A COUNCIL has banned smoking in playgrounds, pools and parks - or smokers could face jail.Now, those for and against smoking bans will argue about the integrity or otherwise of passive smoking studies that led there - all of which were focussed exclusively on enclosed spaces - till they're blue in the face.
New York's Middletown City Council on Monday unanimously passed one of the toughest anti-smoking rules in the region, banning people from lighting up at all city playgrounds and pools, as well as two entire city parks mainly used by children and teenagers.
Violators could be imprisoned for up to 15 days.
The rules, passed by a resolution of the council in the Hudson Valley town 65 miles (104 km) from New York city, is viewed as a measure to protect public health and is intended to reduce the exposure of kids to second-hand smoke.
However, no-one but a lunatic can argue that there is any proven risk whatsoever from second hand smoke in a large public park, for the simple reason that - despite quixotic attempts - no evidence exists which points to it being so. Nor will there ever be any.
So to inflict a ban on smoking in the open air prior to any research indicating any possible harm is bad enough, but to attach the nuclear punishment of incarceration to it is bullying and bigotry. Pure and simple.
Middletown councillors can attempt to classify this move as being about health, but in reality it is the age old human trait of persecution. The marginalisation and denormalisation, with not even the remotest scientific or epidemiological reasoning for doing so, of a section of society classed as inferior for pursuing a legal activity.
One could reasonably argue that those promoting such a policy - and any who support its implementation - can fairly be termed, shall we say ... Nazi-esque?
9 comments:
At least the crack dealers will
be able to work in an healthy
envoirement not to mention the
health conscious paedophiles and
associated trouser droppers.
Land of the free
You cannot be serious
San Francisco, California, USA is a $500 fine for smoking outdoors and they are working toward making it illegal to smoke in your own home that you bought and paid for. This is nothing new because west coast of the US has been a gulag for 15 years now. Americans think it makes them more free.
Does that include President Obama?
How much longer before our bunch of cunts try that, I wonder?
The " NEW WORLD ORDER " of TOBACCO CONTROL.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02720.x/full
What next, a limit to the number of smokers per square mile followed by a government sponsored cull if that number is exceded.
I'm off to set up a JACKBOOT FACTORY, should be a billionaire
in a few years time.
Where is Baz the nazi to defend this one?
Why not test the law on this?
Surely a group of like minded people can get together and hire a decent lawyer to pick holes in zealous nonsense like this.
RHine - 'Where is Baz the nazi to defend this one?' Simple - he's goose-stepping down his local high street waiting for the call.
Smoking in pools? Aren't they harder to light that way anyway? Illiberal and stupid. Ho hum, Reason Number oh, about 318 to not go and visit the home of the slave and the land of the unfree. I'll think about going back when they stop trying to make Russia look libertarian by comparison.
They will take everything from us when are people going to say enough is enough? We must tell congress the FDA as to go, or else then need to take charge of it.
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