June 1st, 2007 by Atomictumor
Word around the campfire is that the state has laid down the hammer on public smoking, with the house passing a bill 84-10 that would ban smoking in all public places but bars.
Now, I was on the fence about this back in March of last year, and am still kinda there now, maybe more so.
My problem is I don’t like seeing the Man telling people what they can and can’t do in their business. A private business should be just that, private. Market forces should be driving health initiatives, ideally. If Joe the diner operator wants to allow people to smoke, thats his right, but he should be aware that he’s going to lose the business of people who aren’t interested in getting smokey second hand death with their grilled cheese.
When the government steps in (and this is where I’m going to be looking all Ruby Ridge, so just bear with me) telling people what they can and can’t do, it moves us one step further from a free state, and I have a basic fundamental problem with that.
Yes, smoking is bad, and Flo the waitress will very likely get sick breathing Jack the Truck Drivers cigarette smoke working at the diner. Its unfair to Flo to have to either find another job or jeopardize her health by working there, I conceed that, but thats freakin’ capitalism for you.
I like the idea of taxing smokes. Make em unaffordable, sure, because that’d still be the market correcting the problem. I’d get all behind the idea of having to make a bar, or restaurant, or whatever get a smoke license, laying down money that would go to funds to pay for workplace second hand smoke sufferers, sure, that’d work too.
Bannination, tho, is unamerican.
When the hell did I become such a capitalist?
June 1st, 2007 at 11:45 am
It’s worked pretty well in most places where it’s been tried. NYC, for instance, is doing very well under a no smoking ban.
I think one general thing is that businesses tend to want to go non-smoking but can’t because of competition. The ban takes that away from them and actually allows them to go non-smoking.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
It’s great in NYC and in CT. I love it.
A business may be privately owned but it’s the public that the ban is trying to protect.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I disagree with you your tumorness. Taxing tobacco is not a “market force.” Raising taxes on any product above the level needed by the government to regulate that product or market, is government medling. I think that we have all become so used to the idea of taxes in this society that we have come to think of them as a market force.
There is nothing wrong with banning the sale of tobacco. I posted in a thread over at the forum that I think anyone should have the right to grow anything for their own personal consumption. Tobacco, marijuana, sunflowers,poppy, tomatoes,peanuts…whatever.
If smokers want to smoke, then they should learn how to grow the stuff. Ending the legal sale of tobacco is not prohibition. Criminalizing the use is.
The huge increase of state tax on tobacco is hard to resist. We would like the additional taxes to help fund education. Lord knows we could us the help, but what is the real difference between gas companies price gouging and the government tax gouging?
June 1st, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I really don’t disagree with you, Daco, regarding regulating the sale of it, but I think that banning it opens up an underground, and cigs are so addictive, you just know its going to exist.
And, I’m sure its going to work in Tennessee, thats not really the question, but I’m not crazy that its come to this. I still see it as a civil liberties case.
Personally, as far as smokes go, ban em. I’m not defending smoking at all (curse you, sweet, sweet sister nicotine) but rather defending the idea that this country doesn’t ban things unless it infringes on somebody elses civil rights. I think the status quo with cigarettes, right now, doesn’t.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Jonathan and Jane….
If it is okay for the government to prohibit the use of tobacco in public, why is prohibition of the product altogether a bad thing?
June 1st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Daco - I couldn’t care less if they banned it altogether. I’m just glad to hear I won’t have to put up with it so much, and I think a lot of other people are glad, too.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I completey agree that “sister nicotine” is an addictive bi&^%. I am now clean and sober for 17 months. Well clean anyway.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I agree with AT. Private business should have the right to allow any legal activity that they chose. Smoking is legal in this country.
I would suggest that if you or I don’t want smoke blown in our faces, we shouldn’t patronize businesses that allow smoking. Now that is a market force.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I’m not for prohibition of tobacco.
If a person wants to kill themselves slowly that’s their right I guess.
(Of course there is the issue of having to subsidize their medical costs if Medicaid is involved…)
I would just rather not be held hostage by their stinky smoke when I go out to eat or kick up my heels at a club.
You come home and have to wash your hair and your clothes right away to get rid of the stink!!
Let them smoke it up all they want at home and in their cars.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I believe smoking is still allowed in private members only clubs.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:50 pm
That brings up a good point Jane. Should medicare and medicaid offer benefits to tobacco users? I agree with you. I think smoking should be a matter of personal choice, but that doesn’t mean that public dollars should be spent on tobacco related health issues. Does it?
June 1st, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Some people say that smokers shouldn’t be entitled to any public health aide. ( I think Bill Mahr is in this camp.)
For myself personally, I’m still developing my view on this..
June 1st, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Seems like a clear case of public good vs. private rights. Why do we make people wear seat belts, motorcycle helmets, use the crosswalk, etc…? Because it’s better for all of us to not have to deal with the negative consequences of people getting hurt, killed, etc.
Since I don’t really value the freedom to injure myself, personally, I’m not really bothered by it. If I wanted the right to injure myself I guess I’d be upset?
June 1st, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I concur with AT on the ‘bannation’ point. Where does all of the governmental babysitting stop? What about McDonald’s and fast food? We are a nation of overweight, unhealthy people. This food is toxic! Medicaid dollars are spent on diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol levels that are direct result of poor eating habits. If the government’s job is now to save the population from themselves, for “the public good”, shouldn’t they ban all of those restaurants, as well?
I think it should be left up to the business owner, as well. Here in the Tobacco State, where there will probably never be a ban on smoking, by their own volition, few restaurants and many bars are smoke-free. Business seems to thrive at both smoking and non-smoking facilities. I’ve yet to hear of anyplace going bankrupt due to their own, or a competitor’s smoking policy.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Correction: few restaurants allow smoking, and even many bars are smoke-free.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
WRT the regulation of private businesses: I support laws that require restauants to meet certain public health standards. Yes, you could say that eveyone has the freedom to decide not to patronize a restaurant that has an occasional salmonella or hepatitis outbreak, but I don’t agree. I don’t see a smoking ban as different. Government meddling in private enterprise isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
WRT denying public health aid to people who smoked–so you’re content to see them suffer and die, rather than intervene? How barbaric. I’m glad the majority of people in this country are more civilized than that.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Here’s what I’m confused about. If smoking is so horrific and so bad for us then why is it legal? It seems the government’s pockets are filled with tobacco money enough to keep smoking legal. If there weren’t heavy lobbying, there is no way cigarettes would still be legal.
I don’t understand the legal web created around smoking. If a drug company sold a product that did this much damage to people they would be sued and shut down. Period.
I have zero compassion for smokers. They cost tax payers millions in medical bills, they are a public health hazard. In Massachusetts you can’t smoke anywhere in public: restaurants and bars included. After the smoking ban bars started realizing that more and more people were coming out and staying out later. The cigarette haze is gone and people aren’t feeling so dragged down and tired and stay late into the night. More people, like myself, are willing to to go out and whoop it up.
In a nutshell, smoking is bad. Making the air a bit healthier for my kids is alllll good.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:36 pm
“This food is toxic!”
Uh, no. None of the foods sold at fast food restaurants are toxic. You’re just hyperventilating.
June 3rd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Actually NYC is… (Or at this point maybe it’s was) considering banning foods made with trans fats.
I do believe the food has additives in it that are either A. just plain not healthy and/or B. addictive.
Does anyone remember the McD’s ad campaign of many years ago featuring the “Big Mac Attack”? In it people were leaving their houses or jobs because they just had to have a Big Mac right that very second?
I think maybe there is more truth to that than we would like to think.
June 3rd, 2007 at 7:25 pm
You watch too much TV, Jane. You need to get out more.
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Uh Joel, have you ever seen the movie “Supersize Me”? Or given a peripheral view of the subject of nutrition, and what needs a human body must fulfill in order to be healthy? I don’t just mean, alive, without scurvy, I mean healthy, then looked at the ingredients and the cooking methods of fast food? You should read up, a little.
Most people are intelligent enough to know that a few meals from a fast food joint are not toxic in the lethal, fall down immediately and die way, but that over a period of time and with enough consumption, they certainly are poisonous to the human body.
My point, that you must have missed, was that we are a fast food nation, that these restaurants are not obligated (and don’t) have to look out for our health, but that if the government is taking it upon themselves to regulate every conceivable detriment to our health in an effort to protect us from ourselves, than the fast food industry should be showing up next on the list.
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I agree with AT that bannination is unamerican; Bannination is Canadian. The province of Ontario has banned smoking at all indoor public spaces, bar none. You’ll be doin’ your smokin’ outside, in the cold, cold Canadian winter.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:14 am
I do watch some TV but it’s mostly of the Grey’s Anatomy, Lost variety; they don’t have too much to say about fast food toxicity.
My opinions on fast food have evolved from personal experience, observation of my childrens’s health and their eating habits as well as watching various friends and family members struggle with their health and fast food eating habits.
I also know a “food scientist”. Doesn’t work for the big two but you would be surprised how food is “formulated”.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:12 am
“Or given a peripheral view of the subject of nutrition, and what needs a human body must fulfill in order to be healthy? I don’t just mean, alive, without scurvy, I mean healthy, then looked at the ingredients and the cooking methods of fast food? You should read up, a little.”
I’m a professor of biochemistry at a midwest medical school. I’m course director for a 1st year medical school course called “metabolism” which deals with nutrition and metabolic biochemistry. Perhaps it is you who needs to “read up a little.”
“Most people are intelligent enough to know that a few meals from a fast food joint are not toxic in the lethal, fall down immediately and die way, but that over a period of time and with enough consumption, they certainly are poisonous to the human body.”
Too much water, over a period of time and enough consumption, is certainly poisonous to the human body. It’s called drowning. That doesn’t make water toxic or poisonous.
“My point, that you must have missed, was that we are a fast food nation, that these restaurants are not obligated (and don’t) have to look out for our health . . .”
My point, that you must have missed, is that the willingness of people to abuse certain foods doesn’t make those foods toxic. The willingness of certain people to abuse the facts to pretend that it does only shows that those people don’t understand the meaning of the word “toxic” and makes those people appear foolish.
“. . . but that if the government is taking it upon themselves to regulate every conceivable detriment to our health in an effort to protect us from ourselves, than the fast food industry should be showing up next on the list.”
This is just silly.
“My opinions on fast food have evolved from personal experience, observation of my childrens’s health and their eating habits as well as watching various friends and family members struggle with their health and fast food eating habits.”
I’ve consumed a bit of fast food in my day. I have normal blood pressure, no signs of cardiovascular disease and a body mass index of 23. I biked ca. 100 miles this past weekend, and averaged 16 mph for the first 56 miles. I am 52, and I have never struggled with my health.
If your friends and family members have bad fast food eating habits, that is not a sign that fast food is toxic. It is a sign that your family and friends are abusing food. Let’s put the blame where it belongs.
“I also know a “food scientist”. Doesn’t work for the big two but you would be surprised how food is “formulated”.”
Do please share with us the list of toxins that are part of fast food formulation. I, for one, am all ears.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Joel, I congratulate you on your physical accomplishments!!
If I could get a list of what actually goes into fast food, I’d be quite the slueth.
Just like the person who finally blew the whistle on the tobacco companies and finally exposed all the stuff that goes into cigarettes.
I’ll be the first to admit that there are people in my family who have atrocious eating habits when it comes to fast food. (and probably food in general)
but I wonder what makes them go back again and again even after they’ve been told by medical professionals that it is bad for them and they have to stop.
Kind of reminds me of people who…. smoke/drink/do drugs.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Oops “sleuth”
June 4th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
“I wonder what makes them go back again and again even after they’ve been told by medical professionals that it is bad for them and they have to stop.
Kind of reminds me of people who…. smoke/drink/do drugs.”
Well, people are complex, but for many people, I think the comparison you make between food abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and smoking is valid.
I think certain foods make people happy. More of those foods make them happier. The abuse of food (in the absence of sufficient exercise) makes them fat, which means they become unhappy because their clothes don’t fit, their back and legs hurt, their doctor nags them and their spouse/partner no longer finds them attractive. The unhappiness drives them to seek pleasure, which more comfort food affords. You could substitute alcohol abuse (as distinct from alcoholism, which is different), drug abuse and cigarette smoking.
Of course, the difference is that food–unlike alcohol, cigarettes and drugs–is not a poison. The excess food only becomes a problem when the amount of exercise is not comensurate with the intake. There is no healthy dose of cigarettes. Alcohol is a mixed thing, since the data show that moderate alcohol consumption is protective for heart disease. As for drugs, small amounts are usually harmless, large amounts of most drugs (even asperin) are toxic.
June 4th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Do you think if a corporation could find a sure fire way to provide food that made people “happy” that they wouldn’t do it?
Even if the food was not necessarily good for people.
The meals for children at one restaurant are called “Happy meals”.
Then when you grow up you can get a “Super Size” meal.
A super size meal contains far more calories than the average person needs in a day. In one meal.
In order to balance that intake you would have to excercise for hours.
June 4th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
“Do you think if a corporation could find a sure fire way to provide food that made people âhappyâ that they wouldnât do it? Even if the food was not necessarily good for people.”
Corporations are in the business of identifying needs and filling them. Sorry, if you imagine that carrots will ever be a comfort food for the majority of Americans, even with the most extraordinary marketing, then the sky is a different color in your world.
“Then when you grow up you can get a âSuper Sizeâ meal. A super size meal contains far more calories than the average person needs in a day. In one meal. In order to balance that intake you would have to excercise for hours.”
Which is exactly my point. Fast food is *not* toxic. Too much food and not enough excercise leads to obsesity, which is “toxic.” Don’t blame the food. Don’t blame the person you’re buying the food from. Blame the person eating too much of it. Anything else is just denial. Time for people who abuse food to take a little personal responsibility.
June 4th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I agree that it is not toxic.
I originally said that it was A. not healthy and/or B. addictive.
Why, I wonder, do they even offer super size meals?
Seems to me you could get the public to buy two smaller meals for more money than one super size one if they are determined to over eat anyway.
Corporations are in the business of making money. They will create a need if they have to in order to do that.
June 4th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Lets, uh, stick a fork in the whole food thing…
June 4th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Yeah, it was VA Bluebelle who said that fast food is “toxic.”
“Why, I wonder, do they even offer super size meals?”
Yeah, blame anyone but the people who overeat.
Sorry, AT. Maybe we shouldn’t Bogart the smoking thing either.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Ah, I have been outpun’d.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Last words on the subject, from me, pissing contests are not my thing. Dr. Joanna Budwig, a West German biochemist, who has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in medicine, is one of world’s leading authorities on fats and oils (ie: hydrogenated oils that are used in fast food and convenience foods, and the resulting trans-fatty acids). Much of my knowledge of modern day food and the effects on the human body are based on her studies, and over 100 other esteemed studies and research, such as the Harvard study, published Nov. 1997 in which researchers found conclusive evidence that “it’s not the level of or amount of fat intake, that increases heart attacks and heart disease, but the types of fats consumed, especially trans fatty acids.”
Joel, while I appreciate your intellect and always respect the views and opinions of other people, even when I do not agree, I was raised to be a lady, to fight fair, and to debate (keyword, here) in a classy manner that does not degrade or demean others. Due to the way that you present your case, I do not wish to engage in discussion with you anymore, and won’t fall for your taunting again.
Also: it’s spelled aspirin.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:20 am
Excellent use of the passive-aggressive, VA Bluebelle!
I can see you’re unaccustomed to being disagreed with. Too bad. You might learn something if you stop letting your ego get in the way.
“Also: it’s spelled aspirin.”
Indeed it is. Mea culpa.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Yes, nice job, everybody.