People Ban: PA State Page 2

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The smoking ruse
 
July 22, 2007
 
Are any Pennsylvanians going to die because the state Senate did not pass the House bill that would ban smoking in public facilities?
 
Only those who expire of frustration. But the tobacco troopers will be back in the fall. “We have an obligation to protect the public’s health,” says Rep. Phyllis Mundy, D-Luzerne.
 
Yet, Professor Thomas A. Lambert at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law writes in Regulation magazine that a valid case for regulation based on the “health risks” of secondhand smoke indoors cannot be made.
 
In 1975, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study concluding that one would have to be in a smoke-filled room for 4,000 hours to inhale the smoke of a single cigarette.
 
In 2003, the British Journal of Medicine reported a study of 35,000 people who never smoked but were married to smokers. It showed no evidence of increased “tobacco-related mortality” during the 39-year term of the study.
 
We think markets governed by free people can manage this issue.
 
No one offended by secondhand smoke need patronize or work where smoking is permitted; businesses have and can still make judgments about allowing, limiting or prohibiting smoking based on the effects on profits and the ability to attract competent workers.
 
The folks nagging us about secondhand smoke should take a deep breath and relax. They’ll live longer.

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The Senate’s rejection of the House bill leaves the issue hanging
July 17, 2007
BY JAN MURPHY, Of The Patriot-News
The state House last night made it clear they want a mostly smoke-free Pennsylvania.

Minutes later, the Senate rejected a House version of a statewide indoor smoking ban, making clear that its vision of a Clean Indoor Air Act was different.

The Senate’s action means a House-Senate conference committee will be created to hash out the differences when the Legislature reconvenes in September.

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, said the development could delay the implementation of a smoking ban for months. Gov. Ed Rendell has insisted on a smoking ban as the centerpiece of his health reform package that is an ancillary part of the budget deal

Greenleaf, who has championed the smoking-ban legislation for a decade, hailed the House-passed bill as an “improved” version of the measure that left the Senate last month.

“The House overwhelmingly chose to have a more restrictive, healthy, worker-friendly legislation than we had passed,” he said.

The House, which passed its bill by a bipartisan 141-62 vote, backed a smoking ban that would order most indoor public places, including casinos, restaurants and taverns, to go smoke-free 90 days after the bill becomes law.

It exempted private homes, private clubs such as American Legions and sportsmen’s clubs, tobacco-related businesses and a quarter of the rooms in hotels. It also would allow smoking in private residences within nursing homes or assisted-living facilities and at cigar exhibitions.

Municipalities could enact stricter smoking bans. And the bill ordered county health department or, in absence of one, another county department to serve as the smoking police.

The Senate rejected this version by a 13-36 vote.

  

More debate scheduled today on smoking ban
Towanda Daily Review – Towanda,PA,USA
BY ROBERT SWIFT HARRISBURG — The House began debate Friday on smoking ban legislation and a key amendment that allows tavern and bar owners to decide if …

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Pennsylvania Senate Passes Smoking Ban
June 29, 2007 | By: J.J. Jackson

Liberty, we barely knew ya. Right now it appears as though it is a race to see who can be more liberal:

    (KDKA) HARRISBURG Governor Ed Rendell is taking exception to some exemptions in a statewide smoking ban bill.

The article also notes that Oregon has added itself to the list of states joining this new temperance movement under the auspices that smoking is bad for you. Which begs the question as to why is it still legal to sell and buy tobacco in states that have passed these bans?

Don’t ask them to be consistent. Their pursuit of power is all that drives them.

The Marc Levy of the Associated Press in Houston Chronicle had this to say:

    Smoking would be banned in most public places and work places, including arenas, stores, restaurants, convention halls and shopping malls.

Huh? I was unaware Mr. Levy that restaurants and shopping malls were “public places”. Last time I looked MOST of them were PRIVATELY owned! Poor reporting Mr. Levy. Poor Reporting. Your ideology is showing.

Mr. Levy also reports:

Another big old “huh?”. Listen, I know you demoratards think everyone is helpless, but the people really do not need your help. No one is being forced to go to work in a place that allows smoking. They can work somewhere else and “protect” themselves. Unless they are your typical liberal Democrat voter that is.

At least one Senator got it right. And low and behold she is a Republican too. Huh. Go figure!

With 27 states now having smoking bans (according to Mr. Levy … I haven’t checked that but we’ll trust him) we’re only a couple states away from the two thirds majority that would be required for a Constitutional Amendment to pass that would ban smoking. We’re not that far from another failed prohibition that is going to end with the government looking like a fool yet again.

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Smoking Ban

6/28/2007 – Dear Editor: I wasn’t in the other day when the newspaper called, soliciting opinions on the proposed smoking ban, but as anyone who knows me will tell you, on this, as well as just about anything else in the world, I have an opinion.

I’m against the ban, and here’s why:

This has become not so much a “smoking issue” but a “health in the workplace” issue. I have never sought employment in a coal mine or constructing skyscrapers or in the military because all are dangerous occupations. Despite the advances and efforts to make them safer, the health risks are not only extreme but they are inherent and obvious. I’m not willing to take the risk. Fortunately for all of us there are plenty of people who are and god bless each and every one of them. It should then be reasonable to assume that requiring only a level of common sense that presumably one would have attained by the first grade (i.e.- fire burns- do not insert fingers), for one to be able to determine that if one deems an establishment to be a health risk because of the smoking policy, one should probably not seek employment/ entertainment in said establishment. Seriously folks, we’re not splitting atoms here.

Have we really become so midless as a society that we need yet another government decree to make such a childishly simple choice for us. Speaking at least for myself, I think not.

Smoking or non smoking, whatever one’s choice, I’m all for it but it should reman exactly that- a choice. A choice for one and for all. Including both patrons and business operators. One point that seemingly gets lost in this debate is the simple fact that smoking is a legal activity that one chooses to engage in (or not). The trend involving the ability of local, state and federal governments to decide where and when it is legal to engage in legal activities has become startlingly alarming. What’s next, am I to be fined for serving fish on Thursdays instead of Fridays because it’s an inconvenience to certain group (don’t laugh, remember the pledge of allegiance?) Must all places be the same? One of the great things about going out to be entertained or to look for a job, is having a variety from which to choose. And that should include smoking or non smoking.

In closing, I think it would be safe to say that those of us, such as purveyors, delivery people, dishwashers, wait staff, bartenders, mgrs, etc., that depend on the restaurant/bar business for our livelihoods, would not be nearly as concerned if after all was said and done, we were simply permitted to vote ourselves a pay raise.
Sincerely,
LaMonte Culbertson
Snuffy’s Cafe and Lounge

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Pennsylvania State Senate Approves Smoking Ban
WETM-TV – Elmira,NY,USA
Harrisburg – Many anti-smoking groups are opposing a plan to ban indoor smoking in Pennsylvania. That plan passed through the Pennsylvania State Senate …

Proposed Law May Weaken Philly Smoking Ban
CBS 3 – Philadelphia,PA,USA
But state legislators are debating a more lenient smoking ban for many public places and work spaces. It would allow smoking in small bars, private clubs …

Pa. Senate burns holes in smoking ban bill for bars, casinos
MARC LEVY

June 25, 2007

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Senators carved loopholes into legislation Monday to ban smoking in many public and work places in Pennsylvania, inserting partial or complete exemptions for slot-machine parlors, private clubs, bars and cigar bars.

A single amendment creating the exemptions passed, 29-21, setting up the newly changed bill for a final vote as early as Tuesday. A similar bill was scheduled for debate in the House later Monday.

Two hours of debate on the bill revolved around protecting public health versus preserving individual liberties, although opponents of the exemptions took most of the time to lambaste them as watering down legislation for the public good.

The amendment also would upend the ban put in place last year in Philadelphia , which banned smoking in casinos, restaurants and most bars , and outlaw other local governments from enforcing a smoking ban.

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, who sponsored the original bill and has worked for a decade to pass such a ban, pitched the bill as a way to protect hospitality-sector workers who are exposed to smoke on the job and have far higher cancer rates.

“So we’re basically saying we’re throwing those people away healthwise,” he said.

Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Allegheny, called the exemptions “disgusting gobbledygook,” and Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, said the changes were like “a pig in lipstick” being billed as a beauty queen.

“There’s nothing that we’re banning here,” Williams said.

Sen. Charles McIlhinney, R-Bucks, who wrote the amendment, said a broadly worded smoking ban did not have the votes to pass the Senate, and insisted that individual liberties deserved a place in the debate.

“This is not to be taken lightly, we are stripping away individual public liberties here,” McIlhinney said.

He said the exemption would apply to just a few thousand out of a million-plus publicly accessible buildings. However, Greenleaf said most of those buildings still in the ban were already smoke-free, and Ferlo challenged the liberties argument, saying the right to smoke is not being taken away.

Twenty-seven states have approved smoking bans, albeit some with exemptions, and Illinois is poised to become the 28th.

Gov. Ed Rendell has made an indoor smoking ban a part of his broader plan to cut health care costs, breathing life into an issue that has had little traction in the Legislature.

The bill would ban smoking in arenas, stores, restaurants, convention halls, shopping malls and more, but would exempt private homes, one-quarter of the rooms in a lodging establishment and tobacco-related businesses, like wholesalers and retailers.

The changes added exemptions for cigar bars, private clubs, bars where food is one-fifth or less of its gross sales, charitable fundraisers where cigars are sold and one quarter of the gambling floors at slots parlors.

The private-club exemption, echoing language in state liquor law, would apparently extend to veterans’ clubs, such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts; Elks and Moose lodges; volunteer fire and rescue halls; political clubs; and country clubs.

Greenleaf said he worried that some establishments, seeking to avoid the ban, would find creative ways to fit into the exemptions.

Sen. John Wozniak, D-Cambria, tried unsuccessfully to tighten the exemption for private clubs, saying many are nothing more than “drinking holes” that should be held to the same food-to-drink sales threshold as the exemption for bars.

Senate puts off smoking ban bill amid disagreements
June 19, 2007

HARRISBURG, Pa. –The state Senate delayed consideration of a broad ban on smoking in public and nearly every workplace until next week after Republicans were unable to agree on a set of exemptions, a top GOP senator said Monday.

Republicans, who control the Senate 29-21, have worked behind closed doors to secure majority support for a single amendment that would create multiple exemptions in the smoking ban legislation.

As currently drafted, that legislation would ban smoking in just about every public space and workplace in Pennsylvania, including casinos, restaurants, bars, sports arenas and private clubs. Senators have been pressed by owners of casinos, clubs and bars for exemptions.

But Republicans have been unable to achieve broad support for any of the exemptions, said Sen. Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, the chamber’s president pro tempore.

The smoking-ban bill has advanced farther than any other legislation of its kind in Pennsylvania. Twenty-seven other states have approved a ban of some sort.

Any bill must also pass the House, where several similar bills have been introduced. Gov. Ed Rendell has said he supports the broadest ban.