Nearly two-thirds of city clerks and government board members in 57 Kansas cities want public smoking bans implemented locally and statewide, according to a new survey by the Sunflower Foundation. Previous surveys have found overwhelming public support for a statewide smoking ban. So if both local leaders and the public want a statewide smoking ban, why doesn’t the Kansas Legislature take action?
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16 Comments
Statewide smoking ban? Does that mean smokers would have to step outside of Kansas to smoke?
Leave the ordinances to local government. Get the state government involved and the costs to enforce it will skyrocket, be ineffective and generally a bad idea to centralize the “no smoking police.”
This idea shows exactly why democracy is a bad thing. It is basically majority rule, which is often similar to mob rule. This country is a republic. See Article 4, section 4. The true essence of America is Liberty and freedom, which means among other things, freedom from government bossing people and business around.
A smoking ban does just that.
State and Local Government should ban smoking in all state operated buildings. Ban smoking outside the doors of these facilites as well.
Then they can go to private business and have the discussion. Until they act in their own backyard stay out of the private yards.
One thing I don’t get.
A smoker get first hand smoke AND second hand smoke.
Thirty-forty years later gets health problems and dies.
But you go into a resturant for what, an hour or two, once maybe twice a week, where there is second hand smoke in another part of the resturant and you die?
right…..
Actually biased, it’s the tar residue that carries the bad chemicals and it sticks to everything, including human tissue.
Try this one day. Go to a smoker’s house and wipe down a wall with a moist cloth and observe the streaks of sticky tar running down the wall. That accumulates on everything.
The smoke just acts as a motion mechanism and concentrates into a tar once it settles.
The non-smokers were against smoking before there was ever a link between cancer, and before the second-hand smoke pronouncement was ever made by the surgeon general.
How does one find a control group for a second hand smoke study? How is that group isolated from other causes of cancer?
If you want my smoke, you’ll have to take it from my cold, dead hand.
we’re not a democracy
It does seem strange that smokers, smoke packs a day, and many never get cancer over decades of use. Non-smokers get an occassional whiff, and blame it on smokers when some of them get cancer.
The Eagle is tyranical.
Even if every single person who ever entered an establishment were PROVEN to be smokers, the Eagle would still want to use the power of the State to tell those people what to do.
Nanny State tyrants!
Also, How many “conservative” or Libertarian City Clerks are there?
You interview people who work FOR the local governments, you interview people who, generally, enforce rules and regulations, and you ask THEM about laws that will be placed on local businesses?
Try again Eagle. This was very biased.
I am not a smoker, and I try to get those I care about to quit smoking. However, the government should stay out of it.
Like a “No Smoking” sign in a weld shop.
Going to ban open wood burning grilles too?
I use to smoke too but I quit 20 years ago. I always ask for the non-smoking section but if it is too close to the smoking section, it bothers me. But going to my parents’ house bothers me too because they still smoke.
However, I know that the government does not have the right to tell people or businesses what they can do and cannot do. We are not a communist government. Our government gives people freedom of choice. That means if they want to serve alcohol or let people smoke they can. And if we don’t like alcohol or smoking, we can go to the restaurants that don’t have it.
As a Christian, I do not like the fact that there are adult bookstores along the interstate, but it is not up to our government to ban those businesses either.
I believe if people like something they will spend their money on it and the business will grow and if they don’t like it, they won’t spend their money and the business will die.
But if the government buts in and tells us what we can do, then THEY have broken our constitution. Why should they get away with breaking the law, when the average citizen doesn’t. If they believe in freedom of choice, then they will allow the citizens of this country to vote on these decisions. It is our freedom, not theirs or the judges.
btw – they are breaking the law when they try to tell churches what they can and can’t do either. If they truly believe in separation of church and state, then they need to realize it goes both ways.
I know Kansas can save money by eliminating air conditioning out of state offices, patrol cars, city vehicles, state vehicles…what have you.
I want war with these tyrant’s.
It is clear that separation of smokers from non-smokers combined
with air exchange technology is a complete solution to this largely
artificial problem. All it takes is regulating authorities setting the
standards for indoor air quality on passive smoke, and the technology
does the rest. Such air quality standards are common in industrial
and environmental contexts. But, to date, no country in the world has
set them for smoking areas. It seems clear that the reasons are not
scientific, nor are they economic or technical: they are political.
The anti smoking agencies do not want safe standards that would still allow
people to smoke…they simply want a ban that will push smokers
outdoors like outcasts.
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation has
nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat of
“second-hand” smoke.
Indeed, the bans themselves are symptoms of a far more grievous threat, a
cancer that has been spreading for decades throughout the body politic. This
cancer is the only real hazard involved – the cancer of unlimited government
power.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect “public places,” smoking bans
have actually targeted many privately owned places such as bars and shops –
places whose owners should be free to ban smoking or not and whose customers
are free to patronize or not. Outdoor bans even harass smokers in places
where others’ health is obviously not the issue.
The decision to smoke or to avoid “second-hand” smoke, is a question for
each individual to answer based on his own values and judgment. This is the
same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their
lives. All lifestyle decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful
consequences; many are controversial and invite disapproval from others. but
the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free,
because his life belongs to him, not to others, and only his own judgment
can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking this freedom of choice for a minority, is being
seriously limited by a majority made baselessly fearful through massive
media campaigns often funded by tax dollars.
The real threat we face here, no matter how strongly it is denied by the
anti-smoking lobby, is the systematic and unlimited intrusion of government
into our lives.
We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our behaviour. They are
in office to serve us, not vise versa.
Thomas Laprade
Not 1 Death or Sickness Etiologically Assigned to Tobacco. By Dr. Simoncini, MD. All the diseases attributed to smoking are also present in non smokers. It means, in other words, that they are multifactorial, that is, the result of the interaction of tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of factors, either known or suspected contributors – of which smoking can be one.