As the nanny staters go after smoking, here’s a preview of their next plan of attack.
If you missed it in the news this week, Nanny Stater Jennifer Stalley continued in her quest to tell everyone what to do, as she promotes her anti-smoking measure. You know, the one that says businessmen and women don’t deserve the right to decide what to allow in their business just because it’s theirs.
Jennifer Stalley, the project director for the South Dakota Tobacco-Free Kids Network, says her group has a number of studies showing that smoking bans do not affect bar and restaurant sales.
“At the end of the day, if every video lottery casino is smoke free, where’s the competition?” Stalley said. “If every video lottery casino is smoke-free, I think you’ve leveled the playing field.”
Read that here. Amazing how this little socialist is the one who gets to decide how they compete, as opposed to the people who own the businesses? Apparently, some people don’t have enough to do.
Well, that’s a preview of the 2009 South Dakota Legislative Session. And now, here’s the part that should really make us nervous….
As they propose new and interesting measures in other states, here’s a preview of what our legislators will import to South Dakota after they go to next years’ national legislative conferences:
Gov. David Paterson’s first state budget threatens to affect just about every New Yorker. Even those online.
and…
Paterson seems to be fighting both obesity and budget deficits with a proposal for an 18 percent tax on soda and other sugary drinks containing less than 70 percent real fruit juice.
“People don’t really realize the amount of calories they’re ingesting through liquids,” said Joe Baker acting deputy secretary for Health and Human Services to the governor. “They say, ‘Oh, it’s just a drink.’”
The idea is to discourage consumption of high-caloric beverages — health officials estimate a 5 percent drop — and to raise $404 million in fiscal year 2009-2010 toward the state’s multibillion dollar budget gap. Paterson said the proposal would raise $539 million in 2010-2011.
Read it here. WOW. Just like the nanny-state advocates have done to smoking, they’re now planning on doing the same thing to soda. They’re going to tax it literally out of affordability.
As I sit at my desk, and drink my second diet coke of the morning, I’m literally sick to my stomach. Not from caffeine intake, but from again having to try to digest the notion that people think they have the right to try to modify personal behaviors through the legislative process. Don’t like smoking? Tax it out of existence. Don’t like snack foods and soda pop? Tax them out of existence.
Altogether too soon they’ll be drawing a target on things such as beef, ammunition, or you name it, just because someone doesn’t like somehing their neighbor does, and just like Jennifer Stalley, they can’t help but be a busybody and think they have the right.
The thing is, the busybody nanny-state advocates don’t have the right. Not unless you let them.
Go look up who your legislator is – and write them a thoughtful and coherent note. Let them know that you don’t appreciate it when they try to tell businessowners how to conduct their own business. Let them know that we’re used to living in a state where we value our freedoms.
And let them know that their job is to keep it that way.
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Comments
I for one am for the smoking ban in restaurant/bars. Not because I’m for the government telling business owners how to run their businesses, but because I’m sick to death of sitting in a restaurant/bar having to ingest some old hack’s/hag’s Lucky Strikes while I’m trying to eat. The second hand smoke is something I don’t need. In some restaurant/bars the air is blue. That can’t be good for the staff that has to breath it all day and it has driven me away from some establishments. I have spoken to some business owners and they’re for the ban, they don’t like it either. It’s not going to slow down lottery. If poor ‘ol Jake wants to blow his weekly check on those friggin machines, a smoking ban isn’t going to deter him. If your business caters to the public, one of the downsides of this privilege is bending to the collective will of the populous. However,smoking in businesses that are only bars, no problem, smoke away.
Duh – If you don’t care for smoke, then vote with your feet. If businessowners don’t like it, then they can enforce their own ban.
Legislation to mandate personal preferences is part of what’s wrong with our system, and contributes to a “blame everyone but me” attitude which seems prevalent in our society.
Oh dear, I agree with Duh.
And I’m a smoker!
Look out, PP, here comes the great quantum mind wave.
If you don’t want to get inundated, better jump in your soma ship, put the pedal to the metal and make a quick paradigm up-shift.
“At the end of the day, if every video lottery casino is smoke free, where’s the competition?” Stalley said. “If every video lottery casino is smoke-free, I think you’ve leveled the playing field.”
Makes sense to me. How is it hurting business if every place is smoke free?
The fact remains. Government is ruled by the majority. Since a majority of South Dakotans don’t smoke why do the minority get to blow smoke in our faces?
I have said if casino and bar owners think it is essential for their business to have smoking make them buy a smoking license that costs as much as a liquor license. Put their money where their mouth is.
…except for maybe one thing, Duh.
Please tell us why you think drunks don’t deserve to breath clean air.
PP, you don’t have a right to walk around naked do you?
Why not?
Is that “Nanny State-ism?”
Will you kill anybody if you do?
(…ok, don’t answer that…)
38,000 people die per year as a result of exposure to 2nd hand smoke.
And —unlike they perhaps would if they saw you naked — they don’t die laughing.
Government tells business what to do everyday. The health department requires them to have sanitary workstations and bathrooms. The state requires them to collect a tax on liquor and beer sales. The state sets an occupancy rate for them. Why is this any different? Those standards are set for the public’s safety and that’s what this ban is about, public safety.
This all heads to dictatorship plain and simple. It should be the bussiness owners decision!
Yes, there are things that have to be regulated because we have lame brains out there. America is get dumber and dumber, soon we might have to remind people to go to the bathroom.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
-Benjamin Franklin
1:49 – Yeah, who needs sanitary bars and restaurants? We should just bacterial diseases run as rambid like lung cancer in cocktail waitresses.
PP,
You say that we can vote with our feet. What if our town only has one or two places to eat that aren’t smoke free? Are we just stuck eating at home or driving to a bigger town that has some smoke free options?
I get what your saying that right now it’s tobacco and then what is next. We can fight these battles one at a time.
If there’s only 1 or 2 places, I’d argue that they’d feel the pressure the fastest, as if a town can only support one place, there aren’t a lot of customers that they can afford to upset.
It is always better to get the owner to accede because of good economics, as opposed to compelling them through draconian legislation.
We all have choices…or do yet; however, some people have to keep harping on certain issues. Let the owner decide; let the patron decide if he/she agrees with the owner. If not, make your choice according to your view.
I do not like going into bars with exotic dancers, so I stay out. I do not go running around trying to control the owners and who they employ.
Wow- I didn’t know having poon flung in your face gave you lung cancer? I learn something new on here everyday.
Bill, the owner should have a choice, the employee should have a choice and the public should have a choice. The South Dakota Tobacco Free Kids Network (for kids gambling in bars?…) is all about REMOVING CHOICES.
While it’s become fashionable to throw around numbers considered “common knowledge” during political disputes, I suggest you read this article by Gio Batta Gori called The Bogus ‘Science’ of Secondhand Smoke.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012901158_pf.html
Mr. Gori would seem to be a well credentialed commentator on the subject. He is an epidemiologist and toxicologist, and a former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention.
I do like the idea of a smoking establishment license. However, the video lottery establishment owners that I’ve spoken to say that there’s a direct correlation between smokers and video lottery and they’re affraid that they’ll leave if they ban smoking. That’s BS. If they’re going to gamble, their going to gamble.
Another idea, increase some of the regs on ventalation if smoking is allowed. If they had better ventalation in some of these places, the smoking would really be a non issue. That way, the non smokers are protected (I think the above post on the “second hand smoke myth” is a bunch of bunko) and the smokers get their “rights”. It’s real. Don’t believe me, start your car in the garage and hang out there for a while and see how you do. (Just kidding of course – Kids don’t do this at home). I smoke cigars and if you’ve ever been in a cigar bar, you’ll know what I mean, the places are virtually smoke and odor free.
Duh, did you even bother to read the article you’ve declared as “bunk”?
Why bother to respect freedom of association if others fail to accomodate your preferences, eh?
Dear detroit L and Duh,
First of all it is not a level playing field. You can still smoke at the many indian casinos across the state. If you dont think people will drive there, look at what the $1 tax per pack did for them. The next thing you have a choice on entering that business and you have a chioce of working in that business. I believe that if this is the South Dakota Tobacco-Free Kids Network, that the first place smoking should be outlawed is in vehicles with minors. They do not have choice there.
You have to have a pretty bad cigarette addiction if you are willing to drive 45 minutes just so you can have a cig while playing a machine. Ban smoking, the smokers will get used to it.
They give people free beers to get them to stay at the machines, why not free nicotine gum? Help them kick at least one habit that way. Get Detroit L. to design the posters: “Lose your ass, not your lungs.” Write your congressman, tell them to get VL and Health on the same page about this.
William: 8:53. I read that article and many others. It doesn’t take a professor to realize that if you are in a room filled with smoke on a constant basis (i.e. employee in a bar, sitting next to your smoke stack spouse) that there will be negative reprocussions. If you eat ho hos all day long, you’re going to get fat, if you drink booze all day, your liver will shut down. If you breath in smoke in close proximity to the smoker, something will happen. Again, I’m not for government intrusion, I’m only stating what I don’t like, smelling and breathing in that crap when I’m eating. I can vote with my feet but that rarely works. What tips it for me is many of the bar/restaurant owners that I’ve spoken to want the ban as well. This allows them to clean up their businesses and not be the bad guy. Again, if someone wants to torch their life, fine. Just don’t do it to me. Many of my relatives have died from that crap and several died from the same complications eventhough they didn’t smoke.
Case in point, Duh.
My wife and I went to Minervas in RC for dinner the other night. The allow smoking in the bar but not in the dining area.
Problem is, some booths close the dining area still smell like smoke, and that’s where we were seated. So my wife asked for a different table, which meant a different waitress.
That means the waitress lost out on a $10 tip through no fault of her own, plus gets to work in a smoke filled part of the restaurant.
The people at the reception counter and in the bar of course have np choice but to breathe people’s smoke.
Yes, you can say they should get different jobs, but that’s like saying that all those people who object to being exposed to coal dust and carbon monoxide shouldn’t work in power plants, or that people who don’t want to get AIDS shouldn’t work in hospitals.
There should be some precautions to protect the workers.
And if an industry can’t survive with killing its workforce, maybe it’s not an industry we need.
Don’t get me started on child abuse… ok, it starts by teaching kids that the earth is only 6,000 years old, and that if they don’t mind their dad, they’ll end up in hell. Want to keep going?
Bill-
Interesting comment about Minerva’s in Rapid City. I was at Minerva’s in Watertown last night, and had the exact same experience.
I’m wondering why Minerva’s in Sioux Falls is smoke free, but none of the others are?
dear anon
if you were in watertown and want smoke-free resturant there is Cliffords in uptown watertown.
9:38-
Most of the downtown restaurants/bars are smoke Free, in fact I can’t think of one that has smoking. I’m sure it was a competition thing. These are all smoke FREE
Amy’s
Michelle’s
Touch of Europe
Minervas
Mama Ladas
Diner
Sushi Masa
Why not outlaw smoking, period?
If it was illegal, I wouldn’t do it (maybe).
For sure, smoking addiction treatment
should be covered by health insurance.
It’s not. Not mine anyway.
Here’s an off-the-wall question. Suppose everybody stopped smoking and the Tobacco companies were going broke… thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of people about to lose their jobs. Millions, maybe billions in ad revenues lost to various media and marketing firms.
Should the Government bail them out? (Remember, you have to have a special government permit to grow tobacco in the first place. In fact, tobacco used to BE a form of currency.)
Nick, you can’t grow tobacco on your farm, right?
And not just because of the climate, right?
Bill, a person can grow tobacco on their farm. “As a result of federal legislation in late 2005, restrictions of commercial tobacco production to quota holders are no longer in effect.”
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/AA260
Thanks Bill!
BTW Detroit, the restaurants you’ve named are good examples of why further legislation (force of government) is really unnecessary in reducing smoking establishments when market forces are working. Larger markets tend to allow a number of options.
For those who wish to use government force to eliminate smoking in their local establishments, caution is advised since smoking bans may very well eliminate the local options that currently exist. Small towns lose primary businesses while larger communities can offer more choices.
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/banstudies.html
From my understanding, proposed legislation contains NO exemption for any business, regardless of their marketed clientel, nor exemptions for private clubs that are only accessible by members.
“Smoke Free Kids” would be defined as anyone living in South Dakota, regardless of their age or their preferences.
It seems to me that legitimate governmental duties and priorities are neglected whenever it has time to focus on enlarging government’s role into the private affairs of it’s citizens.
I can tell you for a FACT that Touch of Europe and Minerva’s went smoke free because of the request of their employees not the public.
Pretty soon there will be a black market for Coke — the real thing.
Oh wait. There already is.