Category Archives: Smoking bans

Secondhand smoke, smoking, Smoking bans

Casper smoking ban battle — petition drive fails after hundreds of signatures thrown out

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Casper, Wyoming a few months ago implemented a smoking ban for all restaurants and bars.

Well, after only a few weeks, bar owners went to the city council and whined about the effect of the ban on their business and the city council, which had a couple of new members from when the ordinance was first approved, overturned the ban for bars .. again after a FEW WEEKS.

Well, a local group was not pleased with the city council caving and turned in a bunch of signatures to put the whole thing to referendum. Their petition fell 61 signatures short of being enough to put it on the ballot … BUT the city clerk rejected 685 signatures … out of about 3,200, making them fall short.

The group — Smokefree Natrona County — is now demanding a recount of those signatures. Sigh, this never seems to be easy (how do you throw out more than 20 percent of the signatures on the petition, anyway?)

Anyway, the city clerk is not required to do a recount, so the bar smoking ban in Casper might be dead for now (not sure what would stop them from doing another petition drive?).

 

Secondhand smoke, smoking, Smoking bans, Uncategorized, Workplace smoking

Lawsuit filed over “smoke shacks” built by Great Falls bars, injunctions filed, groups formed, it’s a mess

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This is a hell of a convoluted story. It’s too complicated to tell the whole story here, so I’ll sum up … It’s a city/county health department fighting the courts, owner of some Great Falls, Montana bars and a citizens’ group has gotten in the middle of it. It’s all over things called “smoke shacks.”

I only know of one bar locally that has one of these “smoke shacks” (Another one has some shelter in an alley behind the bar, but that’s different).

Under Montana law, bar owners could install a “smoke shack” in their bars. It’s usually a really small room, with a few video gambling machines, completely cut off from the rest of the bar. So, if you really want to smoke inside and play video poker or whatever, you kind of get shut off alone in these little rooms.

The owners of a bunch of casinos built these smoke shacks, but then received notices from the city and county that they were violating the state’s clean air act. The bar owners finally filed suit over it. The city and county health department requested an injunction against the smoking shelters and lost.

According this article, the judge ruled that the health department “took a ‘kaleidoscope of ever-shifting interpretations,’ concerning smoking structures in Cascade County, and that the board failed to adopt a coherent and logical interpretation of the Clean Indoor Air for bars and casinos in Cascade County.”

So… it gets more convoluted, because now a citizens’ group has gotten involved on the side of the city and the county, mad that these bars in Great Falls have found loopholes in the Clean Air act.

One of the strangest parts of this article is an interview with a former smoker/gambler:

Doug Richardson watched the tavern industry change from a gaming machine in the Palace Casino.

He was there before the law, when the law was implemented and today after the smoking shelters were built.

He smoked like any other gambler, until he was diagnosed with emphysema.

Now whenever he’s around smoke, whether it’s someone smoking a cigarette outside or if he’s near a backyard fire pit, his lungs act up and he has to use a rescue inhaler.

“These rooms have at least cured that as far as coming into places where people are smoking outside,” Richardson said. “They should build rooms like this. It takes the smoker away from people and into their own zone.”

Richardson was playing a game at the Palace Casino, adjacent to one of the Palagis’ smoke lounges, and he said on any given day the smoking room is full and there’s not a hint of smoke inside the main facility.

Whoa, the guy is dying of emphysema and he needs an inhaler if he’s around cigarette smoke, but I give him credit for being so tolerant toward smokers.

Anyway, it’s a big honkin legal mess … and headed to court, if not the State Legislature.

Personally, I’m not worked up about it too much, but it’s annoying to me when bars try to find these loopholes and just don’t deal with the fact that smoking bans are the future.

cigarettes, smoking, Smoking bans, smoking in movies

Keanu Reeves does not approve of you smoking!

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From the new movie “Generation Um”

Hah, I actually saw something like this about 10 years ago, in which a drunk chick threw a massive temper tantrum for being told a bar was a non-smoking establishment and she stomped out of the bar, after vandalising her table.

Reeves was also in “Constantine,” a few years back, probably the most blatantly anti-tobacco movie I’ve ever seen.

 

Secondhand smoke, Smoking bans, Workplace smoking

Smoking ban relaxed in Casper

casper

Here’s something you don’t see very often. A town actually remove or relax a smoking ban.

Late last month, Casper, Wyo., removed its smoking ban on bars because some bar owners complained to the city that the ban was hurting their business (the ban is still in place in restaurants.).

Smokefree advocates are now collecting signatures for a voter referendum to restore the smoking ban. Not sure how such a referendum would do in such a Libertarian/conservative state like Wyoming, but it would be interesting to see.

Wyoming has no statewide smoking ban and likely will NEVER have a statewide smoking ban as it is one of the most anti-regulation, conservative states in the nation. I know Cheyenne and Laramie have smoking bans, and Jackson, Wyo., attempted to implement a smoking ban, but that ban was tossed by a Wyoming court because the wrong agency implemented it (a county health board). Casper is the second-biggest city in Wyoming next to Cheyenne.

Interesting, bar owners claimed the ban hurt their business, but according to this Casper article from April, there didn’t seem to be any effect in the bars. I’ve always thought some bar owners exaggerate some these claims, but of course, without looking at their books, who knows? At the very least, with the ban in place for only two or three months, business owners and more importantly, the city council, did not give the ban a legitimate chance.

I’ve seen this happen before. It only takes a handful of “squeaky wheels” to get a small town government council to respond (I’ve seen three or four loud parents talk school boards into sneaking intelligent design into their curricula, etc.). Again, I’m not that dogmatic about bar smoking bans, but I hate to see a small town council NOT give their new regulations a chance to succeed, and I hate to see a small town council cave to a small  and likely loud group of complainers.

Interestingly, they held a referendum to get rid of a smoking ban in Springfield, Mo., and Missouri is a pretty conservative, anti-regulatory state … the referendum failed with the pro-ban side getting 64 percent of the vote.

I wish the petitioners luck and I’ll be keeping an eye on if it succeeds.

cigarettes, Smoking bans, Tobacco

Russia “doomed” by smoking ban

Haven’t posted in a while. Have three interesting updates.

The first is a smoking ban in all places — Russia — one of the heaviest smoking countries in the world.  It’s not a particularly strict smoking ban — no smoking in hospitals, on public transit or in schools (nothing about restaurants or bars).

Not very strict, but a big deal in a country where a whopping 55 percent of men smoke daily (compared to about 25 percent in most Western countries).

Bans were also put in place by Russia on advertising and marketing of cigarettes. It affects this Soviet-era cartoon of a smoking wolf named Wolf the Hooligan, which can only be shown at night now because the main character chain smokes.

(Is this music from Speed Racer?)

With the ban, Russia joins most of Europe in having some sort of smoking bans (I believe some Balkan and Eastern Europe countries still have no bans).

As you know, I’m not that dogmatic about smoking bans, but I accept them as part of the changing world. I feel more strongly about the ban on marketing and advertising.

A great article from MSNBC on the latest country to have a smoking ban. Some people are happy, some are mad.

Smoking bans, Uncategorized

Meet Bill Hannegan, a blast from the past

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bill hannegan

Was kind of perusing Tobacco.org the other day and saw an interesting story that there is still a lot of bickering going on about smoking bans in St. Louis. Man, it’s been at least two or three years this has been going on.

I don’t get too worked up over smoking bans anymore because I tend to see it as a dead debate. There’s very few places left where you can smoke in bars or restaurants — mostly the Deep South, and mostly in smaller towns and cities in the South.

Anyway, in St. Louis, the big debate is over whether they should allow exemptions to an existing smoking ban. Missouri is one of the places in the country still fighting smoking bans. The only reason this story even caught my eye is I remember from the old toxic Topix days a Libertarian guy from St. Louis who was vehemently against smoking bans — Bill Hannegan, and I figured, “Oh, I bet ol’ Bill is in the middle of this spat.”

And sure enough, not only is he in the middle of the spat, this newspaper even did a sidebar about Bill. Hah, an article about this guy I remember from Topix five or six years ago, with his photo. So, this is ol’ Bill Hannegan from the Topix days. You still see Bill Hannegan’s name pop up all over the Internet, commenting on stories about smoking bans.

This article calls Bill “perhaps the staunchest defender of smoking rights in the region.” I read that and thought, “Christ, he might be one of the staunchest defender of smoking rights in the whole country, from how often I’ve seen him involved in stories about smoking bans.” It’s nice to see who the person is behind all those hundreds of comments I’ve seen over the years from him.

Bill, as much as I almost never agreed with him, and frankly got offended when he claimed there is no proof secondhand smoke is harmful and he kept comparing smoking bans to Nazism (Sorry, Bill, you cannot with a straight face compare having to go outside to smoke to the murder of 20 million people in the name of ethnic cleansing), usually managed to keep it pretty civil on those boards despite being the target of a lot of personal attacks, unlike this scary-ass Tea Party nut named Conferederate76 or HarleyRider76 (don’t care if I never see that guy again online). You could say Bill is obsessed with smoking bans, but it’s probably kinder to say he is very driven and passionate about it. Like I said, I will probably never agree with him.

(Speaking of Topix, I recommend staying off it. The links are full of malware and the threads downright nasty. There was this epic thread about the smoking ban in Ohio that began way back in November 2006. It got downright vicious, just nasty, threats, etc. It looks like that thread finally petered out in July 2012 after 75,000 comments — most of which came from probably fewer than a couple of dozen commenters.)

Anti-tobacco campaign, Smoking bans, Workplace smoking

Workplaces banning smokers — period. Is that cool?

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Here is something I’ve written about before, employers not only banning people from smoking on the premises, but refusing to hire smokers and firing people for being smokers.

This USA Today article looks at this. There are a growing number of companies that are doing this, even including nicotine in the list of things they drug test for. If employees test positive for nicotine, boom, they’re out the door.

Hospitals and health organizations have led the way on this. The reasoning is two-fold:

  • A) Smokers raise the health insurance premiums of everyone — smokers and nonsmokers alike. (And this is true. It’s been well-documented.)
  • B) Smokers also have a higher level of absenteeism and illness than nonsmokers and thus their productivity is affected (Also well-documented).

That being said, this still smells very wrong to me. I prefer the carrot approach to cutting down smoking, not the stick. This is kind of where I split from the rest of the anti-tobacco lobby.

I’m perfectly OK with employers charging higher insurance premiums to smokers. I think that’s completely fair because smokers do cost everyone money and should pay their share. At the same time, I’m also OK for higher premiums for being who are obese, because obesity causes nearly as many health problems as smoking (and may cause more premature deaths than smoking within the next 10 to 15 years.). But, refusing to hire people and firing people? Smells wrong.

What I personally would VASTLY prefer is if companies helped pay for smoking cessation programs for their employees, with the “carrot” being lower premiums if they are successful in quitting. If smokers don’t want to go through the program and are OK paying higher premiums, that’s their prerogative.

As far as I know, no smokers has ever won an anti-discrimination suit against a company for refusing to hire smokers or firing someone. I’ve scoured the Internet. People have filed suit, but I haven’t found a case in which a smoker has won or got a policy overturned. For the moment, it appears in certain states, companies have the right to do this. Apparently under federal law, smokers are not considered a “class” of person, so this is a legal practice under federal law.

People have sued and have won cases for being fired for being overweight. What’s the difference? No employer in his right mind is going to fire someone for being fat and then telling them that to their faces (places like Hooters can get away with this somehow). But, you can fire a smoker because they smoke on their own time?

A total of 29 states have passed laws protecting smokers’ rights, but in 21 states, companies can still fire and refuse to hire smokers. I really think this goes too far. I’m not comfortable with it.

(As an aside, I noticed one charity quoted — the American Lung Association — as not hiring smoking. Hah, OK, I can see that!)

 

Big Tobacco, phillip Morris, right-wing douchebags, RJ Reynolds, Secondhand smoke, Smoking bans

Herman Cain — Tobacco industry whore douchebag stooge

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herman-cain-and-godfather-pizza-picture-1

OK, if Herman Cain’s pathological bigotry toward Muslims and his borderline Uncle Ruckus “Blacks have been brainwashed into voting for Democrats” schtick wasn’t enough reason to hate him, now there is this.

(Thanks to Sandy at Current for cluing me in on this, BTW.)

In the 1990s, when Herman Cain, owner of Godfather’s Pizza, was a lobbyist for the restaurant industry, he partnered with RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris to oppose smoking bans for restaurants. Cain helped lobby against local and state smoking bans on behalf of the tobacco giants. Why? Whoooooaaaa, Nelly! Here we go! A letter from Herman Cain to SAFE — the Save American Free Enterprise fund, a tobacco industry front group at the time:

On behalf of National Restaurant Association and the
Save American Free Enterprise (SAFE) fund, I want
thank you for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company’s generous
contribution to the SAFE fund.
As you know, the purpose of the SAFE fund is to provide
financial support to state restaurant associations in
their efforts to defeat anti-business ballot initiatives,
along with pro-actively promoting free enterprise
through federal and state legislation .
Rob, as we head into a new millenium, it will take
courage and leadership from industry leaders like you if
we are to Save American Free Enterprise .
Again, many thanks for your ongoing support and
participation with the National Restaurant Association.

Sincerely,

Herman Cain

What a fucking weasel. We are talking about smoking bans in … FAMILY RESTAURANTS … where children eat. It’s bad enough for employees to breath secondhand smoke for 40 hours a week, but they were fighting bans around kids.

Wow, just when you think a guy couldn’t be a bigger douchebag (and really, after Cain’s cracks about Muslims and towns should be able to ban mosques, he’s pretty damn high on the douchebag scale.), Cain takes it one step higher.

By the way, Cain IS Uncle Ruckus!

Anti-tobacco campaign, centers for disease control, Smoking bans

New data on smoking rates by age, sex, occupation — Miners smoke the most!

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miner smoking

Quelle shock, miners are heavy smokers!

I haven’t done a piece on the annual Centers for Disease Control report on cigarette smoking in the U.S. in quite some time.

This report takes a slightly different tack — breaking down smoking rates by occupation.

Overall, the adult smoking rate in America was 19.6 percent in 2010, down ever so slightly from the 19.8 percent in 2009, but roughly the same as the past 5 years, where it has hovered around 20 percent.

The CDC has been doing these surveys for about 10 years now, and they are very accurate. These entail surveys of tens of thousands of people each year.

The smoking rate among 18-24 year olds is 23.8 percent; among 25-34, it’s 23.5 percent; among 35-44, it’s 21 percent; and among 45-64, it’s 19.8 percent. Among people over 65, it’s only 10.2 percent.

The smoking rate for men is 21.5 percent and for women it’s 17.9 percent.

Here’s the stats I find interesting. Again, these numbers have been pretty consistent over the years. Smoking rate for high school dropouts; 27.1 percent. For high school grads, 21 percent, and for college grads, 9.1 percent.

So lack of education = higher smoking rate.

Another interesting stat. Smoking rate for people living below the poverty line, 27.7 percent; near the poverty line, 26.3 percent; middle income or upper income, 18.1 percent.

It’s not surprising since education level tends to correlate with income. What I find interesting is cigarette taxes have gone up astronomically in the past 10 years. An average pack of cigarettes nationally is about $5. So if you just smoke one pack a day (and that’s not a heavy habit), you’re spending $1,800 a year just on cigarettes. The people who can least afford that expense are the ones buying cigarettes and most hit by cigarette taxes. You can bet a lot of these people don’t have health insurance, as well.

The Midwest has the highest smoking rate, at 21.7 percent, followed by the South at 20.8 percent (bit of a surprise, but Oklahoma and Indiana have high smoking rates and I believe they are included in the Midwest). The Northeast has a smoking rate of 18.7 percent and the healthy and tanned West is lowest at 15.9 percent.

Now, as far as occupation, mining and food services have the highest smoking rates at 30 percent (let’s face it, if you’re breathing coal dust all day, I can understand why miners would feel, “fuck it” about smoking.), followed by construction at 29.7 percent. Everything else is below 25 percent. Interestingly, arts and entertainment has a smoking rate of 14.9 percent. That’s lower than I would expect, because there is a LOT of smoking in the music, film and theatre industries.

Smoking_Kills

Health care and social assistance smoking rate is 15.9 percent, though health care support is 23.7 percent. The lowest smoking rate is in education, at 8.7 percent (not many school campuses allow any smoking anymore.) Interesting, a job classification as “physical,” (I assume this means trainers and people in rehab services) is 9.2 percent.

Smoking bans, Uncategorized

CDC predicts every state will have a smoking bans by 2020

mizoram-no-smoking

First of all, the headline is a little misleading. It says “Every state will ban smoking.” They aren’t banning smoking, they’re just banning it in bars and restaurants.

It will be interesting to revisit this in 9 years to see if the CDC is right. It’s not a particularly bold prediction, since there are only 12 states left that *don’t* have smoking bans. The article says seven — Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, Wyoming, South Carolina — but that’s incorrect. They forgot to mention Alaska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Alabama and North Dakota. It’s 12 states that do not *effectively* have smoking bans in either bars or restaurants.

What’s interesting is, in most of these states, the major cities all have smoking bans — Houston, Dallas, Austin, El Paso, Charleston, Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis, Casper, Cheyenne, Kansas City, St. Louis and now Bismarck (Bismarck voters just approved a smokefree law — by a HUGE margin — about 60-40 percent). So, even though there are no statewide bans in these states, there really aren’t that many places in those states where you can still light up in a bar or a restaurant.

By coincidence, most of these states have high smoking rates and high lung cancer rates.

The article correctly states that smoking bans do drive down smoking rates and that hospital admissions for heart disease among *non-smokers* have consistently declined in communities that have smoking bans.