MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Sun, 08 Oct 2006

This is one of the two facts that put the lie to the anti-smoking movement's claim that it's all about protecting the innocent non-smoker from evil smokers and their second hand gas. "Cigar bars", where the well-heeled can gather and puff away, have exemptions from smoking bans in most cities that have implemented them. Rich folks puffing rich smokes: good! - poor folks sucking poor smokes: bad! How do you spell class warfare?

The other little factoid that flies in the face of their claims is the proliferation of the phrase "tobacco free" as opposed to "smoke free". I have yet to hear of the mass suffering of innocents from "second hand spit", though I will admit to finding public spitting a bit of a gross-out. Of course, I also find 700 pound middle aged women in pink hot pants a gross out, too, but as yet see no signs declaring "gross free" zones.

The anti-tobacco movement is about control - nothing more and nothing less. They have the correct answer, and they're bound and determined that everybody else will share in that answer, or else have to answer for their defiant non-belief.

Which sounds amazingly like a lot of monotheistic religions I've heard of. It's not for nothing that we are having a "crusade" against smoking ...

AP - For about five years in the 1990s, the cigar industry luxuriated in a wild sales boom when celebrities and trendy 20-somethings decided that puffing imported, hand-rolled stogies was The Next Big Thing.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

/Politics | 1 writeback | permanent link

On 10/11/2006 11:01:50
Thorolf wrote

A smoking ban recently went into effect here in Denver - all restaurants, indoor music venues, and most bars are now smoke-free by fiat. I'll admit - I rather like the application of the regulation to live music venues myself for purely selfish reasons, since I've been loath to go out and enjoy a good band due to the overwhelming miasma of cigarette smoke (and a few other things) that inevitably follows me home - I'd have to strip down, toss everything in the wash, deodorize the shoes, and take a shower before going to sleep after a good concert. So - until the ban is overturned, I'll take advantage of the smoke-free atmosphere at the Ogden, the Fillmore, and the Gothic. I don't really see the point in banning smoking in most bars, however, and I don't much care for the thinking behind the ban. Most restaurants in town already have pretty good remediation in place (physical separation, good filtration systesms) since a lot of people are on both sides of the fence regarding smoking around mealtime - some enjoy it, while others can't stand it, and not a lot of middle ground. I've always taken my business to restaurants where I don't have to expose myself to secondhand smoke, so the ban doesn't really affect my dining habits. In the long run, I'd have preferred to see other methods tried before an outright ban - the aforementioned Gothic Theatre recently did a remodel that included some serious air scrubbers, and at one pre-ban show that I took the plunge on (Blue Oyster Cult is generally worth a slightly elevated risk of lung cancer, IMHO), the air was downright breatheable even with the mix of smokers and non-smokers.

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MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
Musings, Reflections, Rants and Comments from a Hoosier Heathen husband, father, grandfather, farmer and software engineer. There's really only one of me ...

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