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.
Disgusting.
.
Following the logic of the analogy given.
Works fine for me as I don’t live there.
Property rights belong to the owner of the property. They should be able to make whatever rules they want. Where we went wrong with anti-smoking policy is telling property owners what they can and can’t do with their own property.
I’m all for an asshole-free 100-yard buffer. Don’t even need smoke for a pointer. It’s just there, and the normals sense it.
I would think you’re the one who is disillusioned. If you don’t think so now ... you will in the coming years as you see people maintain their rights on not having poison blown in their faces against their will.
I don’t worry about those who seem to think that it’s a right to blow poison into other people’s faces, because they won’t be around much longer.
I don’t care what you do on your property as long as it doesn’t get to me. I’m not going to be going on your property, especially if you’re blowing that poison around.
So, you won’t see me there. But where you will see me is in the public areas of our country and that’s exactly where I’m not about to have people blowing poison in my face against my will.
Now, there’s a restaurant close by to me that has a completely sectioned off area - another room, a shut door and it’s own ventilation - and all the smokers convene in there. I don’t go in there, but they are free to blow all that poison on each other and they seem to like it.
I don’t care if they stay in that room and it’s fine by me. I appreciate the restaurant for doing that and keeping others safe from that poison. The owner of that restaurant had the right idea.
Got it - You believe in statism and the subjugation of one citizen over another. Thanks for the clarity - mob rules!
I thought I would post OKLAHOMA’s laws on smoking — since Oklahoma has been thr reddest of the Red States in elections. People are - here in Oklahoma - fairly politically conservative as we can see from the results of the last two Presidential elections. And, given that — this is the legislation that governs smoking in this state.
Of course, it would actually help if I posted the link ... LOL ...
I have witnessed states that mandated this by law, with the promise of not going further. Business owners complied, at a substantial cost.
Then the same states banned inside smoking entirely, negating the tens of thousands of dollars spent in previous compliance.
Why does the business owner have to accommodate non-smokers at all, if he or she believes that smokers make a more lucrative clientele for their business?
But where you will see me is in the public areas of our country and that’s exactly where I’m not about to have people blowing poison in my face against my will.
I suggest you build yourself a little bubble - you breath more poison in your car than you ever will in a room full of smokers.
I can't believe someone who has been here as long as you have doesn't understand agendas, media hogwash, and how even the government lies to you because of an agenda.
The flavor aide must taste better in your rarefied world. I truly feel sorry for people like you who are so blinded by their ignorance they can't see how wrong they are.
And ... I appreciate hotels that completely BAN SMOKING from their establishment. It makes for an entirely better environment inside that place. There’s nothing worse than coming into a stinky hotel room left-over from a bunch of smokers. Fortunately, it’s only the RATHOLE types of hotels that allow that to go on. The nicer and better ones, who know how to cater to good customers, don’t allow smoking in their places.
No ... what I see as happening is that smokers, as a political group, are in the business of self-extinction — and they won’t be around much longer. The general population, who doesn’t engage in that, will long outlive them.
In a few years, you simply won’t see very many of them. They’ll be extinct except for the “rare bird” - here and there.
You would - considering the government forced them to do so. thank you for your support of big government trampling on private property rights.
The law in Oklahoma (link is above) doesn’t cost the business anything - in the way of making changes. Many businesses have simply banned smoking from their establishment. And “that’s it” — end of story.
For those who think it’s a good business decision to allow smokers in their place, then they will recoup their costs for compliance (in the required construction) - by the increased business they figure they will get. So, they made a business decision to expend some money and get a return by having more customers.
AND ALSO ... you’ll notice that the law does accommodate some businesses where especially smokers congregate - and in those businesses - non-smokers will stay away - if they have a problem with other people blowing poison in their face.
You’ll notice that the law I provided you for where I’m at — says that the hotels don’t have to ban them from their establishment. The hotels go ahead and ban smoking because they get a better clientele, the rooms stay fresher and cleaner and they make more money overall from doing it that way. They are better off as a business, in banning it completely, even though the law does not require it.
I would say that goes for the better and higher class hotels. I think the reverse is true for the RATHOLE hotels, because they do cater to those types of individuals, overall - as the better clientele wouldn’t stay in those hotels, even if you paid them to do so. So, those RATHOLE hotels are more or less forced to accommodate the lower class clientele.
They won't be extinct, but you won't see them because they'll be hanging out in places that still understand freedom and not in places that are hangouts for control freak leftists.
If one lives in a society - under laws and especially with the US Constitution - that’s the price everyone pays. No one lives in our Constitutional Republic without having to accommodate themselves to the laws of our society, regardless of what they think of those laws personally.
AND ... Of course in our Constitutional Republic ... if something is unconstitutional, it can be brought to a court of law and declared so. And as a last resort, if the people of the country see that something should be unconstitutional, but it’s not being properly judged that way by the judicial system - the people have the option of putting forth a Constitutional Amendment to ultimately force the judicial system in the right direction.
So, one way or another it all works out in our system, as it has in the past.
First, get your face off my lawn.
Cigarette smoke doesn't bother me unless it is really thick. What does bother me are those who think they need to fumigate their environs with the latest body spray, and I have to stay upwind of them if I want to breathe. They are everywhere, in enclosed spaces, in the open, and reeking.
We had a restaurant which went to the expense of doing just that--separate room, separate HVAC, the works, but within a year the smoke Nazis had banned those smoking areas, too.
Don't worry, when they are done with the smokers, something you like will be in their sights, and they'll never be satisfied in their quest to do good in their eyes.
As for breathing poison, most of the poison you breathe from cradle to grave will go unopposed by you or others--whether or not there are smokers present.
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