Coast Star is running a story about the dual proposals, one a local ordinance, the other a state initiative, to have an outright ban on smoking at public beaches. Author Haley Behre was kind enough to call me for my opinion and reported my comments thusly:
……….The (state) fine would be not less than $250 for the first offense, $500 for the second offense and $1,000 for each subsequent offense. (Can you believe that? A thousand dollars? For smoking a cigarette?)
The bill, which is currently pending in the Senate, was approved by the state assembly last month.
Belmar resident Dave Schneck, who is a longtime smoker, said he has only used the designated smoking area on Belmar’s beach once and he was hit by a volleyball. (It hurt)
“For many adults my age who choose to smoke this has been a perfectly legal thing for us to do for a great majority of our lives,” so for “younger people who aren’t smokers, that don’t know what it’s like to be a smoker, have no understanding of it, no experience of it” to come along in a “capricious manner” and ban it “displays a total lack of empathy,” he said.
Having the ban will make smokers choose between going to the beach and smoking, Mr. Schneck said, adding that having smokers cross Ocean Avenue or stand in the road to smoke in the summer is dangerous. (Would they be considered “smoking-related” deaths?)
“For me, if I can’t smoke on the beach I don’t even know if I want to go,” he said.
He also said the arguments that banning smoking reduces litter and second-hand smoke “don’t really hold any water,” because he sees more bottle caps than cigarette butts and some smokers, like himself, try to be courteous of those around him while smoking.
As for the ordinance amendment, Mr. Schneck said it “really has no bearing on me” because he smokes near the water, where he says the borough has no jurisdiction.
Lisa Ryan, spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, said, “No state agency would enforce or regulate this proposed legislation. It’s a legal matter for the towns to figure out who have riparian lands [areas that are along water bodies]. It will be based on common law interpretations and statutory interpretations of their jurisdiction.”
Mr. Schneck also said he believes the statewide ban will pass because “90 percent of the people in our state government don’t understand freedom and couldn’t care less about freedom anyway.”
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The good news is what Lisa Ryan of the DCA said. So as long as Belmar continues to interpret their jurisdiction on riparian lands they way they currently do, I can stop complaining about this issue. If not, and my watery sanctuary is taken away from me……………
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Hitler’s Anti-Tobacco Campaign
One particularly vile individual, Karl Astel — upstanding president of Jena University, poisonous anti-Semite, euthanasia fanatic, SS officer, war criminal and tobacco-free Germany enthusiast — liked to walk up to smokers and tear cigarettes from their unsuspecting mouths. (He committed suicide when the war ended, more through disappointment than fear of hanging.) It comes as little surprise to discover that the phrase “passive smoking” (Passivrauchen) was coined not by contemporary American admen, but by Fritz Lickint, the author of the magisterial 1100-page Tabak und Organismus (“Tobacco and the Organism”), which was produced in collaboration with the German AntiTobacco League.
http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id1.html
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16741714-lungs-from-pack-a-day-smokers-safe-for-transplant-study-finds?lite
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
And the EPA study that was the impetus for so much anti-tobacco legislation was declared a fraud and vacated by a federal judge:
http://forces.org/Archive/evidence/35-The+Osteen+decision.html
I may not be clear on your exact position on smoking next time just say what you mean.
And furthermore……….
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