The Journal Gazette published several articles regarding smoking the week of Jan. 13. This concentrated blitz is surely an effort to influence the City Council as it prepares to consider modifying that oppressive piece of legislation commonly known as the smoking ban.
People who go to bars and clubs go there to smoke, relax and have a few beers and socialize with like-minded friends.
Now, the smoke Nazis are encouraging people to inform on their fellow citizens. They have even come up with a special 311 number to make the process easier, and they have enlisted the pledge of the police department and fire department to enforce their edict.
I resent that my tax money is being used to police the city for people who want to have a cigarette when that tax money could be used for better purposes.
This whole debacle reeks of the same tactics that got the Third Reich started, i.e.: unreasonable laws, people informing on each other, businesses going broke, people out of jobs and so forth. For those too young to remember, maybe the words “Adolf Hitler” and “Nazi Germany” will have meaning.
Kudos on more terrible Nazi comparisons. Please let me know when the SS come by to haul off smokers- then you might have a case.
Also - the 3-1-1 number isn't a smoking snitch line. Its the "One call to City Hall" number. FW Website
The public now can dial 311 to get quick and easy access to non-emergency City services. Several City departments are part of the initial rollout. Those departments are Solid Waste, Neighborhood Code, Parking Control, Street Department, Property Management, Sign and Signal Operations, and Right of Way. Additional departments, including Animal Control, Water Maintenance and Traffic Engineering will be added in the near future.The funny thing is - I have heard multitudes of nonsmokers say how great the smoking ban is, and personally I can't see how the ban has made a smoker's life intolerable. The way people are whining, its as if something terrible was happening to people every time they stepped outside.
Maybe its just an age thing.
4 comments:
"For those too young to remember, maybe the words “Adolf Hitler” and “Nazi Germany” will have meaning."
Unfortunately, for many of 'those of us too young to remember', the power of those words has been so tragically diluted by their overuse in lazy arguments such as this that, no, they do not hold the power they should.
Smoking is not a constitutionally guaranteed right. It's not a basic human right. It's not a right at all! You do, however, have the right to publicly express your idiocy so way to go on that one!
There is a old unwritten law of the internet forums and chats that says something like: Anytime you invoke Hitler or Nazis you automatically lose the argument.
It should apply to letters to the editor also.
I feel sorry for Marty Bender, who is bringing this issue back before the City Council. Who wants to be remembered for being the last one to "get it"? Not that his traffic broadcasting career made him a respected public servant, but this issue will make him come off as a dunce.
C Ford does such a terrible constituional analysis its almost as bad (although not quite) as the Nazi analogy.
No one is saying that smoking is a basic right. In fact, any restaurant, bar or other business owner could ban smoking inside their establishment and many of them did. What is, or used to be, a right is to use your property how you see fit. If nine guys who meet for a couple hours once a week can tell a business owner that he or she may not permit a legal activity in their establishment, they can certainly tell you what you can and can't do in your own home. That's why people are worried.
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