Thursday, February 17, 2011

Ignorance Is Bliss in Parts of Northern Kenturcky

I really don't get how people can be ignorant enough to not see the health problems caused by second hand smoke, but there are enough of them to push the Campbell County Fiscal Court to extinguish a law to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.

All people have to do is to point to Ohio. We passed a smoking ban statewide, and naysayers then pointed to Kentucky as a grave warning of bad times ahead. They said that bars in Cincinnati would crumble without smoking and with Kentucky just over the river with a smoker's paradise we would never recover. Well, how many bars have opened in the Downtown Cincinnati area since the ban, let alone around the city? If you are not going to say a ton, then you just haven't been in Cincinnati in years.

Kentucky needs to pass a statewide ban and get over smoking. It is not a bottomless pit of profit as some think. It is a quick high, then you crash and need another. Don't get sucked into the bad habit of overplaying the importance of militant smokers. The militancy dies out after a couple of days.

4 comments:

  1. It is not that simple - you are completely discounting the fact that Kentucky is a *tobacco* state. It always has been.

    I definitely agree a statewide ban would be awesome ...but baby steps are what it is going to take. And a one-time shooting down doesn't mean this is never going to pass. It just means the proponents of the ban need to try harder next time to make it more appealing.

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  2. It's not just smokers - you got the militancy of personal property rights folks, too.
    The bans give bar & restaurant owners an idea of what business would be like without smoking. That's probably good. Lift the bans & let business owners make the decision to allow smoking or not.

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  3. And the people who work there can just get over the cancer and heart disease risks of 2nd hand smoke, eh Quim? Hard to just quit a jo in the middle of a recession & 9%+ unemployment.

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  4. The Right has gone full-on kakistocratic. At this point, anybody in office who believes that policy has actual bearing on life works for a Democrat.

    Everything's just a matter restoring the manifest destiny of the gilded age. Having a black president (or even just a Democratic one) made chauvinists say "I don't recognize my country! I want it to be like Mad Men!"

    ...typing that, I realize that Mad Men is actually probably their model. Smoking for all, no contaception, no unions, minorities are elevator operators, women are secretarial cum depositories...

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