Prohibitions against outdoor smoking in Ann Arbor win approval from City Council

[alp227]

Source: Ann Arbor News

The Ann Arbor City Council voted 9-2 Monday night to approve a new local ordinance prohibiting outdoor smoking in certain areas.

Once the ordinance takes effect in the coming days, smokers no longer will be allowed to light up within 10 feet of a bus stop, or within 20 feet of the entrances, windows and ventilation systems of any city buildings, as well as the Blake Transit Center.

The ordinance also authorizes the city administrator to post signs designating certain parks or portions of parks as off limits for outdoor smoking.

A violation of the ordinance will be a civil infraction punishable by a $25 fine or community service at the discretion of a judge. However, it's the hope of supporters of the ordinance that police won't have to write tickets — that people will self-police.

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/04/ann_arbor_city_council_approve_15.html

[Nye Bevan]

1. Excellent.

I support people's right to smoke, provided that no bystander is ever exposed to secondhand smoke without giving explicit consent. And when you are waiting at a bus stop and someone is smoking nearby your options are limited.

[MillennialDem]

2. As evidenced by the callous attitude by smokers (both pot and cigs) in a post here

yesterday... ie don't care about smoking on people when they drive by or near them.

Fuck em. Good.

[sofa king]

5. You say that now...

...But guess what? I have severe allergies to colognes and perfumes, which are also airborne contaminants which can be persecuted just like cigarette smoke. So guess what people like me are going to take away from you, within a couple of years?

Your smell. Because your smell reaches me and causes me harm, just like smoking. And now we have the peanut allergy people and the smokestaffeln building up a fine body of case law. Benzyl Acetate, which can be found in almost every perfume and cologne, is an airborne carcinogen, so you see where that's going to go, and just think how fun it's going to be when you can't pass the smell test at the airport.

Now, the people who love their perfumes and colognes aren't going to be happy about it, but hey, their chance to do something about it was when someone else's rights were being taken away, and now that they failed to defend the rights of others, it's far too late to save themselves.

Just one more example of how, when you shit on a minority, even a voluntary one, you shit on everyone sooner or later. But we Americans are condemned to never learn that lesson, obviously.

[Major Nikon]

10. If there's a link between cause and effect for any of it, then perhaps it should be banned

I'm not convinced there's any evidence whatsoever that outdoor 2nd hand smoke harms anyone. If the standard for a ban is that someone might find a particular odor offensive, that can lead to bans on all sorts of things including those you mentioned.

[HockeyMom]

22. That's the basis of Third Hand Smoke

Just smelling the smoke (not actually near smoking) on a person's hair or clothing will make them sick and die. That is going to be the next ban; Third Hand Smoke. The Health Police are very shrewd. Total Smoke Free Society. Get with the program or we will force you to.

[sofa king]

23. Cause/Effect doesn't apply to smoking.

That's my point about all of this. Recall that it took fifteen years for an actual, measurable link between secondhand smoke and cancer to be shown, fifteen years after the first fallacious study on the subject was greased up to a mere 90% confidence level and used by the feds to declare secondhand smoke a carcinogen.

http://www.epa.gov/smokefree/pubs/strsfs.html

Originally, the EPA based its decision on only one 1992 prepublication paper from Japan, one in which the original data was never actually released. It was, at the time, the only conclusive study the EPA could find at all. Finally, in 2007, a series of repeatable studies began to show a link.

The problem was, in part, thanks to the EPA firing a shot across the bow of secondhand smoke before they had reliable data. The causal link is not statistically significant in conventional studies, and cracking down on secondhand smoke made discovering that tiny relationship all the more difficult.

But also as a result of making it a legal question rather than a scientific one, the EPA took the decisionmaking out of the hands of the scientists and plopped it into the laps of the lawyers, and the question of whether secondhand smoke is dangerous became a legal opinion rather than a scientific one.

Now the legal opinion is, "science don' matter when we're talkin' about making airborne stuff illegal." So once the legal precedent of banning outdoor smoking is fixed, it's just as easy to attack other invisible vapors with the same bullshit pseudoscientific lawyer-speak. Then it's on to dirty diapers in public, offensive personal odors, and using fire, which should piss off all goddamned humans, but it won't.

And it will keep going on like that until some judge demands that we go back to the science... which may be never, so long as Republicans keep appointing the judges.

Edit: The craziest part of all, the one thing that amuses me the most, is that the EPA was absolutely fuckin' right! They actually managed to anticipate the course of scientific study by fifteen years. Had it been done by an individual we would have said it was amazingly prescient and years ahead of its time. But, instead, by jumping the gun they gave the issue to the lawyers, who as usual fucked it all up and turned it into a weapon to be used against the American people.

[Major Nikon]

29. Even if you can say it does you still don't get there from here

Even if you put stock in the science that's there, what studies do exist on 2nd hand smoke were done on people who live or work with smokers. So you're talking about people who have a far higher exposure level than someone who would be only occassionally exposed to a far lower level. Human olfaction is incredibly sensitive and can detect even extremely minute substances even when masked by much stronger smells. Trying to track down and ban every smell someone finds offensive is a fool's errand.

[sofa king]

32. Yes, it's all a fools errand!

[snappyturtle]

43. +1 nt

[MillennialDem]

28. I don't like perfumes or colognes either.

[sofa king]

55. Heh heh!

But that's the thing, we have to put up with that sort of bullshit so that we can burden others with our own foibles.

I would be all for banning and outlawing this stuff if fair and impartial scientific studies showed them to be actual dangers rather than inconveniences.

But right now I feel like the "science" on the matter is just a bunch of witchcraft incantations that impress judges and juries, and exactly because the decisions are no longer based on actual science, they are beginning to mutate into perverse, inconvenient, and dangerous laws that, as stupid laws always do, punish the victims and provide profit to the powerful.

[MillennialDem]

56. I can tell you my wife/domestic partner has asthma which can very readily be triggered by

cigarette or pot smokers, even if we are in the car together (windows rolled up) and the smoker is in their car with THEIR windows rolled up too.

I know that's anecdotal and not a falsifiable study, but I'm scared shitless when she reaches for her inhaler.

For me it is more of an inconvenience (getting my hair and clothes stinky with cig or pot smell), but your rights extend only to my nose... and in the other thread quite a few smokers thought it was too bad that there habit was making me stinky - and even moreso whether illegal or just a dick move they didn't even think it was a dick move.

[sofa king]

65. That's a hard attitude to break, I guess.

It was only just before my time that the proverbial "smoke-filled room" where all the important decisions were made wasn't proverbial at all. For a hundred years before that, everyone indoors was bathed in an ever-present fog of tobacco, and few seemed to notice it at all exactly because it was ever-present and an inextricable part of modern life.

And it really was everywhere, permanently scenting and yellowing all documents, for example (beyond the normal acid-yellowing of aging paper). One tip I quickly picked up on in archival research was that the brownest piece of paper was among the most important in the file, because that's the one that was on top of the pile or taped to the wall, and exposed to smoke for years.

There is also the phenomenon of familiarity, in which smokers become unaware of the smoke and smell they are generating. It makes it difficult for them to empathize with those offended, because it's an issue beneath their perception, and therefore easily considered trivial.

[notadmblnd]

34. Excellent post

It also amazes me how these self righteous anti smoking police can accuse people that do smoke- of being selfish and lacking empathy for others, when in fact they are the one who are selfish and lack empathy. Never once do they stop to consider that perhaps many of those smokers regret ever taking up the habit and do try desperately to quit repeatedly and have so far been unsuccessful in their endeavors. Instead, all they can think of when they see someone with a cigarette in their hand (nevermind that it's not even lit) is to be rude, roll their eyes and fake cough. If they ever once considered being polite and nicely asking the person with a cigarette in their had to please not smoke it near them, that they would find most, (if not all) would kindly oblige.

It seems to me, that these self appointed smoking police efforts might be better spent advocating more for people not to take it up to begin with. Hell, I know smokers that spend more time trying to convince people not to take it up while I don't believe I've ever heard any of the people who I've heard bitching about it, speak to a young person about why they shouldn't.

[demigoddess]

46. I have had the same problem with

perfumes and cigarettes. With me I think it was more obviously the formaldehyde in them. I would also react to household items, soaps etc that had formaldehyde in them. Cigarettes have so many bad ingredients, including ammonia, that it is hard to defend smoking where anyone else, especially a child, has to breathe it.

[catbyte]

51. Agreed, sofa king. Perfumes & cologne trigger migraines. I especially hate Calvin Klein

I don't know what the hell they put in that, but it triggers one every single time.

[MicaelS]

7. And if you fart near me..

I will try and have you arrested for use of a chemical weapon.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. ...

[MicaelS]

3. I look forward to the day pot is fully legal everywhere.

For no other reason than because it will make the hardcore anti-smoking zealots heads explode. The kind who go into screaming fits when someone dares to use tobacco near them. I don't use tobacco, and won't use pot. I just don't like anti-tobacco zealots.

[bob27]

6. I agree with you about the zealots.

I feel that way every time I see the retail clerks at Macy's smoking out by the dumpsters in the parking lot. That's their designated area. They are pariahs, and I feel sorry for them.

My town bans open air smoking, and I think that's a crock. I quit smoking 25 years ago, but I think this anti-smoker zeal that you put your finger on is--what do they say on DU?--"over the top."

[MicaelS]

8. It's not just that...

Now the next thing they're trying to purge is Vaping.

As the evil Redleg Officer in The Outlaw Josey Wales said "Doin good ain't got no end."

[Psephos]

15. "Doin good ain't got no end."

Perfect.

[alp227]

49. "anti-smoker zeal"?

What's so hard about respecting people who don't want to breathe others' filth?

[bob27]

63. Where did I say the contrary?

[alp227]

64. well, Macy's clerks who go outside to smoke are pariahs, you write.

I feel that way every time I see the retail clerks at Macy's smoking out by the dumpsters in the parking lot. That's their designated area. They are pariahs, and I feel sorry for them.

You also wrote:

My town bans open air smoking, and I think that's a crock...I think this anti-smoker zeal that you put your finger on is--what do they say on DU?--"over the top."

Well, you call open-air smoking bans "over the top". Do you not think people want to breathe air without filth blown at their faces? If people want to smoke politely, they shouldn't do it in nonsmokers' breathing area. Period.

[frylock]

18. i smoke pot, and would never willfully expose someone to second hand smoke..

I'm no anti-tobacco zealot, but I am a keep your stinky fucking cigarettes away from me zealot.

[demigoddess]

47. smoking, yes,

but a lot fewer chemicals in the smoke of pot. Tobacco is treated with formaldehyde and ammonia among others. Heard Peter Jennings announce something like 400 chemicals in cigarette smoke. Look up what killed him.

ps. ammonia is what keeps the cigarette still burning if you put it down.. cigars and pipes go out if not puffed on.

[Tikki]

9. I agree with you N B...

We make it a plan to visit cities in CA that ban smoking indoors and out in public places.

The Tikkis

[Psephos]

14. Rather ironic that people will still breathe bus exhaust at the bus stop.

Take a few deep puffs off the exhaust pipe and you're dead.

But secondhand cig smoke wafting by at homeopathic concentration? Can't have that.

And no, I don't smoke, nor have I ever. But I am fed up with low-science, high-intrusiveness rules "for my own good" from the overlords.

Somehow over the past few decades, it has become cool and accepted for liberal-minded people to support authoritarian government, usually with a big dose of puritan condescension. The unquestioned assumption that rules and laws are the best and most effective way to guide behavior could stand some serious questioning. The evidence says otherwise.

Sad to see the liberal mindset morphing into the very thing it used to stand against: reactionary intrusion.

[frylock]

19. i guess you might have a point if you were able to ride your cigarette into work.

[Psephos]

24. I see you weren't a member of the high school debate team. n/t

[frylock]

25. i see you're a member of the bullshit analogy all-stars..

bring something of substance, and perhaps you'll get your debate.

[Psephos]

26. I did bring substance, it's just that my opinion is different from yours.

Can't have that, can we?

[frylock]

30. "Take a few deep puffs off the exhaust pipe and you're dead."

let's start off with your leading paragraph:

Take a few deep puffs off the exhaust pipe and you're dead.

How many people do you know that actually "Take a few deep puffs off the exhaust pipe?" 1? 100?

[notadmblnd]

35. So you're saying that it's not what you say, but how you say it?

nt

[frylock]

37. no, i'm saying that the analogy is bullshit..

just like I said to the person that posted the aforementioned bullshit.

[notadmblnd]

39. I can see you're one usually brings out the best in people.

have a nice day.

[frylock]

40. do you have anything to add to the topic of discussion?

or do you want to make this about me? that other poster wanted to have a "debate." where the fuck did he go? are you his surrogate?

[Psephos]

44. the literalist mindset is not your friend

I made a substantive, transitive analogy and a comparison of relative toxicity. If you really need it laid out, it goes like this: if you inhale deeply on a cigarette, you will have sucked in a lot of toxic substances, but in small enough concentrations that it won't kill you or even sicken you, usually until at least 10 pack/years have passed. (1 pack/day x 1 year = 1 pack year).

Cigarette smoke, while toxic, is a mild enough toxin that it causes little unrepairable damage in the short term, even at the concentrated dose received by direct inhalation. The diluted dose one gets standing around a bus stop is, as I said before, at homeopathic concentration, i.e., extremely dilute. (The risk of the bus jumping the curb and hitting you is far greater than the risk from the bus stop cigarette smoke.)

Meanwhile, bus exhaust is way more toxic than cigarette smoke. If you breathe in undiluted bus exhaust, you will sicken almost instantly, and die shortly if you persist.

Volume for volume, bus exhaust is the deadlier substance by far, as this thought experiment shows. I hope that's obvious to you, but if not, I can't help you get there. I would note that breathing engine exhaust in a closed space is a common method of quick suicide. Smoking a pack of Marlboros is not.

The irony here is that Ann Arbor is banishing the far less-toxic fume, while ignoring the more-toxic one, at the bus stop. Because they value political correctness over science and basic freedom from authority.

Of course, even the more-toxic bus exhaust is diluted to safe levels rapidly, so it's an acceptably small risk. I am not advocating the banishment of bus exhaust, just noting the hypocrisy. Cigarette smoke is orders of magnitude less poisonous than bus exhaust, but both risks are miniscule in the concentrations one would receive when breathing either dilute cigarette or dilute bus smoke.

Concentration is what makes a poison. Drink 30 bottles of water and you will die of water poisoning.

One more thing...

You wrote above "that other poster wanted to have a 'debate.' where the fuck did he go?"

I went to work, to teach a class. Not everyone can sit around for hours on the keyboard taking potshots at whoever fails to have an identical opinion.

[frylock]

45. well we can discuss green energy, alternate methods of transportation, et al..

none of which was addressed in your 'liberals are becoming authoritarians' derpatribe. smoking cigarettes is filthy and unhealthy. people should not have to be subjected to second-hand smoke because others are incapable of dealing with their drug addiction. conversely, people need to get to work, school, the grocery store. busses offer an affordable method of transportation for low income people. so we can probably address both issues, or we can just throw up our hands and say fuckitall. but one is clearly a necessity, while the other is not. i'll leave it up to the viewing audience to decide which is which.

[RandoLoodie]

20. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

[awoke_in_2003]

42. They can't smoke at bus stops, either...

[alp227]

50. "reactionary intrusion"?

Do you not understand that second hand smoke is not an individual thing: others can breathe it and be sickened?

As the saying goes, your right to swing your arm ends at my face. Same goes for blowing filth around.

[Psephos]

58. No reactionary thinks they're being reactionary.

Just as no bigot sees him/herself as a bigot.

Outdoor second-hand smoke at a bus stop is not going to sicken anyone. As I stated elsewhere, the concentration of bus exhaust (which is vastly more poisonous) at the bus stop will be higher than that of the cig smoke. But why let science decide when there's a chance to force others to conform to someone else's opinion.

Someone else in this thread nailed it:
"Doin' right ain't got no end."
(from The Outlaw Josey Wales)

[alp227]

60. So what if it isn't gonna sicken anyone? Let people breathe smoke-free air.

And again about bus exhaust: it's not being blown towards somebody in the same manner as cigarette smoke.

[awoke_in_2003]

41. I am a smoker and agree. nt

[freshwest]

4. Guess there will be an uptick in nicotine patch sales. n/t

[RandiFan1290]

11. Can't they just take it outside?

Why is that so hard?

[fredamae]

12. I do hope that includes

Back-yard BBQ's--the smoke and fumes make it so hard to breathe---Auto/Mass transit exhaust fumes---Corporate carelessness with Fracking/Oil Extraction/Mishandling Coal Ash and the list goes on...
Nice how we're all steered to worry about just the "ONE" thing that, while nasty---fails in comparison to the harms caused from the aggregate of the others.

[Luminous Animal]

36. Yep. I live in a city and the black grit that accumulates on my sill

Is also black grit that is going into my lungs. And my husband and I switched to a gas grill when the smoke from our charcoal grill sent our asthmatic neighbor to th hospital.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. Glad I quit.

[Arugula Latte]

16. Good news!

May this spread like ... uh ... cigarette smoke.

[dipsydoodle]

21. in certain areas......

within 10 feet of a bus stop, or within 20 feet of the entrances, windows and ventilation systems of any city buildings, as well as the Blake Transit Center and certain parks or portions of parks.

[christx30]

57. There is a similar ban

in Austin, Texas where I live. You can't smoke within 15 feet of a bus stop. It's mostly unenforced, except by the bus drivers. I've seen them pass a bus stop where people are smoking. I wish it would happen more often.

[truthisfreedom]

27. Wonderful!

Cigarette smoke sucks, so does perfume. We need perfume/cologne bans in public places next, especially elevators.

[penndragon69]

31. Let these ASSHOLES

smoke at HOME or in their CARS (with the windows closed) NO WHERE else.
Too bad we can't make this POISON ILLEGAL !

[Comrade Grumpy]

62. People who smoke are assholes? My, you're charming.

[HockeyMom]

33. Private backyards?

I live 10 feet from my neighbors. Cannot smoke on my own property because they can smell my smoking, and other friends and family smoking outside when I have a BBQ? Wow, smoke from cigarettes, AND from a charcoal (horrors) grill.

Oh, what to do about THAT????

[Demeter]

38. It ought to be interesting, enforcing this

I live in Ann Arbor by choice, but sometimes I doubt the sanity of many of the self-important people around here.

[alp227]

52. "self-important" for understanding most people don't want to breathe filth?

As opposed to rude, entitled fools who blow their smoke wherever they like?

[Crepuscular]

48. Ann Arbor

Sure seems to know what's best for people.

Protecting you from the dangers of sitting on a couch on your porch and having a cigarette.

For the record I quit smoking 30 years ago and still think Ann Arbor's prohibition is a stupid law. I do, however, still sit on couches. Fortunately, since I don't live in A2, I am still able to.

http://www.annarbor.com/news/ann-arbor-city-council-passes-ordinance-banning-couches-on-porches/

[alp227]

53. Because people don't want to breathe others' filth.

Great framing as "government knows what's best for you." They didn't ban smoking in people's own homes. I deserve to be able to breathe without rude smokers ruining it for me & other nonsmokers.

[Demeter]

54. a series of nasty fires produced the banning of couch porches law

it involved a lot of college students and student housing and safety is important.

But yes, there is a lot of that going around.

[Psephos]

59. This is correct.

Same problem in East Lansing, too.

There are few things more perplexing than deciphering why well-fed, middle-class college students would want to drag a sofa into the street and light it afire.

But I suppose if someone lacks actual struggle and conflict in their life, they may have to whip a little up to compensate.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

61. It's more than street fires.

I know of two buildings here in chicago that were gutted due to fires on the porches. In both cases, the fires started in the deck furniture by smokers, broke the back windows and entered the building.

One was the building behind mine.

We all have fire resistant treated lumber porches here but we load them up with outdoor drapes, outdoor rugs and outdoor couches.

I'm seriously considering putting sprinklers on the back porch.

[mmonk]

66. But I guess gasoline vehicles are still allowed.

[alp227]

67. because people aren't getting their noses stuck in valves... nt