Proposed Mobile smoking ban would allow bars to opt out

Proposed Mobile smoking ban would allow bars to opt out | al.com:

An ordinance soon to be considered by the Mobile City Council would bar smoking in virtually all public spaces and places of employment in the city. 

The most notable exception to the ban would be bars serving patrons age 21 or older. 

Bar owners could choose for themselves whether to allow smoking. Signs indicating whether smoking is OK would be required near the entrances. 

Smoking at restaurants would be permitted in outdoor spaces, provided that the outdoor space is 25 feet from the entrance. 

The ordinance is expected to appear on the council’s Jan. 10 agenda, but may not come to a vote until Jan. 17. 

Councilman William Carroll is sponsoring the ordinance, a draft of which was provided to the Press-Register. "Hardly anybody wants to eat their food around someone who is smoking anymore," he said. "Practically the whole country is trying to go smoke free." 

Carroll said that the ordinance is fair to smokers because it allows them a social outlet where they can smoke. 

Interesting and unusual.
I suspect many bars would choose to opt out since they make a great deal of money from smoking patrons.

I don't like smoking bans,I never have they started a society where rules and laws are made by the association or the agency that yells the loudest.

It is never made by taking the people who smoke into any kind of consideration at all.

Bits And Pieces

Things I found interesting today.

Shopkeeper hits out at cigarette plain packaging plan:

"The whole thing is ridiculous. It applies to tobacco as well and almost all my pipe smokers are over 50.

"The government is trying to denormalise something which is perfectly legal and age restricted.

"If you are over 18 and decide to smoke you should be entitled to go into a shop and buy cigarettes just like anything else.

"Where will all this end? Why can’t people be allowed to make up their minds? It is just a step too far."

Researchers create a healthier cigarette

Scientists have tried to make safer cigarettes in the past. Haemoglobin (which transports oxygen in red blood cells) and activated carbon have been shown to reduce free-radicals in cancer smoke by up to 90 percent, but because of the cost, the combination has not been successfully introduced to the market.

JoVE Content Director, Dr. Aaron Kolski-Andreaco, is very excited to be publishing this article as the journal's landmark 1500th article.

"Practically, this research could lead to an alternative type of cigarette filter with a free radical scavenging additive," said Kolski-Andreaco. "It could lead to a less harmful cigarette."

BBC Four The Smoking Years

Timeshift reveals the story of the creature that is 'the smoker'. How did this species arrive on our shores? Why did it become so sexy - and so dominant in our lives? Was there really a time when everywhere people could be found shrouded in a thick blue cloud?

Enlisting the help of Barry Cryer, Stuart Maconie and others, The Smoking Years tells the unnatural history of a quite remarkable - and now threatened - creature. 

SAVVY SMOKERS FIND WAY TO SNEAK AROUND SIN TAX…BY ROLLING THEIR OWN CIGARETTES

Regardless of which strategy Massachusetts legislators choose to employ, one thing seems clear: the matter is less about the health risks involved in smoking (remember, Massachusetts has long bee been a fierce champion of personal “choice”) than it is about holding on to million of dollars in tax revenue.

More Kansas businesses use "tobacco shop" exception

His building has been split in half.  On one side you’ll find Mike’s Steakhouse and on the other you’ll find Mike’s Smoke Shop.

“This is a separate address, it has a separate corporation, separate shareholders and ventilation system,” says owner Craig Gabel.

The law says it has to be separate and 65 percent of the gross profits have to come from tobacco sales.

Book Project Needs Your Support - Cigarettiquette

Finally a book to give a voice to the people who are passionate about breathing smoke!

Sandy Lynn Riefberg, 27, has written a book which explores cigarettes and smoking from the point of view of a smoker. She delves into all the benefits smokers gain from smoking as well as their feelings about smoking and the segregation of smokers in today's world.

Compensate people & businesses damaged by special interest lobbying (Petition)

Clearing The Air: Anybody who's lost a hospitality business or job in the last 10 yrs should sign this petition to force lobbyists (RWJF) who profited from smoking bans:

The special interest laws enacted around the globe are funded by RWJF on behalf of their partner J & J, for profit and market share amounts to rent seeking legislation. Though the average person may appreciate the end result laws, the fact is that hundreds of thousands of people in the hospitality industry lose jobs and homes as a result

Nice :)

Only has 56 signatures so far.

Seems like it should have many,many more than that.

THE WAY FORWARD (Tobacco Control in Industrialized Nations: The Limits of Public Health Achievement)

PDF

http://www.publichealthreviews.eu/upload/pdf_files/10/00_Bayer.pdf

THE WAY FORWARD
The current state of affairs with regard to adult smoking in developed nations
that have already adopted muscular tobacco control programs poses a
difficult ethical and policy challenge. In the US, smoking among adults
stabilized between 2006 and 2008. In Europe, EU observers stated that
“overall prevalence has reached a level from which it will be difficult to show
further decline unless substantially stronger measures are implemented”.
18
For some, the data suggested that there was no alternative but to further
tighten the public health vise. The goal of limiting tobacco-related morbidity
and mortality provided ample warrant for pressing on. Others were less
certain. Rabin whose concerns about the potentially prohibitionist goals of
ever higher taxes were noted earlier,
23(p.1754)
 has thus noted: “It is important to 
retain perspective on the fact that for some smoking is a pleasurable and/or

psychologically rewarding experience. And correlatively, we should not lose 
perspective on the question of how restrictive a society we want to create—
that is, how-far we want to go in reducing individual autonomy, including 
what can be perceived as self-destructive behavior.” The issues are especially 
complex because significant decreases in the prevalence of smoking at the 
population level can only be achieved if measures are targeted at those at the 
lower end of the social gradient. To the extent that such individuals will bear 
the burden of increasingly restrictive interventions, questions of equity are 
bound to emerge."

The PDF is nauseating.

The part I copied and underlined was the best part and it was the final passage in the last two pages of the report.

What Vietnam Taught Us About Breaking Bad Habits

What Vietnam Taught Us About Breaking Bad Habits : Shots - Health Blog : NPR:

"The research was very much focused on trying to understand how to change people's attitudes," Wood says, "with the assumption that behavior change would just follow."

So researchers studied how to organize public health campaigns, or how to use social pressure to change attitudes. And, says David Neal, another psychologist who looks at behavior change, these strategies did work.

Mostly.

"They do work for a certain subset of behaviors," Neal says. "They work for behaviors that people don't perform too frequently."

If you want, for example, to increase the number of people who donate blood, a public campaign can work well. But if you want them to quit smoking, campaigns intended to change attitudes are often less effective.

There it is in black and white.

Sadly the rest of the article isn't quite as enlightening.

Relevant things can be found in almost all stories of this type,too bad I'm not a good writer or I'd have run with this one already.

The Australian Audio Debate Do We Need A Nanny State?

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2011/09/bia_20110922_1810.mp3



I spent about 48 minutes listening to this debate which starts out with every anti-smoker's friend Simon Chapman.

I don't know what depresses me more the fact that this is how I am reduced to spending my New Year's eve or the fact that this debate was even held.

It's really something.

Worth a listen IMO.

Today’s villain was once a holiday hero

Today’s villain was once a holiday hero | OwentonNewsHerald.com:

For a 100 years, maybe 200, my Owen County family relied on growing tobacco for their economic health. Of course, they did not know how unhealthy smoking was for their bodies, but even understanding that as I do now, I am stunned that within a handful of years, six bent barns have come to stand empty.  Fertile fields lie fallow. And the mammoth tobacco auction warehouses that once dominated towns like Carrollton, Cynthiana, and Lexington have become, like dinosaurs, extinct overnight.

Just thought this was interesting.
You hear so little about tobacco farming or the people who grow tobacco anymore..............