Pikeville Update
Ban smoking? What’s next — beer?
Backyard Banter
Jeff Vanderbeck
This smoking issue has me pretty fired up. The whole thing is because we are irresponsible as a society, thus causing our freedoms to be jeopardized.
I’m not a big advocate of smoking and Lord knows it makes me want to puke to sit near a smoker at a restaurant while I’m trying to down a meal.
For the most part, smokers are inconsiderate and spend too much time whining about their rights being compromised every time they light up when someone complains. What irritates me more is a smoker who criticizes the production of coal, strip or deep, while they puff away and poison the environment. If you are a tree hugger, you should also be a non-smoker.
When it comes to smoking in restaurants, owners should supply adequate ventilation for all their customers. On the flip side, if the patron wants to be in a smoke-free environment, leave and eat somewhere else. If nudity offends you, why would you walk in a strip joint? The same holds true for smoke; if it offends you, learn to cook or try the takeout. This comes from a person who hates smoke, but respects freedom of choice.
If smokers, in general, were a little more considerate and smoked only in smoking sections, didn’t walk into a store with a cancer stick dangling from their mouth and respected no-smoking areas, then maybe the kids who started the protest would be home studying instead of at a city council meeting on a Monday night.
Smoking sections in restaurants don’t have to be bleak and out of the mainstream part of the restaurant. There could be a nice area which is well-ventilated for the smokers to puff in. Smoking will happen so you might as well provide a nice place for it to happen. They are smokers, not lepers.
The other problem I have with the smoking issue is the kids made a big stink and all of a sudden they are getting their way. I commend them on their efforts, but it should be left up to the people and not the five members of the city council at the whim of a few protesters.
Not too long ago, the Landmark wanted to hold their annual New Year’s Eve party, which fell on a Sunday night, and to serve liquor. After all, what good is it to ring in the New Year with grape juice? The restaurant had to plead their case in front of the city council. The city council voted it down, saying they wanted to let the voters decide, and it should have been put on the November ballot. Another blow to society — do you think it really made Pike County safer?
Smokers can be a finicky bunch. If they don’t like something or someone they will let you know. The young protester who appeared on the front page of this newspaper was sporting a Belfry Pirates shirt. She has moxie. I think if the ban goes through, the smokers will revolt and may show up at CAM stadium to hold them a smoke-in. Generate a puff of smoke large enough for the second-hand carcinogens to affect the old folks in Phelps. Maybe the football team will protect her.
One day the kids who protested will get educated and leave the area. Their legacy is they eliminated smoking from restaurants and other places. Great for them, but bad for the economy. The reason some restaurants won’t come to the area is because either the land is insanely expansive — land owners must be smoking something — or because they can’t sell liquor with their steaks. Toss in inability to attract 40 percent of the potential customer base and bam! No deal. And when the kids come back to Pike County to visit relatives, they’ll complain about the lack of eateries available. These kids were very effective in their endeavors, kudos. Maybe we should let them lobby to the drug manufactures and doctors to see if they can prevent the making and over prescribing of pills in this area?
Next week the city council will vote on the ban for restaurants and bingo halls. As much as I hate to say it, I hope they turn it down or better leave it to the voters. If a smoking ban is imposed on bingo halls, it could ruin the local economy. Smoking seems to be a pre-requisite to be able to play bingo. As you enter the hall, you get the cards, a marker and an ashtray.
In protest of this ban I call a smoke-in at City Hall. All smokers should show up and puff away right there at City Hall in protest of losing their rights. Remember you have a right to smoke but not to be obnoxious about it. So if you want the join the smoke-in, call or e-mail me and we will set up camp the evening of the proposed vote. You’ll can blow enough smoke so the little ones will be wheezing and can’t represent themselves well in front of the council members.
I don’t want to see another right banned. The right to pray in schools is compromised, the teaching of the Bible in public schools is gone. In court, we swear on the Holy Bible but the Ten Commandments are removed from the court room. Our right to pursue happiness on a Sunday by having a beer and watching the game in a public setting has been stripped. Gambling legally in Kentucky may be thwarted for another four years. Pretty soon the only place you will have your freedom and any fun is in the privacy of your own home. But you must wear a seat belt, not use your cell phone in the car, not pray at school, buy your beer in a another state and become a complete social misfit — we’re not that far away.
Reach Jeff Vanderbeck via e-mail. jvanderbeck@news-expressky.com.
Pikeville considers public smoking ban
September 2, 2007?
LORETTA TACKETT
Pikeville may soon join 10 other Kentucky cities in adopting a law putting some type of ban on smoking in public places, a decision the city says is made on behalf of children.
Originally against telling citizens what to do on their property, Mayor Frank Justice II said he changed his mind when Town and Country Barber Shop’s Dickie Brewer reminded him, “Children don’t have a say so about where they go.”
The American Lung Association reports cigarette smoking is identified as the number one preventable cause of morbidity and premature mortality worldwide, and is responsible for approximately one in five deaths in the United States.
“The most progressive cities in the state have addressed this,” Commissioner Dallas Layne said, sharing his personal experiences as a non-smoker with bronchitis and his physician’s thoughts on the cause of his condition. “It’s been second-hand smoke, because I never smoked.”
Secondhand smoke — a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers — can cause serious harm to children, the American Lung Association says. Involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers, it lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can cause or exacerbate a wide range of health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma. The lung association says an estimated 400,000 to one million asthmatic children have their condition worsened by exposure to secondhand smoke.
“We stopped smoking in all public city buildings a long time ago,” Justice said.
The county adopted an ordinance in July 2006, banning smoking in all enclosed areas within the Pike County Courthouse and Hall of Justice building. The ordinance was the result of a push from students from the Pike County Youth Leadership Council (PCYLC).
Commissioner Barry Chaney made a motion to have City Attorney Rusty Davis draw up an ordinance by the next meeting.
City Manager Donovan Blackburn suggested stand-alone bars where children are not permitted should be exempt from the ordinance. Davis said certain businesses like the Log Cabin, the Landmark Inn and Mark II and III — with sections which only allow 21-year-olds — would be exempt, while places like Applebees, which is all open area, would not be excluded from following the ordinance.
“We’re trying to help those who don’t have a choice whether or not they go in,” Justice said.
An ordinance would also help adults, Layne said, as many have to go in public establishments within city limits or do without certain services.
Commissioner Jimmy Carter suggested the city go further by asking the county, Coal Run Village and Elkhorn City to join them in the move.
Coal Run Mayor LaVerne Dye said the city has not discussed a smoking ban yet, but a couple of students from the PCYLC had asked her to put the issue on the agenda.
“It is something I’ve thought about,” Dye said, asserting she had invited Pikeville High School’s Don Comb’s to address the council about the matter.
Mayor Bill Powell of Elkhorn City could not be reached about the issue as of press time.
There are currently 10 cities with some form of smoking ban other than just city buildings, according to the Kentucky League of Cities (KLC), an association serving an association of 400 cities and municipalities in the state. The city of Paintsville enacted earlier this year a ban on smoking in restaurants — a business which gets at least 50 percent of gross revenues from the sale of prepared foods. The cities of Paducah, Morehead, Elizabethtown, Lexington, Louisville, Henderson, Georgetown, Frankfort and Ashland have some type of ban on smoking in public buildings.
There are five of the state’s 120 counties — Letcher, Hardin, Daviess, Oldham, and Madison — which have some type of smoking ban, the KLC reported.
September 2, 2007?
LORETTA TACKETT
Pikeville may soon join 10 other Kentucky cities in adopting a law putting some type of ban on smoking in public places, a decision the city says is made on behalf of children.
Originally against telling citizens what to do on their property, Mayor Frank Justice II said he changed his mind when Town and Country Barber Shop’s Dickie Brewer reminded him, “Children don’t have a say so about where they go.”
The American Lung Association reports cigarette smoking is identified as the number one preventable cause of morbidity and premature mortality worldwide, and is responsible for approximately one in five deaths in the United States.
“The most progressive cities in the state have addressed this,” Commissioner Dallas Layne said, sharing his personal experiences as a non-smoker with bronchitis and his physician’s thoughts on the cause of his condition. “It’s been second-hand smoke, because I never smoked.”
Secondhand smoke — a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers — can cause serious harm to children, the American Lung Association says. Involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers, it lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can cause or exacerbate a wide range of health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma. The lung association says an estimated 400,000 to one million asthmatic children have their condition worsened by exposure to secondhand smoke.
“We stopped smoking in all public city buildings a long time ago,” Justice said.
The county adopted an ordinance in July 2006, banning smoking in all enclosed areas within the Pike County Courthouse and Hall of Justice building. The ordinance was the result of a push from students from the Pike County Youth Leadership Council (PCYLC).
Commissioner Barry Chaney made a motion to have City Attorney Rusty Davis draw up an ordinance by the next meeting.
City Manager Donovan Blackburn suggested stand-alone bars where children are not permitted should be exempt from the ordinance. Davis said certain businesses like the Log Cabin, the Landmark Inn and Mark II and III — with sections which only allow 21-year-olds — would be exempt, while places like Applebees, which is all open area, would not be excluded from following the ordinance.
“We’re trying to help those who don’t have a choice whether or not they go in,” Justice said.
An ordinance would also help adults, Layne said, as many have to go in public establishments within city limits or do without certain services.
Commissioner Jimmy Carter suggested the city go further by asking the county, Coal Run Village and Elkhorn City to join them in the move.
Coal Run Mayor LaVerne Dye said the city has not discussed a smoking ban yet, but a couple of students from the PCYLC had asked her to put the issue on the agenda.
“It is something I’ve thought about,” Dye said, asserting she had invited Pikeville High School’s Don Comb’s to address the council about the matter.
Mayor Bill Powell of Elkhorn City could not be reached about the issue as of press time.
There are currently 10 cities with some form of smoking ban other than just city buildings, according to the Kentucky League of Cities (KLC), an association serving an association of 400 cities and municipalities in the state. The city of Paintsville enacted earlier this year a ban on smoking in restaurants — a business which gets at least 50 percent of gross revenues from the sale of prepared foods. The cities of Paducah, Morehead, Elizabethtown, Lexington, Louisville, Henderson, Georgetown, Frankfort and Ashland have some type of ban on smoking in public buildings.
There are five of the state’s 120 counties — Letcher, Hardin, Daviess, Oldham, and Madison — which have some type of smoking ban, the KLC reported.
