NEWS: New Jersey Proposes Public Smoking Ban

In response, I would like to propose a public New Jersey ban. All residents who agree with me that this law infringes on personal freedom and has no scientific evidence to back up the claims of the state, should leave the state. That's right, pick up and leave. All you cops, move to queens, why the hell would you want to live in a glorified sewage treatment plant/landfill anyway?

I am officialy boycotting New Jersey. A state that smells like burning tires from border to border, has the gall to tell me my cigarette is making their air unbreathable?

Oh yeah since when do minors get rejected from pool halls. Thats where I spent alot of my later teenage years

Sorry Sardion, I'm showing my New York-centric ways again. I haven't been a minor in a bit, and living in Manhattan many of the pool halls here did not allow those without adult ID in primarily because alcohol was sold there. Apologies.

Surely, if there are as many people opposed to smoking in public places as is claimed, the businesses who allow smoking will not be able to compete with those who do not, and will either have to conform to the majority's will, or fold.

Jezebel, you are so precise with that statement that I wonder if you are a surgeon. If the public is crying out so hard for smoke free establishments, where are they? This is supply/demand territory. Not government.

[edit on 3-15-2005 by Djarums]

Wow WyrdeOne, I am surprised. What lack of evidance are you talking about... did you even look?

www.jimmunol.org...

www.ash.org.uk...

tc.bmjjournals.com...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

as well as this link

scholar.google.com...
as well as 10 more pages of links to scientific evidance...

Sorry Sardion, I'm showing my New York-centric ways again. I haven't been a minor in a bit, and living in Manhattan many of the pool halls here did not allow those without adult ID in primarily because alcohol was sold there. Apologies.

lol no worries. I can get Toronto-centric quite often as well.

[edit on 15-3-2005 by sardion2000]

Whether people have been noticing this or not, NJ has been slowly turning into this for over the past two years. In the town that I live in, half of all the eating establisments that allowed a smoking section now do not.

While I can understand somes desire to have a smokefree eating environment (especially for the sake of children), I see little validity in forcing bars to become smoke free. After all, if you cared so much about your health, what the hell are you doing in a bar? As for the arguement about bartenders being subjected to smoke, they have the choice to take the job or not. You don't see prostitutes marching the establishment about eraticating STDs in the work place. Perhaps an extreme comparison, but the logic is clearly there.

Sardion
I believe data gets cherry picked, and the government has a very clear agenda. They want to make everyone think smoking kills relentlessly and indiscriminately. They want to make us believe that if we get lung, or mouth, or throat, or bladder cancer, it's because of the cigarettes we smoke.

Numerical corrolaries are meaningless without intense, expensive diagnosis of cancer patients to discover the source of their cancer. It's easier to say 'smoking kills' than it is to investigate the other causes.

75% of lung cancer deaths in the US are attributable to forest fires in Western Canada. The smoke from forest fires is higher in particulate content, un-filtered, and highly contaminated by industrial pollutants it binds with in the middle to upper aptmosphere.

Dust storms blowing across the Atlantic carry more carcinogens than you could possibly hope to smoke in a lifetime.

I'm in a discussion about this at the moment, in a thread about silver bullet cures for cancer, and I reserve judgement until I see conclusive evidence. What you posted wasn't conclusive by any stretch of the imagination. What those studies continue to prove is an anecdotal link, there's no hard, physiological evidence that smoke from a cigarette can initiate a cancer cluster.

Ever hear of that experiment when they passed smoke over the rats for months at a time, and couldn't get a single cancerous growth to sprout? Then they inserted a nicotine and polonium disc into the rat's spine and sure enough, CANCER. Well, call me crazy, but if you insert a radioactive disc into the spine of an animal, it's probably going to get cancer. Smoking cigarettes is an entirely acceptable form of drug use, and has been around for centuries. The government is being a bully, trying to cover up the damage from their nuclear tests and careless polution, and I refuse to be bullied.

And yes, I have looked. I'm a smoker, and I got so tired of being blamed for all the ills of America, I did some research. There are tons of meaningless studies that focus on statistics which are by their very nature misleading.

I'm waiting for mattison to get back to me on the uptake of polonium into the tissues of tobacco plants, and the part anhydrous ammonia plays. I'm hoping he can shed some light on the issue. Till then, call me skeptical.

As for the arguement about bartenders being subjected to smoke, they have the choice to take the job or not.

A valid point, can an auto mechanic protest his employer for his environment smelling foul and being greasy? Can a librarian protest his environment being quiet stuff and dusty? Can a pilot protest his ears popping upon takeoff?

The people that applied for these jobs in bars (for example) were fully aware that people smoked inside bars when they applied.

I see little validity in forcing bars to become smoke free.

Well in Toronto there are very few pure Bars left. They are mostly Bars/Restaurants and even the ones that used to be pure bars are moving toward this methodology, in anticipation of the ban years ago. It has helped my neighbourhood immensely, most of the pure bars have been pushed out and have been replaced by better establishments that still serve liquor but also serve food and good food to boot(they also employ more people to cook the food as well mull that over). I have seen the positive impacts firsthand and business owners at least in my area are not complaining. The Tourists seem to like it as well as in the Summer they pack these types of establishments.

[edit on 15-3-2005 by sardion2000]