Finally, on a lighter (ahem) side, a photo of a pretty woman smoking a pipe…
Archive for January 24th, 2010
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Sunday, January 24th, 2010State smoking ban bill would trump rules in Lafayette, WL
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
By ERIC WEDDLE • eweddle@jconline.com • January 21, 2010
A no-smoking sign is in plain sight on the door of DT Kirby's in downtown Lafayette on Wednesday. (By Brent Drinkut/Journal & Courier)
Lafayette-area smokers, bar owners and anti-tobacco advocates have heard it before.
Proposed statewide smoking restrictions, advanced Wednesday by an Indiana House committee, have become a familiar story, they say.
But a smoking ban bill’s author, state Rep. Charlie Brown, a Gary Democrat, said this third attempt to stop smoking in many public places has more bite than before. And Brown said the time has come for statewide smoking restrictions.
If passed in its current form, the statewide measure would push aside smoking ordinances in place in Lafayette and West Lafayette. Stricter in scope, the bill would ban cigarette, pipe, cigar and other tobacco puffing just about everywhere, including bars, restaurants, private clubs, hotel rooms and tobacco stores.
No one at Lafayette’s Ben Hur Tavern Wednesday afternoon was buying into his plan.
“Oh, Brown is trying again?” asked Steve Bolin, of Lafayette, as he finished a cigarette. “I am not saying that smoking has never hurt anyone, but we should be able to smoke if we want.”
The South Fourth Street bar is one of 41 businesses in Lafayette with an exemption allowed under Lafayette’s citywide smoking ban.
As part of Lafayette’s ordinance, passed in 2008, bars, restaurants and other businesses that only employ and serve those 21 years and older are eligible for the exemption.
If Brown has his way, House Bill 1131 will not make exceptions for private clubs or bars. It does allow an exemption for casinos and parimutuel horse racing venues.
“Last year, they hired everyone who was available to lobby against the legislation,” Brown said of the gaming industry. “I am wholeheartedly in favor of a smoking ban in all places. But I have to crawl before I walk.”
He said a ban that included casinos could hurt their business and reduce tax revenue to the state at a time when Indiana’s tax collections are falling far short of previous expectations.
Smoke-free workplace laws have been implemented in eight counties and 31 cities in Indiana, according to the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation agency. But the rules vary, and many communities have no regulations at all.
Brown said he wants a uniform state code.
The Indiana House passed a similar bill last year. But the measure failed in the Senate and died during late-session negotiations.
Stan Balser, owner of the Ben Hur, said he is opposed to any bill that would wipe away his business’ exemption. He favors Lafayette’s current ordinance and wants it to stick.
“You have a choice of where you can go,” Balser said. “I don’t smoke — haven’t for 15 years. But people should have the choice. If you want to smoke, you can come here. If you don’t want to be around it, you can go to West Lafayette.”
In 2007, West Lafayette banned smoking at all bars and restaurants and many other workplaces. Lighting up is allowed only at tobacco shops and designated hotel rooms.
Tristan Kirby of the Tobacco Free Partnership of Tippecanoe County said a blanket ban would offer the most protection to employees from secondhand smoke. That’s the major push behind Brown’s legislation.
“There is no safe level of secondhand smoking,” Kirby said. “Any level can be detrimental to an employee. The only way to be truly free of secondhand smoke, 100 percent, is to not allow smoking inside a facility.”
Kirby said there are worries about the health of casino workers. But she said the Tobacco Free Partnership would support House Bill 1131.
Lafayette City Council member Steve Meyer, D-at large, called the bill a double-edged sword.
Meyer pushed for the amendment in the Lafayette smoking ban to exempt businesses serving and employing those over 21.
“I think it is good to be uniform across the state, but I think our way is better because it allows business owners to make a decision,” Meyer said. “Those type of business owners should retain that decision.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
Premium Cigar Association Supports D.C.Smoking Ban Proposal… Almost
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
IPCPR Okays Underage Smoking Prevention but Nixes Smoking Bans
Washington, D.C. 1/20/2010 09:36 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)
Washington, D.C. January 20, 2010 – The International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association has come out in support of proposed Washington D. C. Council legislation to reduce under-aged smoking and against the same piece of legislation that would impact smokers’ rights outside businesses.
The proposal would assess new penalties on under-aged youth for purchasing or possessing tobacco products. At the same time, the bill allows shop owners to post no-smoking signs in front of their establishments to include 25 feet of their front door or from the sidewalk.
“As owners of premium cigar stores, we have very few people coming into our stores who are underaged and, if they try to make a purchase, they are carded without exception. So the part of the legislation regarding underaged youth and tobacco is not a problem for us, unlike the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids which, ironically, opposes this aspect of the legislation,” said Chris McCalla, Legislative Director of the IPCPR. “It’s the other part of the legislation that bothers us – no smoking outside of buildings – even though it contains no enforcement provisions.”
McCalla pointed out that the vast majority of premium cigar and pipe smokers are courteous and mindful of people around them when they are smoking. However, he said, legislated smoking bans of any kind are anathema to the group and its individual members.
“Anyone who says there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke, including that which is found outdoors, is totally misinformed. In fact, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has set safe standards for secondhand smoke. Those OSHA standards are 25,000 times higher than air quality levels found in restaurants and bars. So, whatever wisps of smoke may occasionally waft into a building cannot possibly be unsafe, according to OSHA,” McCalla said.
Referencing those people who cite the Surgeon General’s report regarding the alleged adverse health effects of secondhand smoke, McCalla said: “There is absolutely no evidence presented in the report that supports this claim. These misinformed people have been brainwashed by neo-prohibitionists and tobaccophobes into believing otherwise,” he said.
“If store owners don’t want smoking in their places of business, they have the right to declare their property smoke-free. And if these property owners don’t want people to smoke outside of their places of business, they have the right to ask people not to smoke there. We support that. But enacting legislation that gives the government authority over these individual property rights we do not support,” he said.
“Not only is it not justified from a medical standpoint, it is not a justified deprivation of our personal rights from a constitutional standpoint. Next thing you know, the government will be running our nation’s auto companies, financial institutions and the entire health industry – or trying to.”
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Contact: Tony Tortorici
678/493-0313
tony@tortoricipr.com
‘Uncertain road’ ahead for state
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
By: Melissa Turner, News Editor January 19, 2010
State Rep. Joe Gardner, Sen. Nolan Mettetal, and Rep. Larry Baker attended a legislative breakfast last week at Senatobia City Hall. Sen. Robert Jackson and Rep. Clara Burnett were not in attendance at the meeting.
Money – it’s on the mind of most folks these days, and that also applies to our elected officials.
Three of those officials came to the annual Legislative Breakfast, sponsored by Entergy Mississippi and coordinated by the Tate County Economic Development Foundation.
Rep. Larry Baker, Sen. Nolan Mettetal, and Rep. Joe Gardner all attended the meeting last Monday at Senatobia City Hall, along with several dozen local officials and citizens.
Baker said that the session had started earlier this month with an incentive program to assist Tunica County with a German pipe manufacturer, which recently announced it would locate there.
But the biggest talk at the capitol, he said, was the continual budget cuts, which Governor Haley Barbour was doling out.
Under state law, Baker said, the governor is allowed to cut 5% from the budgets of state agencies, but cannot cut more until each agency has been cut. However, Barbour has been asking the legislature for authorization to cut up to 10%, saying that some agencies can better sustain the cuts than others.
Sen. Mettetal thanked the local leadership, saying that having excellent officials here made his job easier – but adding that there was nothing easy about being in the state legislature right now.
“The budget is overwhelming, it consumes everything” he admitted. “Other issues are legitimate, but the are being put on the back burner.”
“We are walking an uncertain road,” he said.
Also a concern was the upcoming census, and whether any local legislators would be involved in reapportionment of representatives.
None of them are on the reapportionment committee, but Mettetal said that the issue of representation would probably be settled by the courts, not the legislature.
Rep. Gardener said he was optimistic about recently released employment numbers, but admitted that there was only so much money to go around at the state level. Budget cuts were hard, he said, because they could mean lost income for a state worker.
“We keep getting phone calls, ‘Don’t cut us,’” he said. “If we listened to everyone who said ‘Don’t cut us,’ no one would ever get cut.”
Bill Burford, President of the Board of Supervisors, asked the legislators to make sure that this next year’s budget was more “realistic,” saying that the local governments had to make up funding shortfalls when the state mandated programs but did not fund them.
Those budgets were made on income estimates, Burford was told, which Mettetal said had been revised downward each month for the past several months.
Senatobia Mayor Alan Callicott asked the men about the possibility of a statewide smoking ban, saying that 27 states now have such a law.
Baker and Mettetal said they were opposed to such a law, because they were opposed to larger government.
Coldwater Alderman Harold Davis asked what kind of cost savings would be seen by the potential consolidation of school districts, but Baker said that any savings would probably not be significant in an area like Tate County.
The lawmakers stayed around for several minutes afterward to speak with individual citizens.
Hmm…I wonder which German pipe maker that is?
