Tougher Smoking Bans Are Coming
Thursday November 16, 2006
It was only a matter of time, but the City of Belmont, California is taking steps to ban smoking everywhere, except in single family detached homes. According to the Daily Journal, the new law is now being drafted, and will be considered by city legislators within the next several weeks. It seems to me that local officials are trying to put their town on the map, and perhaps get their own names in the media, by proposing an outrageous limitation on the personal freedoms of their city residents. Thanks to the November 1998 Master Tobacco Settlement between tobacco companies and the States, tobacco is still legal in the U.S. Therefore, a city cannot make the sale or possession of tobacco products illegal. However, local jurisdictions are adopting a myriad of smoking bans, resulting in inconsistent and ever changing laws amongst American cities. It is almost impossible for a smoker who travels to keep up with all the changes. It is time for the States to take control, and to muzzle all these small town politicians who are trying to get their names in the news at the expense of our personal freedoms.
Comments
Gary are you getting an early start to April Fool’s Day? This can’t be serious…can it?
Banning smoking every but in single family detached homes? So those of us in townhouses or condos are out? No smoking in my car?
When will the insanity end?
I`m not surprised. Disapointed, yes. We allow this to happen even though our rights are supposed to be protected. We allow others to tell us how to live our lives. A perfect example is states that still have dry counties and others that do not allow Alcohol sales on Sunday. There is also a huge problem with scensorship.
The Smoker now deals with unfair taxation, price gauging and discrimination. Being seen smoking could soon be a misdemeanor. The problem is, it is a little too late to stop the rolling snowball. It`s coming and you are in the path. Untill m-16`s are handed out with each carton of cigarettes, nothing will happen to stop this because it will take a rebellion which will not happen on our soil this day and age. People can`t afford it and fear the consequences. We will pay $50 for a carton on generic cigarettes. We will pay $5.00 for a gallon of 86 octane. We will be fined for smoking in public. We still won`t be able to buy a six pack on Sunday and we will still be told we live in a free country.
The fools here are the kooks that keep buying smokes that injures health. I want the corps to pay for all damages that they’ve causes due to their greed and hegemony structure.
Before you open your mouth, why not research how the corps conditioned the masses of idiots to smoke? That should be enough to shut your mouth and accept the fact that smoking helps one class of people: the profiteers.
Why not try prohibition again? It may work this time, as we have so many timid people, that they may actually obey the law.
Seriously, we should ban TV, as this is a simply tool of conditioning used exclusively by the corps to mold young and and maintain stagnant minds of the elderly.
The bottom line is that the desire to smoke preys upon our most vulnerable population: the young and retarded.
I’ve touched upon a couple social notions in the above. Perhaps some may see that we, as a culture, are depraved. Well, that’s good, and a start. So keep on thinking, at least for two more seconds.
The biggest problem with the pending ban in Belmont, CA is that it has about as much of a change of working as did Prohibition of alcohol in the 20s. I know two people who live in Condos in Belmont, and neither of them have any intention of stopping smoking an occasional cigar either inside or on their decks. They’ve decided that they will smoke on their own property (what a novel idea?) and if it means that they get hauled away to jail, they and their lawyers are ready for a big fight.
It is not just a matter for smokers but all freedom loving people of America. We already have psuedo “laws” in residential areas, ie. home owners associations, that infringes on our basic freedoms in the name protecting other rights (value of property).
Smokers and non-smokres should realize that when we make it easy for government to “tell” us what is good or bad, we slowly move into a socialist mentality. Does the government really know what is best for me?