California Town Bans Smoking in Condos and Apartments That Share Walls

intrepid

zillah
The whole "Wahhhh we can't smoke where we want to" mentality is ridiculous.

We've been used to that for decades and most adhere to it. The attitude we can't stand is the self righteous that set the perimeters and then change them when they decide it's time to screw with others. Smokers are such easy targets. I'll tell you as a smoker, we've been pushed far enough.

we used to have those little gold tin foil ashtrays in McDonald's...

most smokers had enough common sense not to light up if a kid was sitting next to them or near (this smoker anyway) and I never remember being bugged by non-smokers.

it's weird, like this mental infection and they way it is spreading should be looked at more closely than the act of smoking.

reply to post by SisyphusRide


Removing the smell and vapor alone does not eliminate the fine particulate matter (read: carcinogens) unless as I said, it is a True HEPA as they filter up to 0.3 micron as cigarette smoke contains particles ranging from 0.01 - 4 microns. So you effectively eliminate "up to 99.97%" (hey marketing) of fine particulate material.

Unfortunately it isn't as easy to simply decide not to walk into your own home because your neighbors smoke is seeping through the wall.

FSC doesn't actually cause cigarettes to go out, in fact most times it causes mine to burn up after I thought I had adequately snuffed it. There will be no ember or smoke, ashy dark tip and an hour later I'll go to finish it and discover it burned up entirely.

sidenote: even eCigs contain some risk of second-hand, trans-dermal absorption of nicotine and as any nicotine is bad for you (PERIOD) as it hardens arteries this has also lead to the push to also ban eCigs in public commons.

reply to post by zillah


With NO regard for others. It's not only smokers that suffer from this crap. There used to be a place in Milton, On called the Hardball Cafe. It was THE spot outside the GTA. When I moved here 17 years ago that place was jumpin. Hell, even LL Cool J hung there when he was in Toronto. 10 years later smoking laws. 3 years ago, out of business. And the owner didn't smoke. He wanted to keep the smoking but was not allowed.

reply to post by intrepid


I feel no sorrow for this story at all. I have absolutely no emotion regarding the closure of a business as they exist solely for the public good and when they cease fulfilling that obligation, it is time to dissolve them. As our understanding of public good evolves to include public health, I expect things that were once socially acceptable to be recognized for what they are and removed from our culture.

reply to post by intrepid


you can do that here... in my state anyway, Virginia is a tobacco state.

businesses usually just have to register as a private establishment... which is still open to the public, to generate members.

there are places you can smoke at still in my state and many of the mid-western states.

DerbyGawker
reply to post by colddeadhands

 

You reduced the scenario to absurdities. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that vehicle exhaust also contains: Hydrocarbons, Nitrogen oxides and Sulphur dioxide.

edit on 22-11-2013 by DerbyGawker because: (no reason given)

Absurdities? So it is OK for your car to kill me but not OK for my cigarette to bother you? I don't give a rats a## what chemicals are being emitted the point is that your car is definitely worse for me than my cigarette is for you!

intrepid
reply to post by zillah

 

With NO regard for others. It's not only smokers that suffer from this crap. There used to be a place in Milton, On called the Hardball Cafe. It was THE spot outside the GTA. When I moved here 17 years ago that place was jumpin. Hell, even LL Cool J hung there when he was in Toronto. 10 years later smoking laws. 3 years ago, out of business. And the owner didn't smoke. He wanted to keep the smoking but was not allowed.

I lived in Omaha when the smoking ban went into effect there. Smoking wasn't allowed inside anywhere, and if someone chose to smoke outside it had to be something like ten feet away from any entrance. The only exception to this rule was anywhere that KENO was played...because if KENO business went down, there went the state's money.

I think that even changed down the road (I moved a couple of years back).

reply to post by Cabin


That is why they make FIRE SAFE CIGS.
But is probably ok to smoke MJ just not cigs. This is totally stoooopid.

reply to post by DerbyGawker


Places are in business to MAKE MONEY. They aren't there to cater to the gov't or weak minded pussies. Read that as rabid anti-smokers.

reply to post by colddeadhands


If you lock yourself in a small room with no ventilation and run my car for 15-30min, you deserve to die. Vehicles are accepted as a necessary evil as they are currently the only modern conveyance capable of supporting our culture, necessity for travel and economy, as such they are heavily regulated and continuously improve their emission quality and fuel efficiency (could they do better? absolutely). But as their known effects now begin to displace their usefulness you see a policy transition towards zero emission vehicles, better mass transit, etc.

I have provided evidence that clearly shows tobacco smoke is worse for you than vehicle emissions per volume. I won't even attempt to entertain your evident tautological fallacy suggesting that if we ban cigarettes we should ban vehicles, this is reality and one is useful to society whereas one is plainly destructive.

@inteprid, the sole legal purpose of any business is to fulfill a public need with respect to the public good. If you don't believe me, go learn about the historical framework of corporate charters and just what articles of incorporation are. In short, a business must plead with the state (representative of the people) for permission to exist, it has no rights. Its very existence is a privilege which may be revoked at will of the state.

DerbyGawker
@inteprid, the sole legal purpose of any business is to fulfill a public need with respect to the public good.

What "public good" do strip joints provide? Casinos?

I snipped the rest as textbook BS seldom works in the real world. Try that in the real world and your tax dollars are going to the lawyers for businesses law suits.

All nonsmokers should be great full towards smokers. The reasoning behind this is the more taxes the smokers pay (cig tax fed and state) If people quit smoking or it becomes illegal that will just prop up a black market, like someone said, and raise the taxes of all the nonsmokers. The govt will need to get its money somehow.

wu

DerbyGawker
Classic, attempt to define your opposition as immature for expecting the right to not be subjected to your nuisance when in actuality the more mature person would respect the right of the minority not to be subjected to such a nuisance.

This is the gradual introduction towards the criminalization of smoking, it's giving people time to reflect upon how their actions effect those around them and themselves and to attempt to ween themselves from the habit and quit.

I'm not attempting to define militant anti-smokers as immature; I'm saying they are. Because they expect smokers to modify their public (and increasingly private) behavior in order to suit a perceived 'correct' style of behavior that their opposition merely finds distasteful and unappealing, rather than harmful.

Now I understand that the same argument applied to a vice-versa situation could also be postulated: that smokers are immature for expecting that the non-smokers around them simply put up with their habit, but I don't really think that could be argued anymore at this point because the vast majority of public smoking has already been stamped out, and all that's left - and now under increasing attack - is smoking in private and personal settings. And expecting to control and legislate what habits people engage in away from public locales for the same reasons goes beyond immaturity and into bullying.

I dislike cellphones. I don't own one, and yet almost everyone has them. Getting calls and talking loudly on the bus, in the mall, walking down the streets all around me. People use them in my house, in my friend's houses, in their cars and around their children. They're everywhere! I personally find constant connectivity to communication annoying, but I put up with it because in the end it doesn't affect my life beyond being a public nuisance to me at times, and I'm the minority.

And cell phones are dangerous to some extent. They cause auto accidents through driver distraction, are targets of theft, can easily become thrown projectiles with the ability to cause bodily harm and have been known to occasionally explode or catch fire under certain circumstances. Cell phones have killed and injured people, directly or indirectly.

So when can I start banning these from all public use? While they pose little direct threat to me, I find them annoying, don't use them myself, consider them a public nuisance and am potentially a victim when they're misused by other people around me.

Am I stretching my premise? Hell yes, but so do the anti-smokers in my opinion. Same premise; different product.

reply to post by DerbyGawker


No, legislating morality is one of the worst things this country has ever done or attempted to do. Just because you don't agree with using a certain substance and know how bad it is does not give you the right to tell others that they aren't allowed to use it. Also your point about lighting up in bathrooms is just downright silly, if you aren't allowed to smoke a cigarette in a public bathroom, what makes you think you'd be able to smoke anything else in there (provided the substance is legal)? Not to mention stealing is illegal (and meth heads already steal to support their fix, but so do alcoholics so that point is just as silly). But again, this is offtopic. If you want to have a discussion about the drug war, pm me or start another thread. I can tell you that I am very well prepared and knowledgeable about this subject matter.

The legislation in the OP falls into the legislating morality department and it is just as dumb. I've lived in apartments before and have spent much time in my friends' apartments. I don't smoke and as long as no one is smoking in the particular apartment unit I am in, I have NEVER smelt cigarette smoke in them. So I really don't believe that nonsense about smoke leaking through the walls and filters and stuff.

reply to post by ArchAngel_X


Personally, I think this is fine. If we're talking about a public place where people can choose to enter or not, it makes sense. You don't like smoke? Don't go to the bar that allows smoking. Go to one that doesn't. But where we live and where we work? No.

I was on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to London many years ago when that airline still allowed smoking onboard. You had to sit upfront and they pulled a curtain to separate the smoking and non-smoking sections. Non-smoking my ass. Even my clothes stunk after that flight.

intrepid

DerbyGawker
@inteprid, the sole legal purpose of any business is to fulfill a public need with respect to the public good.

What "public good" do strip joints provide? Casinos?

I snipped the rest as textbook BS seldom works in the real world. Try that in the real world and your tax dollars are going to the lawyers for businesses law suits.

edit on 22-11-2013 by intrepid because: (no reason given)

Obviously our moral fortitude has severely declined over the years (thank you leftist judges). But I'd rather see smoking outlawed before porn, not because I favor the latter but because the former is far more destructive.

wuforde
All nonsmokers should be great full towards smokers. The reasoning behind this is the more taxes the smokers pay (cig tax fed and state) If people quit smoking or it becomes illegal that will just prop up a black market, like someone said, and raise the taxes of all the nonsmokers. The govt will need to get its money somehow.

wu

Do you honestly think tobacco taxes that generally fund education negate the increased health costs now subsidized by all tax-paying Americans?


EDIT:

@ArchAngel_X, most of what you have suggested is already criminalized, enforcement is the issue just as it is with this. Police aren't going to spy on you, they are going to act upon notification and if no one notifies them, there is nothing known to act upon.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by DerbyGawker

 

No, legislating morality is one of the worst things this country has ever done or attempted to do. Just because you don't agree with using a certain substance and know how bad it is does not give you the right to tell others that they aren't allowed to use it. Also your point about lighting up in bathrooms is just downright silly, if you aren't allowed to smoke a cigarette in a public bathroom, what makes you think you'd be able to smoke anything else in there (provided the substance is legal)? Not to mention stealing is illegal (and meth heads already steal to support their fix, but so do alcoholics so that point is just as silly). But again, this is offtopic. If you want to have a discussion about the drug war, pm me or start another thread. I can tell you that I am very well prepared and knowledgeable about this subject matter.

The legislation in the OP falls into the legislating morality department and it is just as dumb. I've lived in apartments before and have spent much time in my friends' apartments. I don't smoke and as long as no one is smoking in the particular apartment unit I am in, I have NEVER smelt cigarette smoke in them. So I really don't believe that nonsense about smoke leaking through the walls and filters and stuff.

ROFL what. *IF* meth was legal, do you honestly think a law against smoking in a public restroom would stop a tweaker from doing so? Do you know what meth is? Alcoholics won't damage an $8,000 AC unit for $3 in copper. Punishing them generally reduces reciprocity.ct

Legislating centrist morality isn't dumb. We made murder illegal because it's immoral, stealing as well. There will always be a socially acceptable baseline. However vices are winning because (for example) some leftist judge decided strip clubs was protected speech, because some other leftist judge gave persons rights, which then made corporations equal under the law. So a deviant minority of the populace can now corrupt the morality of the majority.

Cheap (or old) units do allow for smoke to penetrate. Legally speaking it is far "easier" to establish a universal law which includes all domiciles sharing a common wall banning smoking than to require new developments to protect against the problem (which would still leave older buildings to suffer the matter) as ex post facto laws are illegal which prevents the state from just mandating all old as well as new residences must properly separate units to shield them from passing smoke. So really this is their only option of legal recourse since the alternative would be to change the constitution and allow for ex post facto laws so that people can just smoke "in private" without affecting the rights of others.

reply to post by DerbyGawker


I am just simply stating that taxes would go up, if a certain segment wasn't paying for them. How much i don't know, but i know state taxes range from 0 to alot. Just look at what NYC wants to do with the price, per pack. That is going to be all taxes b/c you can't force a business to sell items at certain prices.

lol @ San Rafael

- San Rafael is a stronghold of the Democratic Party.
- Top employer : Kaiser Permanente

- The term "420" when used in reference to Cannabis consumption is believed to have originated in San Rafael, specifically, at San Rafael High School.

- The Oakland, CA Hardcore Punk band Short Changed's Ep & Song entitled "Burn Down Wagon Town" is about San Rafael, CA the guitarist Shipwreck's home town.

reply to post by DerbyGawker


It's been my experience that smokers are quite accommodating towards nonsmokers generally. I have always been. Even in areas that are OK to smoke in. My own house if I want my daughter's boyfriend to come over. But things have gone too far. If you are a smoking OK environment and started spewing this tripe don't be surprised if you have smoke blown directly into your face(I would... now). Enough is enough:

reply to post by Diabolical


As long as they don't introduce a 'No masturbating if you have neighbours policy!

You think i'm joking? If they can ban smoking in your own home, while legally selling tobacco and making profit from the sales taxes, they can ban literally anything...including fiddling with your little man (or whatever you like to fiddle with!)