Use this for entrance into the Cigar Bar when Fred Thompson announces for President to celebrate his candidacy! Only conservatives need attend.
Posted on 05/17/2007 4:47:06 PM PDT by Wheee The People
Editorial: Smoking ban proves Legislature can get things done 5/17/2007 8:56:33 AM ...
The hope comes in the form of the "Freedom to Breathe Act," which Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed on Wednesday.
The act, which will take effect on Oct. 1, bans smoking in virtually all bars and restaurants in the state. A statewide smoking ban was proposed in previous legislative sessions, but the bills died amid the partisan rancor that has beset the Legislature through the 2000s.
This year, however, nearly equal numbers of Republican and DFL lawmakers joined together to pass the statewide smoking ban by comfortable margins in both the Senate and the House.
We stated in a previous editorial that the smoking ban issue is one that is best addressed at the statewide level. Many cities and counties, including Olmsted, have enacted their own smoking bans over the last decade. But those local ordinances create an unequal playing field for bar and restaurant owners who fear they'll lose business to nearby communities. The statewide bill goes a long way toward leveling the playing field.
We are empathetic to business owners who still believe they'll lose customers as a result of the statewide ban. However, the Oct. 1 implementation date, which was moved back from the bill's original Aug. 1 compliance deadline, should give business owners and their patrons time to plan ahead. Who knows? Maybe some customers will use the next four and a half months to complete smoking cessation programs, or cut back on their tobacco use.
We also empathize with those who argue that the government has no business telling restaurant and tavern proprietors what to do.
After all, no one is forcing individuals to frequent bars or restaurants that permit smoking, and there are plenty of smoke-free dining and entertainment options out there.
The law isn't perfect. There are still concerns that bars and restaurants near Indian gaming casinos, which are exempt from the new law because they're under federal jurisdiction, might be at a competitive disadvantage.
The same holds true for establishments in border communities such as Moorhead.
Only the enactment of a national smoking ban would completely level the playing field. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon. In the meantime, a Minnesota ban makes good sense in a state that has for decades been a leader in the protection of public health.
Use this for entrance into the Cigar Bar when Fred Thompson announces for President to celebrate his candidacy! Only conservatives need attend.
Even dumb eurotrash favor a ban on smoking
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nearly three-quarters of Britons back a total ban on smoking in all indoor public areas and in restaurants, according to a new survey.
And nearly two-thirds think such a ban is already in operation and is being respected, even though it only comes into force in England on July 1.
Scotland was the first part of the UK to implement a smoking ban, which was introduced in March last year.
Wales was the first to vote for a full smoking ban, which came into force in April, as did a ban in Northern Ireland.
The Eurobarometer survey, published ahead of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, shows overwhelming support across Europe for such bans, with support for smoke-free offices running at 88%, compared with 86% last year.
The poll also reveals that nearly half - 46% - of British smokers have tried to give up the habit in the past 12 months, a higher rate than in any other EU country.
More than a quarter of Britons who try to give up do so as many as five times - and, across Europe, more than 70% of “reformed” smokers take it up again within two months.
The Greeks (42%), Latvians, Hungarians and Bulgarians (36% each) are the most prolific smokers, while the most abstemious Europeans are the Portuguese, with 64% saying they have never smoked.
EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou welcomed the support for smoking bans he said: “This can only strengthen the momentum towards making European public and workplaces smoke-free by 2009.”
According to the Commission 650,000 people die from smoking-related diseases every year, with about 80,000 adults dying as a result of inhaling “second-hand” tobacco smoke.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/health/britons+support+smoking+ban++poll/526162
Your love for all people shows, Wheee.
I'm hoping you'll be able to "DEAL WITH IT!" -- loving and respecting your fellow man, that is. You sure make FR a lovely place for adult dialogue, because with you, it only goes on way, unfortunately. You are not gracious in victory, like President Reagan and both of the Presidents Bush, and you don't seem to respect the views of others with whom you disagree. If you would have bothered to read what I have posted, you would understand that we share some points of agreement on this issue. Instead of focusing on that, you continue to post childish, "deal with it" messages, and you don't even have the courtesy to answer legitimate questions from your fellow Freepers. So, please don't bother me with boring stats any further -- I know what they are.
I'll ask you my question once more ... "Isn't having a 'snitch' line to report your fellow citizens a little 'extreme' when all that had to be done was to post 'no smoking signs' and remove the ash trays?" It's worked every other time and place it was tried. Everyone should be treated with respect, even those with whom you disagree. That’s why I use the term “Nazi” (and I don’t like doing it), because that’s exactly what those signs entail, and we shouldn't treat each other that way.
Lastly, unless you live in Ohio and/or have bothered to read the law, you should not assume the law is a “good” law, because it’s not and, therefore, you should not comment on it.
Ahhhhh a picture person...OK
ST. PETERSBURG -- Cigarette smoke hangs in the air in the room where Bryan Lee Curtis lies dying of lung cancer.
His head, bald from chemotherapy, lolls on a pillow. The bones of his cheeks and shoulders protrude under taut skin. His eyes are open, but he can no longer respond to his mother or his wife, Bobbie, who married him in a makeshift ceremony in this room three weeks ago after doctors said there was no hope.
In Bryan's emaciated hands, Bobbie has propped a photograph taken just two months ago. It shows a muscular and seemingly healthy Bryan holding his 2-year-old son, Bryan Jr. In the picture, he is 33. He turned 34 on May 10.
A pack of cigarettes and a lighter sit on a table near Bryan's bed in his mother's living room. Even though tobacco caused the cancer now eating through his lungs and liver, Bryan smoked until a week ago, when it became impossible.
Across the room, a 20-year-old nephew crushes out a cigarette in a large glass ashtray where the butt joins a dozen others. Bobbie Curtis says she'll try to stop after the funeral, but right now, it's just too difficult. Same for Bryan's mother, Louise Curtis.
"I just can't do it now," she says, although she hopes maybe she can after the funeral.
Bryan knew how hard it is to quit. But when he learned he would die because of his habit, he thought maybe he could persuade at least a few kids not to pick up that first cigarette. Maybe if they could see his sunken cheeks, how hard it was becoming to breathe, his shriveled body, it might scare them enough.
So a man whose life was otherwise unremarkable set out in the last few weeks of his life with a mission.
* * * Bryan started when he was just 13, building up to more than two packs a day. He talked about quitting from time to time, but never seriously tried.
Plenty of time for that, he figured. Older people got cancer. Not people in their 30s, not people who worked in construction, as a roofer, as a mechanic.
He had no health insurance. But he was more worried about his mother, 57, who had smoked since she was 25.
"He would say, "Mom, don't worry about me. Worry about yourself. I'm healthy,' " Louise Curtis remembers. "You think this would happen later, when you're 60 or 70 years old, not when you're his age."
He knew, only a few days after he went to the hospital on April 2 with severe abdominal pain, how wrong he had been. He had oat cell lung cancer that had spread to his liver. He probably had not had it long. Also called small cell lung cancer, it's an aggressive killer that usually claims the lives of its victims within a few months.
While it seems unusual to the Curtis family, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa, Bryan's oncologist, said he is seeing more lung cancer in young adults. "We've seen lung cancer earlier and earlier because people are starting to smoke earlier and earlier," Paonessa said. Chemotherapy sometimes slows the process, but had little effect in Bryan's case, he said. Bryan also knew, a few days after the diagnosis, that he wanted somehow to try to save at least one kid from the same fate. He sat down and talked with Bryan Jr. and his 9-year-old daughter, Amber, who already had been caught once with a cigarette. But he wanted to do more. Somehow, he had to get his story out.
When he still had some strength to leave the house, kids would stare.
"They'd come up and look at him because he looked so strange," Louise Curtis said. "He'd look at them and say, "This is what happens to you when you smoke.'
"The kids would say, "Oh, man. I can't believe it,' " Louise Curtis said.
In the last few weeks, Bryan's mother has been the agent for his mission to accomplish some good with the tragedy. She has called newspapers and radio and television stations, seeking someone willing to tell her son's story, willing to help give him the one thing he wanted before he died. Bryan never got to tell his story to the public. He spoke for the last time an hour before a visit from a Times reporter and photographer.
"I'm too skinny. I can't fight anymore," he whispered to his mother at 9 a.m. June 3. He died that day at 11:56 a.m., just nine weeks after the diagnosis.
Bryan Lee Curtis Sr. was buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in St. Petersburg on June 8, a rare cloudy day that threatened rain.
At the funeral service at nearby Blount, Curry and Roel Funeral Home, Bryan's casket was open and 50 friends and relatives could see the devastating effects of the cancer.
Addiction is more powerful.
As the graveside ritual ended, a handful of relatives backed away from the gathering, pulled out packs of cigarettes and lit up.
http://www.whyquit.org/
I’m sorry that you are incapable of communication, Wheee, I truly am. You don’t even give a bit of consideration to what others say. Continue with your childish ways, then.
Rather than stalking me from thread to thread, here is a great article about a likely ban in Oregon.
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_050607_news_smoking_ban.3f7a9984.html
Ban on bar, tavern smoking in Oregon likely
By BRAD CAIN, Associated Press Writer
SALEM, Ore. — A measure to snuff out smoking inside Oregon’s bars and taverns is back on track and appears likely to pass in the 2007 Legislature, despite some lawmakers’ earlier worries that a smoking ban could make it tougher to balance the state budget.
The bill stalled after state fiscal analysts said the smoking ban could shrink revenue by $50 million in the coming two years, by reducing video lottery play and by cutting into sales of cigarettes and alcohol — and the taxes the state collects on them.
This past week, however, Senate President Peter Courtney came to the conclusion that protecting public health trumps concerns over a possible revenue hit. So he’s asked the Senate Revenue Committee in the coming week to advance to the full Senate a bill to clear the air in Oregon’s bars and taverns by requiring smokers to step outside to indulge their habit.
“It’s time we do this. The danger of secondhand smoke to the people who work in these places is well documented,” the Salem Democrat said.
In 2001, the Legislature passed a measure that outlawed smoking in businesses but exempted bars, taverns, bar areas inside restaurants, bowling alleys and bingo halls in most places.
Anti-smoking groups have been pushing for years to extend Oregon’s workplace smoking ban to bars and taverns, and they were heartened to hear that the bill is moving again.
More than 35,000 Oregonians work in those establishments, and a U.S. surgeon general’s report issued last year made it clear that their health is put at risk by exposure to secondhand smoke, anti-tobacco activist Tabithia Engle said.
“We are very hopeful the bill will pass, because those employees are being exposed to dangerous, deadly chemicals in the workplace,” said Engle, spokeswoman for the Tobacco-Free Coalition of Oregon.
The coalition has a strong ally in House Speaker Jeff Merkley, who says the House is ready to extinguish smoking in bars and taverns once and for all.
“It’s the right thing to do,” the Portland Democrat said. “This is about protecting the health of Oregon’s citizens.”
Although some lawmakers have questioned the $50 million estimate of lost revenue, Senate leaders have decided to have the smoking ban take effect in January 2009, instead of next January, to soften the impact of any revenue drop on the coming two-year budget.
Delaying the start of the smoking ban until 2009 also would give Oregon’s bars and taverns — and their customers — time to get used to the idea that smokers’ last indoor public refuge is eventually going to disappear.
The Oregon Restaurant Association, representing 3,000 bars and restaurants, has strongly opposed past bills to ban smoking in bars and taverns, but isn’t taking a position on this year’s bill.
“We still think it’s taking away the rights of adults to do what they want to do,” said association spokesman Bill Perry. However, he noted that other places, including neighboring Washington state, have moved to ban smoking in all indoor business establishments, and that anti-smoking advocates have threatened to take the issue to the 2008 ballot if the Legislature doesn’t act.
“Most of our people thought it was going to get on the ballot and pass, so they were expecting the 2009 date anyway,” Perry said.
Aside from the one-year delay in implementation, another pending amendment would exempt so-called “cigar bars” from the ban on indoor smoking. The change was sought by Sen. Ryan Deckert, chairman of the Senate Revenue Committee, who called it a narrow amendment that would apply only to the 20 to 30 such establishments now in the state.
The Beaverton Democrat, who has on occasion patronized cigar bars, said they are generally small, self-contained areas within bars or taverns with their own ventilation systems where customers can go to smoke cigars.
“So the bill will say, `If you’ve already got a cigar bar; and it’s self-enclosed and has a ventilation system, you can keep it,’ “ Deckert said. Engle, the Tobacco-Free Coalition spokeswoman, said she’s not thrilled with that amendment but can live with it because it is narrowly drawn and applies only to a relative handful of such establishments.
“We’re making these political concessions because we want to get these laws passed to protect as many workers in Oregon as possible,” she said. In 1998, Corvallis became the first city in Oregon to adopt an ordinance banning smoking in bars and taverns. Since then, Eugene, Philomath, St. Helens and other local governments have adopted similar ordinances.
The 2001 legislation kept in place the local ordinances already adopted, but it blocked efforts to ban smoking in drinking establishments in other places.
If you can't do that, then stop posting to or about each other altogether.
There, fixed it.
Actually, it's the left that applauds smoking bans, not social conservatives.
Banning Wheee Wheee???? Don’t you dare. We should clone him not ban him...
Beating him up is the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on.
You two need to put on a Barry White record and make up.
You are fascinating Mullah Muhammad Wheeenie. What else would you like to ban next in the name of Allah? Liquor? Dirty words? Sex on TV?
I'm here to help you WheeeWheee. You are going to need counseling as you struggle through the GOP primary. You have a very tough decision to make in a few months. What's more important to you? Your faith or your hatred of smokers?
Will you support the cigar smoking Fred Thompson? Or do you hate smoking so much that you will vote for Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith insists that the Garden of Eden is located in Jackson County, MO??? Mitt doesn't drink or smoke. I feel your pain. It's like voting for Joseph Smith or the Marlboro Man. It must be a personal struggle.
How does that make you feel?
I am a social conservative. I applaud nothing that puts the government in the place of mans own responsibility. Government has no role in this issue, or in many other issues. To applaud an issue like this is to be a nanny state liberal!
We're going to be living in a Socialist Utopia run by elitist left wing loons who used religious fundamentalists to garner power when it suited them. Eat, drink, smoke and be merry. If you get sick or don't show up for work, the welfare state will take care of you. Of course the elitist welfare state libs probably won't let you eat, drink, smoke or be merry. They are paying for your healthcare and so they get to make the rules.
THIS IS SOOOOOOO MEXICAN! WHEEEZER IS MEXICAN! THIS GREAT COUNTRY WILL BECOME MEXICAN. WE'RE ALL MEXICAN.
Nos vemos.
Wheee Wheee on the Sheeple, GOOD NEWS: I'm moving to Mexico. You and your Taliban religious fundamentalists and the Socialists who used you like a rented mule can have this once great nation all to yourself.
SURGEON GENERAL WARNING: IF YOU FOLLOW ME DOWN THERE AND TRY TO BAN CORONAS OR SMOKING, OR TRY TO ENFORCE SHARIA LAW IN CANCUN, IT WILL CAUSE BROKEN BONES, LACERATIONS, FAT LIPS, AND BLACK EYES.
You are about as predictable as rain in April, so I'll help you out with your next post. You know, the one where you do a Google search on Mexico + smoking + bans.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mexico+smoking+bans
Have a DosXX on me.
Thanks Pablo. Do you actually drink beer?
I have very religious friends, family and coworkers who say they don’t drink because it is against their religion. My question to them is “Didn’t Jesus drink wine”?
What’s the answer?
Wheee, you are very difficult to treat. I thought your personal jihad was based on the idea that smoking and other vices were a "cultural pariah" that God has instructed you to obliterate. We all thought you were a Taliban fundamentalist.
We were making progress in your therapy. Now you have reverted back into a normal red blooded male who drinks beer but understandably hates having smoke blown in their face. Which is it? I have no problem with your hatred, I've been there and I understand, I'll tell you why later.
But schizophrenia is not my specialty. Please pick a personality and stick to it so I can treat you.
Eric keep up the good fight. And being a Pennsylvania resident, I still see PA being a hold out for awhile longer.
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