California steamin'...

Larry Gude

Larry Gude

Strung Out
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-belmont29jan29,0,7656220.story?coll=la-home-local


Banning smoking everywhere but single-family detached homes and their yards would be a big step forward, even in health-conscious California.
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This is so blatantly unconstitutional it's not even funny. Calling that a 'step forward' uncovers a mindset and thought process that is simply mindnumbing.


"When you have a smoker and a nonsmoker living next to each other in an apartment, the smoker is fine. It's the nonsmoker who feels the pain," Husmann said, especially if that person has asthma or other respiratory problems. "The right to breathe fresh air is the greatest right."
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The greatest right. Hmmm. "Life, liberty and the persuit of happiness" come to mind. I guess that's the argument, that my smoking threatens your life and your liberty and your persuit of happiness.


"The joke," DeWitt said, "is if you're driving down El Camino and you're speeding and you get pulled over and you're smoking, is the penalty increased?"
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Well, does it?


"I don't know where the boundaries of a truly legally defensible ordinance are," acknowledged Councilman Dave Warden, who is pushing to pass "the strictest law possible."
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The boundaries? Read "1984" azzhole.


So although Belmont may not make the kind of history envisioned in the early headlines ("Belmont to be first U.S. city to ban all smoking"), it still could make history of another sort, by finding a line this tobacco-averse nation is unwilling to cross — at least for the moment — in pursuit of better public health.
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We went to Iraq to depose a dictator and put pressure on othr bad actors in the region. Seems we've got plenty here at home to deal with.
 
aps45819

aps45819

24/7 Single Dad
I think that if all politicians wen't money hungry whores, cigarettes would be classified as a an illegal drug like heroin.
 
Larry Gude

Larry Gude

Strung Out
Well...

aps45819 said:
I think that if all politicians wen't money hungry whores, cigarettes would be classified as a an illegal drug like heroin.
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...money hungry is one thing. The federal government consumes one out of every 5 dollars the nation produces per year and people still use heroin, illegal or not. The issue here to me is the constitutionality of it.

Our nation is set up as one of laws; things you can't do regardless of who you are, a neighbor or the President. It protects the strong and it protects the weak, all the same. When we say that it is now a public health issue, a clean air 'right issue because the cigarette smoke coming from my apartment is a danger, a threat, to you, my neighbor, we open the door just that much further and that much closer to 1984.

You don't need a stove; you might burn the whole apartment building down.

I don't need to make spaghetti; the scent of tomatoes makes you nauseous.

It is frustratingly stupid to argue that your cigarette smoke, in your apartment, violates my rights in mine. We're talking about dilution and dissipation that is beyond statistical irrelevance. My God, nerve gas is dangerous only so close.

This all sets precedent and precedent is a very powerful thing in our society. Just let the imagination run wild with the things you could argue violate your rights in some way or another that go on behind my door.
 
aps45819

aps45819

24/7 Single Dad
Larry Gude said:
...money hungry is one thing. The federal government consumes one out of every 5 dollars the nation produces per year .....
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Never mentioned the government. It's the politicians recieving "campaign funds" that keep tobacco of the CDS list.
 
Larry Gude

Larry Gude

Strung Out
Well...

aps45819 said:
Never mentioned the government. It's the politicians recieving "campaign funds" that keep tobacco of the CDS list.
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...there's a point there, as well, but it is a two sided coin. Big Tobacco actively lobbied for the big settlement a few years back in order to end litigation and fix their costs. They are as much to blame for formalizing the government new right to turn a legal personal choice into a pigs trough as much as any one. And the courts should have thrown it out. You can NOT sign away your rights. They are inalienable. Supposedly.
 
vraiblonde

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
How about people with deathly peanut allergies? Can they successfully sue to have ALL peanut products removed from restaurants, AND can they sue their landlord if they get sick because someone in the next apartment is eating a PBJ?

At what point do we tell these freaks to STFU and get a bubble?
 
M

Mousebaby

Guest
Just a thought, why can't they section part of the apartments for smokers and the other part for non smokers? :shrug: They do it at hotels, and restaraunts. Just seems to be an easier solution to the problem then trying to ban smoking period. JMHO :howdy:
 
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