The city moves to yank the licenses of nightclubs that it considers too tolerant of covert cigarette use. [NYT via Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
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May I ask, what’s to prevent a club from calling the police for each occurrence, saying “we think we saw someone smoking, you better get here right away!” If, per the mayor, it’s to be a crime to smoke, then surely the crime should be reported.
Equally surely, it would be reckless and dangerous for a private organization, in a public space filled with innocent bystanders, to attempt to deprive an addict of his (or her) drug; such delicate matters should be left to trained police officers. The anti-smoking forces have made quite the case for the horrible addictiveness of tobacco, have they not?
@ras: That’s a good idea. It would be the only way to truely protect the club against their own inability to get a customer to stop smoking. Until, of course, it becomes legal to use force to stop someone from smoking around you because of the known health issues.
Until, of course, it becomes legal to use force to stop someone from smoking around you because of the known health issues.
I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but where I am from the number of times the police are called out to a club is weighed when granting the club a liquor license.
So if they call the police, that gets used against them when going to renew their license. If they don’t enforce the non-smoking ban, that gets used against them.
It is a no win situation for the clubs.
(Of course, I am of the opinion that if a club or establishment wants to allow smokers, let ‘em. If enough people complain or stop going to the club, then the owners will ban smoking. But I suspect that I am in the minority on this.)
“Until, of course, it becomes legal to use force to stop someone from smoking around you because of the known health issues.”
That would be the alleged health issues. I state with no more than anecdotal certainty and common sense, but nonetheless certainty and common sense that if an ordinarily healhty non-smoker is in a night club and another person smokes a cigarette in that same nightclub, no health issues for the non-smoker will arise.
As I understand it, smoking itself increases the probability of lung cancer from 1 unit to 20 units; second hand smoke from 1 to 1.3. In neither case is lung cancer a certainty and incidence is in later years. I don’t believe Mayor Bloomberg’s smoking regulations are justified, although as a non-smoker I appreciate my smoke free environment.
The situation with lead is thousands of times worse. The EPA wants to put in a CPSIA type lead regulation that will increase the cost of replacing a window by $90. We are talking about a minor amount of dust that would be in a house for a day or two at most. Lead is not salmonella, it does not make more of itself. If you start with a tiny amount of lead, it will stay tiny or disappear entirely.
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