By Jim Abrams
President Barack Obama is lauding the passage of historic anti-smoking legislation that gives the government sweeping authority to regulate tobacco products, pledging to quickly sign the measure into law.
“For over a decade, leaders of both parties have fought to prevent tobacco companies from marketing their products to children and provide the public with the information they need to understand what a dangerous habit this is,” said Obama, who has struggled for years to kick his own nicotine habit.
The House on Friday gave final approval to the bill after a bitter fight lasting nearly a half-century. The measure for the first time will give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate what goes into tobacco products, demand changes or elimination of toxic substances and block the introduction of new products.
Lawmakers and the White House quickly declared it would save the lives of thousands of smokers of all ages. Even more important, they said, the measure could keep countless young people from starting in the first place.
The thousand health and consumer groups that endorsed the bill say that, combined with other anti-smoking efforts, it can significantly reduce the 400,000 deaths and $100 billion in health care costs attributed every year to smoking in the U.S.
Under the legislation:
- Cigarette packages will have warning labels that cover 50 percent of the front and rear. The word “warning” must be included in capital letters.
- Any remaining tobacco-related sponsorships of sports and entertainment events will be banned, as will giveaways of non-tobacco items with the purchase of a tobacco product. A federal ban will be imposed on all outdoor tobacco advertising within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.
- Point-of-sale advertising will be limited to adults-only facilities, and remaining vending machines will disappear except in places restricted to adults. Retailers who sell to minors will be subject to federal enforcement and penalties.
- Smokers, particularly the younger crowd, will find they can no longer buy cigarettes sweetened by candy flavors or any herb or spices such as strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon or vanilla. Cigarettes advertised as “light” or “mild,” giving the impression that they aren’t as harmful to health, will no longer be found on store shelves.
By Jason Cochran
Second only to “last call, Ms. Handler,” it’s the most common refrain among bar and club owners: “Smoking bans hurt business.”
As a non-smoker, I love being able to come home after drinks without stinking like Patty Bouvier, but bar owners have claimed that indoor smoking bans, where they exist, have driven away a percentage of their business. A regular at the aptly named pub Cutting Edge, in Barnsley, England, studied the two-year-old ban and found a loophole: If smoking is conducted in the name of research, it can be done indoors.
So last week, the pub’s owner (non-smoking, but pro-choice) opened a “smoking research centre” where patrons can simultaneously have a beer and a cigarette. All they have to do is fill out a legal questionnaire about their smoking habits first, mostly to satisfy the requirements of the letter of the law.
In Britain, the pub industry has claimed that some 2,000 establishments have shuttered because of the ban (although personally, I think other health-conscious trends in society have contributed equally if not more). The Cutting Edge hopes that the (maybe not) legal smoking area will set it apart from its competition and keep it in business.
From WDIO Channel 10 TV in Duluth:
Some lawmakers, including two from the Iron Range, would like to see the smoking ban include a provision for smoking rooms.
Representative Loren Solberg, from Grand Rapids, and Tom Rukavina, from Virginia, are sponsors of the legislation, but they are not the chief authors.
“It’s not economy related. The original legislation in the House back in 2007 included the smoking rooms. But that part was taken out in conference committee. We are bringing it back,” Solberg said over the phone from St. Paul.
The smoking rooms would need to be entirely enclosed, and have a ventilation system. And the provision would only apply to bars or restaurants that make more than 50% of their sales from liquor.
Pizza Luce in Duluth has a room like that. Owner Scott Nelson said he is interested in the bill, since he already has the room. But he said he doubts it will pass into law.
The American Lung Association said they will fight this bill.
“It’s a past notion. Most Minnesotans love the smoking ban,” said Pat McKone, Director of Missions for the ALA.
The bill does not have a companion one in the senate.
Common Sense Radio returns to Minnesota’s airwaves on Monday, January 19th. Dan Conry’s new show will be broadcast live, weekday mornings from 7:00 to 9:20 on KRWC, Radio for Wright County AM 1360.
Conry’s new program based on common-sense conservatism and having a good time while discussing the issues of the day will be streamed live on the internet and podcast from DanConry.com.
Raised in Flatbush Brooklyn in what he calls his crazy Irish family, Dan developed his street smarts & well known self deprecating sense of humor on the streets of New York. Dan joined the NYPD in the 1980s. After several years as a street cop in Brooklyn, he became an undercover narcotics Detective in Manhattan. Dan retired from the NYPD and moved to Minnesota after an injury in the line of duty.
Dan says he’s bringing some familiar characters to the new program. Super Dave Harrigan will produce the show and Bill Snyder will be sitting in from time to time.
More and more colleges are banning smoking in public spaces.
By Jenna Ross
Matt Evans is 20 years old. Young enough to expect — and accept — that he can’t smoke in class, at the student union or even in restaurants.
But campus sidewalks?
“Man, give us some freedom,” the University of Minnesota junior said.
The U is studying whether it might ban smoking — inside and out. Over the years, many colleges and universities have outlawed smoking indoors and around building entrances. Now, bans are going campus-wide.
The number of colleges and universities with smoke-free campuses has more than quadrupled since 2006 — from 34 to at least 160 — according to the Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, a California-based lobbying group.
That list doesn’t count campuses like Carleton College, which allows smoking only in designated areas outdoors and considers itself smoke-free.
“Most institutions are on this path,” said Richard Davenport, president of Minnesota State University, Mankato. “If they haven’t looked into it yet, they’re looking at it now.”
Many anti-smoking advocates are cheering the trend as a natural progression in the movement to protect people from second-hand smoke. Today’s 18-year-olds grew up supporting smoke-free spaces, surveys show.
Read the rest at Star Tribune.
By Matt Snyders
The U of M is kicking around the idea of enacting a campus-wide smoking ban. Officials say the ban might include all outdoor areas.
Now: we’ve opined on the ludicrousness of the smoking ban here before. In doing so, we’ve elicited many a skillfully argued rebuttal, which inevitably hinge on the notion that secondhand smoke poses a grave threat to unwitting victims— which is to say those unfortunate enough to have been kidnapped and locked in smoky bars against their wills for a sufficient duration (decades) to suffer the damages wrought by secondhand smoke.
(Though some especially skilled debaters have managed to stretch the definition of unwitting victims to include bartenders and clients who choose to enter a bar of their own volition.) Fine. Point conceded.
Obviously, that argument can’t be applied to justify an outdoor ban: when a law endeavors to push beyond second-party concerns, when it seeks to curtail behavior that is unequivocally, 100 percent victimless—that is to say when the “offender” and “victim” are one and the same—it enters a realm of absurdity that, in a sane world, would hardly need pointing out.
It goes without saying that we don’t live in a sane world. So let’s be blunt here, and unrepentantly straightforward:
The anti-smoking crusaders who operate on this level are the ideological descendents of the imbecilic prohibitionists and anti-drug warriors that have plagued our nation since time immemorial. This ramped up anti-smoking fervor is merely the latest incarnation of our predisposition to puritanical meddling, our weird inclination to put our neighbor’s “health” before his freedom or—Jesus forbid!—his own debauched happiness.
The fact that today’s ban advocates describe themselves, by and large, as “liberals” (root word: liberty) only adds to the counterintuitive (read: hypocritical) hilarity of their stance.
Read the rest of this piece at City Pages.
Press Release
Mark Benjamin files appellate brief with the MN Court of Appeals to overturn conviction of his bar owner client who hosted Theater Night in his bar and allowing his patrons to smoke indoors.
On Friday, September 12, 2008, criminal defense attorney Mark W. Benjamin filed his appellate brief with the Minnesota Court of Appeals to overturn the petty misdemeanor conviction of his client Tom Marinaro.
Mr. Marinaro is the owner of Tank’sBar in Babbitt, Minnesota. On March 14, 2008, he was issued a citation for allowing his patrons to smoke indoors during his theatrical production of “The Gunsmoke Monologues”. Mr. Marinaro pled not guilty and demanded a court trial, arguing that he and his patrons were engaged in a legal activity, namely, the production and performance of an improvisational play.
His play called attention to loss of individual liberties, governmental intrusion into private business and the economic devastation wrought by the state-wide smoking ban. His play also allowed smoking by designated actors and actresses who wished to participate in his play.
Minnesota’s state-wide smoking ban took effect on October 1, 2007. It included an exception (inserted during the closing days of the legislative session) that allowed actors and actresses to smoke as part of a theatrical performance. Short of requiring advance notice to patrons that there might be some smoking during a play, the legislature failed to limit who could put on a theatrical production, or whether the production required a stage, costumes or scripts.
Minnesota bar owners began hosting Theater Nights in February 2008 and reported that their revenues – even in a recession economy – jumped back to pre-ban levels virtually overnight. Smoking ban advocates whined that Theater Night was a loophole. Bar owners said it a lifeline.
Mr. Marinaro went to court on May 23, 2008, was found guilty and issued the maximum fine of $300.
Mr. Benjamin’s appeal makes thefollowing points:
The police chief was pressured by a city councilor to issue Mr. Marinaro a ticket, even though the chief himself wasn’t sure Mr. Marinaro was breaking the law.
The trial judge thought it “absurd” to consider Mr. Marinaro’s production to be a “real” play because it didn’t have any costumes or scripts and wasn’t performed on a stage.
But a 1970 U.S. Supreme Court case stated that theatrical productions didn’t have to be performed on a stage by professional actors, or be heavily financed or elaborately produced.
When the legislature slipped the “theatrical productions” exception into the smoking ban bill at the last minute, it did so as a favor to the Guthrie Theater.
When a legislator pointed out that that bar owners might use the “theatrical productions” exception to host their own plays and smoke indoors, the other legislators laughed, instead of tightening up the language. Now they want the courts to clean up their mess.
The language of the exception is clear and unambiguous. Smoking during theatrical productions is a legal activity. With no standards provided by the legislature, no cop or court has the authority to judge what is good or bad theater.
Even so, the Minnesota Department of Health still believes smoking during a theatrical production in a bar is illegal because … it’s in a bar.
A reply brief will be filed in 45days. Oral arguments at the Court of Appeals in St. Paul will take place at a later date.
##
Attached is a copy of Mr.Benjamin’s brief. http://presslord.com/cigap.html
Our show goes on.Contact:
MARK W. BENJAMIN
Criminal Defense, P.A.
237 Second Avenue SW, Suite 111
Cambridge, MN 55008
763-691-0900 (office)
763-670-9664 (mobile)
By Peter Shawn Taylor - The National Post
The standard stereotype of a politician was once someone who refused to take a position on any topic, dissembled when asked a pointed question and always claimed more investigation was necessary. It applied equally to sitcoms (think: Yes Minister) and real life (think: Prime Minister Jean Chrétien). No longer.
Today that stereotype has been turned on its head. The typical politician these days is more likely to take too much action based on too little information than the other way around. And politicians seem to relish using their greatest power — the ability to ban outright items or activities — so much that it seems impossible to imagine we ever complained that they did too little.
In the first half of 2008, Canadian politicians at all levels of government have gone ban-crazy. Herewith a partial list of bans either enacted or announced since January: the use of pesticides, banned by Ontario; clear plastic baby bottles, banned by the federal government; the sale of bottled water, banned by the Waterloo Region District School Board in Ontario; Styrofoam, banned by Turner Valley, Alta.; using cell phones while driving, banned by Nova Scotia and Quebec; smoking in cars with children, banned by Nova Scotia and Ontario; the sight of cigarettes in corner stores, banned by Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.
The existence of bans is certainly nothing new. Governments have always been banning things. In fact, the first recorded use of the word came during the Middle Ages in reference to a monarch’s ultimate power — the ability to summon his subjects to war. It later came to mean a wide variety of official proclamations or proscriptions, including expulsions or banishment. Over time, this heavy-handed application of government authority became so commonplace and routine as to be banal. In the ’60s, ban briefly became a campus imperative — as in “Ban the Bomb” — suggesting governments weren’t doing enough.
These days, however, the sheer number of things forbidden, and the surprising lack of scientific or other rational backing for these actions, suggests that politicians are keen to get back to the earlier application of the word. They ban early and they ban often. So how come bombs were never banned in the ’60s while water bottles and foam plates get banned today? Politicians have their reasons.
Reason 1 Bans mean you care Popular belief holds that saving the environment requires direct and immediate action. Further study is for wimps. The same goes for children’s health. So bans have become the dramatic policy tool of choice for politicians eager to prove they care, regardless of available scientific proof. Consider Health Canada’s ban on plastic baby bottles containing the chemical Bisphenol-A. According to the most reliable scientific evidence, average infant exposure to BPA from these bottles in Canada is 100,000 times less than the known danger levels. But Health Minister Tony Clement banned them anyway. The environmental file has never been a strong point for the federal Conservatives and taking this kind of extreme action gives him the appearance of being tough on the topic. The same goes for Ontario’s ban on pesticides, which directly contradicts the findings of Ottawa’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency. Premier Dalton McGuinty dutifully ignored the available facts and banned pesticides in the name of “our children’s health.”
Reason 2 Bans are easy For politicians hoping to find simple solutions to difficult problems, a ban is the perfect option. It’s a breeze to pass and enforce a law banning handheld cell phone use in cars. The same goes for bans on cigarette “power walls” in corner stores. Of course hands-free mobile devices are just as distracting for drivers and not banned. And youth smoking rates have no connection to in-store displays. Thinking intelligently about the law can be a complicated and time-consuming process. Not so with bans.
Reason 3 Bans can make you famous As politicians discover that bans give them a useful environmental profile, there’s a strong incentive to be first. Case in point, Turner Valley’s curious plan to ban Styrofoam. Such a move makes even less scientific sense than bans on pesticides or baby bottles. The embodied energy costs of Styrofoam are far less than paper alternatives, and it is entirely inert. This move will most likely do more harm than good for the environment. Besides, Styrofoam is simply the brand name for one form of polystyrene foam, which wasn’t banned. But so what? Just announcing they were thinking of a ban got Turner Valley great press. It’s the same reason even smaller Leaf Rapids, Man., banned plastic shopping bags last year. A ban is a great way for small-time politicians to get themselves national attention.
Read the rest of this story at the National Post.
New data from Canada mirrors a trend in the UK. Despite enacting extraordinarily tough indoor smoking bans, increased taxes and numerous other anti-smoking laws, smoking rates aren’t declining. A Canadian national survey on tobacco use found that one in five Canadians smoke, a rate that has remained steady for the last three years despite new restrictions on the sale and display of tobacco products and sweeping smoking bans.
Promoters of liberty-robbing anti-smoking legislation have been predicting that smokers would be quitting in droves thanks to the new laws, taxes and fees. It’s all for the greater good, they intone. Anti-tobacco groups generally profess a goal of an eventual smoke-free world, or at least their corner of it. Evidently, their heavy-handed tactics aren’t having any effect.
An article in the Irish Times I found interesting:
by Paddy Clancy
THE WOMAN with Ireland’s first alcohol-free hotel bar has launched a campaign to reverse the smoking ban in pubs.
Ann Sweeney said the first mission for her one-person New Ireland party is to seek to have luxury smoking rooms attached to pubs.
Ms Sweeney has issued a rallying call to smokers throughout Ireland to get in touch with her at her Carraig Rua hotel in Dunfanaghy, Co Donegal. She plans weekly meetings of supporters and aims to take the issue as far as the European Court if necessary.
She is encouraged by a recent judgment in Germany that partially overturned bans on smoking in bars.
Ms Sweeney reckons that the Irish law that says smoking can only take place in shelters with two sides open to the elements is unconstitutional. She said: “The Irish public thought it was great to get smoking out of pubs and I agree 100 per cent. But I find the Government’s double standards fascinating. If it insists on raising revenue with heavy taxes on tobacco products, then there is an obligation that smokers be treated the same as drinkers and proper facilities should be put in place for them.”
She said they were entitled to have their own enclosed smoking area, with big crushed velvet couch and leather armchair. She said: “They should not be exposed to the Atlantic gales, which is what happens in Donegal . . . Why can’t we have an extractor system in a very comfortable smoking room that would do the same job?”
Ms Sweeney, who also owns a licensed pub, said pub trade in rural Ireland has fallen by two-thirds since the smoking ban.
She formed her New Ireland party after gardaí seized all alcoholic drink in her hotel and pub because of a licence dispute. The drink was returned on a court order and the pub resumed business, but she accepts her hotel must remain alcohol-free until a complication over its drinks licence is resolved.
