This is gonna be interesting!
Apparently the law states that any establishment violating the new law is subject to fines and ultimately the lost of their liquor license, so I’m guessing they’re a-gonna be enforcing this law.
It’s just kinda strange envisioning a LOT of NYC bars sans smokers!
That is all.
Finally I can go into a NY bar without having an asthma attack.
Yeah, it’s all good!
I read a very small article in the Albany Times-Union that indicates that they’ve passed a law expanding NYC’s new law to cover the entire state. It goes into effect in July. Apparently it will be illegal to smoke ANYWHERE IN THE ENTIRE STATE with the exception of your own home, Indian casinos, and private vehicles. (Drive a company car? No smoking allowed in it.)
NYC’s law includes an exemption where a bar or restaurant can have a separate room with its own ventilation system, and in that room people could smoke. However, when the state law goes into effect, that exemption will no longer exist.
You know something? I don’t even smoke, and I have asthma, and I still think this is out of line.
Surely you can still smoke on the street?
The way I read the article, you can’t smoke in any public space, including streets and sidewalks outside of buildings.
Well, in Manhattan every sidewalk/street is outside a building, so that is gonna be a bitch to enforce I’d imagine…
The thing that astounds me is how very silently they’re slipping this through. I’ve read two small sidebar articles in the Times-Union’s Local section, and that’s it. You’d think a complete smoking ban would get some notice, especially here upstate where it’s completely out of the blue.
Article here.
The examples that the story gave
…seem more about buildings than streets and parks. I don’t see the exact text of the law there though.
I did a bit more googling and came here
(on an unrelated matter…the beagledave clan will be in Albany Apr 12-16…visiting my relatives…maybe we could grab some lunch or something…)
They’ve passed something similar here in Bloomington, IN, too. It just passed in the city council, I watched the meeting on TV. It prohibits smoking in all public facilities effective at the beginning of August, except pre-existing bars and private clubs, which are exempt until Jan 1, 2005.
This is in adittion to the previous smoking ban they enacted some years ago, which is basically the same thing, except it exempted a lot more places and the exemptions didn’t “fade out” as it were.
Basically, before the new ordinance, the only places you could smoke (besides your home and car) were places that had been in existance before the old ordinance had come into existence and that had smoking sections already. Any new businesses built had to be smoke free. Also, if an existing business moved, closed for 6 months and then reopened, or changed ownership, it had to revert to non-smoking.
I don’t smoke, but I think this is absurd. I do NOT think New York (state)'s decision is absurd though.
Something one of the bar owners here said struck me. He said that this ordinance WILL hurt his business, because people can still go out of the city to go to a bar and smoke. He said he wouldn’t be upset about a statewide ban, because then it’ll put everyone on a level playing field. The current ordinance will only push people to go outside of the city, and to push new business to open outside the city.
And it was pushed through fairly quietly. I guess organizations don’t want to be seen as pro-smoking.
Thanks for the link, beagledave, guess my reading comprehension skills are slipping a little. And by all means there should be lunch to be had when you’re up here. Dopers in Albany seem blessed rare.
Garf, Gunslinger told me that Longview, TX has a law similar to these already in effect. There are no smoking sections in Longview restaurants. However, Longview’s the only town with any real businesses in it for an hour or more in any direction, so they don’t seem to worry much about people taking their business out of town.
Having moved here from California, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal (next winter it could really piss me off though). Even as a smoker, I don’t fancy smoky bars and having my clothing saturated with smoke, yuck. Smoking outside takes care of that.
I do think there will be some issues to deal with that people hadn’t counted on though. Like flocks of people standing outside bars, beer in hand, tossing butts on the sidewalks. It can get rowdy…and loud.
I was in a bar last night when this law went into effect. Starting promptly at midnight, bouncers asked smokers to step outside. Fine by me.
Silently? Everyone I know has been waiting for this for months!
Um no…this ain’t Hoboken. It is also illegal to drink in public in NYC. That will get you a nice 3 hour wait at the courthouse to pay a $25 fine.
Sadly, I will miss the days of coming home with cigarette burns in my clothes because some drunk biatch is waving her cig around.
msmith537, I have heard quite a bit about the ban in NYC, but until that article in the Times-Union I hadn’t heard even the barest whisper of an inkling of a vague idea of them toughening and expanding those laws to apply to the entire state. That’s what I feel has been slipped through so silently. I’d have expected there to be more discussion of such a topic around here (“here” being “upstate,” where there are currently very few limits on smoking in restaurants).
I visited NYC in May of 2001. Every single place we went, whether a bar, restaurant, whatever was “no smoking”. Any smoking at all had to be done outside, where just about every restaurant or bistro had a few chairs and tables for outdoor dining, and smoking.
Even the hotel in Chelsea where we stayed was non-smoking. Not one place we visited (museums, things like that) had a smoking area.
I’m just a little confused…how is this going to be any different than it was then? When we were there, we were under the assumption it was already against the law to smoke indoors.
Were there places that allowed it and we just missed them?
Seriously, we went to many, many places and none of them allowed smoking, or even had a smoking area. I know NYC is a gigantic place, but seems like I’d have noticed a couple.
Well, hallelujah. I’m so sick of going out dancing and coming back reeking of burned plant, and much as I love Quebec, it’ll be nice to have someone with civilized anti-tobacco laws to the south.
Yeah, if you’re dressed in rags and sleeping in a cardboard box. I’m sure that issuing $25 citations to people drinking $15 martinis, doing the associated paperwork, and transporting the hideous criminals to said courthouse is much preferred to the laborous task of grunting, “take it inside.”
My only regret is that I will no longer live in New York when this goes statewide. I hate going out to places and coming back smelling like smoke. It even happens in places when I can’t really smell the smoke when I’m actually there. But as soon as I get back and take my clothes off–SNIFF–there’s the smell as I put them in the hamper.
To the people that will oppose this ban on Libertarian grounds–how libertarian is it to do something that stinks up other people’s clothes and can even kill them?
It’s not that big a deal. You wanna smoke, just step outside. You can stop drinking for a minute or two, really. 
There’ll almost definitely be someone else out there doing the same. Been that way for years in California.