Tuesday, 9 April 2013

And Now For The Outdoor Snus Ban

If you thought Bloomberg's ban on smoking in 29,000 acres of New York parks  - and California banning e-cigs everywhere - was insane, wait till you get a load of this.
Grand Forks outdoor parks have areas where smoking is banned, courtesy of Measure 8 in November. Grand Forks Park Board Commissioner Molly Soeby wants to extend that ban to all varieties of tobacco. 
Commissioner Jay Panzer responded to Soeby’s proposal at Tuesday’s board meeting with a big grin and the words: “This is a ginormous can of worms.” 
After flashing a smile acknowledging Panzer’s assessment, Soeby argued that chewing tobacco is damaging because it’s an unhealthy habit in what should be a healthy environment. 
“We look at parks as a way to make a community healthier,” she said. “There’s no way tobacco makes us healthier. Our community is becoming more healthy and it realizes what a problem tobacco is.”
The "the smoking ban is only to protect those poor bar workers from passive smoke" defence is but a distant memory, isn't it?
She said she will be OK if she doesn’t get a smokeless ban, but . . . 
“I’ll be back next year,” she said. “The times are a-changing.”
They sure are. After 80 years, deeply anti-social prohibitionists have escaped their collective straitjacket and are greasing up the slippery slope on a daily basis.

I don't fancy alcohol's chances much, do you?