City Council passes smoking restriction on outdoor dining areas

[The Straight Story]

City Council passes smoking restriction on outdoor dining areas
Posted: 03/25/2009 12:08:10 PM PDT

SIERRA MADRE - City officials unanimously passed a restriction on smoking at all outdoor dining areas Tuesday.

The issue brought out activists on both sides, who filled up City Council chambers to the point where some had to watch from chairs in the lobby outside.

....

Supporters of the restriction, who handed out fliers and sported "smoke free dining" stickers, cited public health concerns as the primary reason to pass the restriction.

Opponents, many of them from local grassroots organization "Stop the Sierra Madre Smoking Ban," argued for the private rights of citizens to smoke without government intrusion, and for the rights of businesses to make the choice for themselves.

A Chamber of Commerce poll of 53 downtown businesses found that only 17 supported some form of restriction on outdoor smoking.

City officials, who passed the restriction 5-0, also hinted that it could be the first in a series of wider restrictions on smoking outdoors.

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_11993799

[Sultana]

1. oh

:popcorn:

[The Straight Story]

2. Heck with the popcorn, pass me a smoke and some beer

:smoke: :toast:

[Mari333]

3. pass the butter

:popcorn:

[asthmaticeog]

4. Outdoors? Rigoddamndiculous. nt

[ixion]

5. anti-smoking zealots are just as bad as social conservatives, IMO

and I'm sure they'll come out and flame me for that, but it's really the other side of the same coin.

Both groups are intent on telling others how to live their live, and ultimately, both will fail miserably because of it, in the long term.

"The more you tighten your grasp, the more star systems will slip through you fingers."
-- Princess Leia to General Tarkin.

It is a true statement about any extremist, no matter what their political stripe may be.

[MADem]

6. Oh boy, a smoking thread! Don't sit near the edges of the outdoor dining area!

The angry smokers will step outside the defined space, light up, and angrily blow their smoke INTO the area.

Why not just put them in a corner with a fan blowing their shit away from the rest of the bunch?

I'm not a smoker, but I find crabby, loud, irritable smokers more of an annoyance than a faint whiff of tobacco.