Posted on 11/19/2013 1:19:52 PM PST by Kaslin
Berkeley, Calif., City Councilman Jesse Arreguin has recommended that the city ban smoking in single-family homes. Councilwoman Susan Wengraf, who supports an ordinance to ban smoking in multiunit dwellings, is appalled.
"The whole point is to protect people who live in multiunit buildings from secondhand smoke," Wengraf said. Locals have told her they find the notion of a ban in single-family homes scary. "I hope he wakes up and pulls it," she said.
Actually, I think Wengraf should want Arreguin's recommendation to stick around. After all, his proposal makes the multiunit ordinance seem reasonable.
Arreguin aide Anthony Sanchez tells me that the recommendation is really just a "footnote," "a non-actionable topic of future consideration."
Or call it the next logical step. Berkeley already has banned smoking outdoors -- in commercial districts, in parks and at bus stops, where nonsmokers are free to walk away from smokers or ask them to move. With that ordinance on top of California laws banning smoking in the workplace, at restaurants and in bars, have advocates of nonsmokers' rights determined that their work is done? Never!
The job is never done in the nanny state. Hence the Berkeley proposal, hardly the first in the Bay Area, to ban smoking in multiunit dwellings. Wengraf tells me that smoke can get into ventilation systems and spread through a building.
But what if it doesn't? What if you live in a building where secondhand smoke doesn't leach? There is no burden of proof that your smoke bothers others. If you smoke in an apartment, you're guilty.
Enter Arreguin, who fears that the multiunit ordinance would fall "disproportionately and unfairly on the backs of tenants." It's not fair. So if the city is going to tell renters what they can do in their own lodgings, he writes, it should pass a ban "in any dwelling (including single-family dwellings)." In deference to the secondhand smoke rationale, Arreguin suggests that the ban apply if a minor lives in the home, "a non-smoking elder (62 or older) is present" or any other "non-smoking lodger is present."
Walter Olson of the libertarian Cato Institute compares the Berkeley nanny ordinance to secondhand smoke itself: "They are seeping under our doors now to get into places where they're not wanted."
He faults "ever more ambitious smoking bans" that rework the definition of private space. "Now they're really just saying it doesn't matter if you have the consent of everyone in the room." Olson savored Arreguin's suggestion that 62-year-olds cannot consent to being near a smoker.
When I asked Cynthia Hallett of the Berkeley-based Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights whether she supports the Arreguin recommendation, she answered, "Right now, the policy trend is really for multiunit housing."
The left always likes to say that the government shouldn't tell people what they can and cannot do in their own bedrooms. Yet here is progressive Berkeley about to pass a law that tells people they cannot smoke in their own bedrooms.
Of course, there is an exemption for medical marijuana. City Hall wouldn't dare to tell pot smokers not to exhale. After all, they have rights.
(or even a “sane smoker” - but that’s questionable if they exist, considering what they’re doing).
...based on your nastiness in your post, I take it you travel among the stars securely perched on a broomstick...
Sorry ... wrong costume. On Halloween I dressed up as one of the Duck Dynasty ...
Too bad there are two sides to that equation. Your math is unbalanced.
That's also what the Chemtrail people say!
Poisoned? Did you ride the Drama Llama here?
Oh lookie here - another nanny state loving cretin!
I hate to burst your simple minded bubble, but unless you own the property on which you are standing, our rights are exactly the same as anyone else's - except the owner. If you own it, you have the right to make the rules, if you don't own it, you only have the right to LEAVE.
State or no-state — no one has any self-proclaimed rights, when those faux-rights trample all over my rights.
They can poison themselves all they want, but they don’t get to poison me.
No one’s rights gets to trump and/or erase another person’s rights - as individuals. Someone may say they have a right to swing their arms - but when the swinging of their arms ends up on my nose - then they can’t claim “privilege” because it’s “their right”.
I would suggest that they develop the science behind that to bolster their case with the public and legislatively ... then ... :-)
But I can sense your feeling of kinship, maybe you can be their Marshall Applewhite!
I don’t care about contrails or comets — but someone blowing poison in my face is up close and personal.
But you are free to believe any idiot thing you want.
Remember, dilution is the solution!
If they are swinging their arms and you move into the space they are occupying intermittently, then you have violated their rights by taking up the space they needed to swing their arms.
Nice attempt to substitute “privelege” for “right”, BTW.
The concept that one’s rights trump others’ rights is inherently abridgement of their rights. When states and cities started with the smoking bans, they always couched it in terms of the rights of non-smokers, and never in terms of the property owners or smokers. The non-smokers’ rights were used to cancel the rights of even the people who owned the bar or restaurant to determine whether customers were allowed to smoke.
Now, you are here claiming an inviolable, portable smoke-free zone around yourself, no matter whether the smoker was in the space you decide to occupy first. The only way that logical equation balances is if they have NO rights - only you can have the rights you claim. They are only allowed the “privileges” you allow.
Which means you are considered in the exact same position from someone else’s perspective.
You cannot make a logical case that is balanced based on your assertion of having superior rights to anyone who asserts a right that “affects” you, regardless of circumstance.
Dilution would definitely be the solution for me - which is why I mentioned 100 yards in an earlier post.
Of course then some crazy comment was made after that - saying all that was needed was maybe ten inches.
Since it’s poison in my face, I’m going with a hundred yards.
Yes, I do claim a poison-free zone from smokers as a basic right. And, there are plenty of other people around who also claim that poison-free zone around them, from the poisonous fumes from smokers.
In the end - we all know how this is going to turn out (no matter which side you are on) - because pretty much all people with common sense know that they, personally, have a right to be poison-free, even if someone else chooses to poison themselves. They know - inherently - that the other person’s desire to poison themselves does not extend to any other people, against their will.
Just wait a few more years and you’ll see where this one will go. It won’t be in favor of those who poison themselves and wish to extend that to others against their will.
Since you obviously do not know anything other than the statist propaganda, there is really no sense in discussing this with you.
However, I will try to explain the point I was making in a manner more directed to your level of comprehension:
If it is my property my right to it trumps yours, if it is your property your right to it trumps mine - get it?
Since you have no problem with poison spewing combustion engines I propose you send an hour in a locked garage with a running automobile and I will spend the same hour in an identical locked garage with 100 smokers all smoking at one time. After the hour we will meet to discuss our experiences.........that is if you last that long.
Nanny State PING!
I own a multifamily residential facility and I'm thinking of putting a "no sexual activity of any sort" clause in the lease.
Does that work for you?
“I own a multifamily residential facility and I’m thinking of putting a “no sexual activity of any sort” clause in the lease.”
Depends. Exactly how much semen are you being forced to consume?
You are sadly disillusioned as to what constitutes a basic right.
Public education and the news media did this to you.
Don't take it out on the rest of us. It was a disservice to you, but you can outgrow it and turn it into something useful - maybe.
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