Wednesday 23 April 2014

The World's First E-Cig Ban In Private Homes?

Do these people know how ridiculous they look?
Corte Madera Town Council members Tuesday voted 3-1, with Councilman Michael Lappert dissenting and Councilwoman Diane Furst absent, to ban smoking and the use of electronic cigarettes in both new and existing multifamily units. The ban will take effect May 2015.
Just when you think the 'looks like smoking' witch hunt couldn't get more absurd, eh?

It's worth rewinding a few years and retracing the history of home smoking bans to properly illustrate how utterly insane this Town Council is.

Back in 2009, the City of Belmont in California (natch) enacted the first ban on smoking in private homes, a move which prompted a lot of coverage from US website Reason. In a video from November 2008, they explain how far removed from even tobacco control junk science the justification for home smoking bans is.


Note especially the hysterical rhetoric from councillor Dave Warden equating smoking in an apartment with shooting a gun through a wall. In fact, the original footage of that meeting - which now seems to have disappeared from the internet - featured a quote along the lines of "if you smoke, it's like you are reaching through the wall and shooting a child".

This, despite studies on second-hand smoke - yes, even those fabricated by anti-smoking organisations - showing that living with heavy smokers for decades presents a negligible risk, if at all. The idea that a faint whiff of tobacco from next door is the same as a bullet fired from a gun is laughable. Anyone suggesting such absurdities are quite obviously so dense they could bend light and would offer nothing but a vacant stare if you were to mention Paracelsus.

So what would these looney tunes call the danger of using an exponentially safer e-cig? Firing a water pistol, presumably.

They did, at least, extensively apply their scant intellect to the issue though ... perhaps in between breaks from trying to understand the instructions for a Lego starter kit.
Council members struggled with whether the town should ban the use of e-cigarettes and e-cigars in multifamily homes and public places as part of the ordinance. 
While Condon and Councilman Bob Ravasio were completely in favor of banning e-cigarette use, both Lappert and Councilman Sloan Bailey were unsure it was the council's place to enact such a ban. 
Lappert said it should be up to the state to determine whether e-cigarettes are a health hazard.
Or even a health hazard for someone living with a fucking solid brick wall between them and the vaper, perhaps?
For Bailey, he wasn't sure there was enough proof that e-cigarettes are harmful. 
"I don't agree with the philosophy that in absence of proof, you ban something," Bailey said.
You're gonna love this guy's principled stance and stoic self-belief.
But after Condon, Ravasio and five members of the public spoke about the issue and referenced research on e-cigarettes, Bailey changed his tune.
Because he hasn't got Google to look it up himself, obviously.

I'd love to meet this Bailey character, I reckon I could have some fun. Perhaps I could let him know that he owes me quite a bit of money.

DP: So when are you going to repay me that loan?
Bailey: I am not sure I owe you anything
DP: Well, actually, I say you do.
Bailey: Oh OK. Maybe I do.

Incredibly, the citizens of Corte Madera are condemned to suffer these retards running their town. I couldn't think of anyone less qualified, they don't appear capable of running a tombola.

So, in answer to Reason TV's question as to how far smoking bans will go, just 5 years after they pondered it we are already onto the use of devices which Belmont City councillors will not even have heard of when they enacted their ground-breaking home smoking ban.

Future historians will look back on the times we are living through and write books about the stunning stupidity of our era, while Horrible Histories will lampoon politicians like those in Corte Madera for kids to laugh at.

We, of course, don't have to wait that long. We merely have to sit and watch as amused eye-witnesses to a once-proud tobacco control industry as it - and its superlatively gullible followers - inexorably descends into farce. Aren't we lucky, eh?


11 comments:

DaveAtherton20 said...

Towards the end of the video @6.39 an American commenting on bans in the home said "bollocks to that." Nice to see our vernacular crossing the Pond.

Sam Duncan said...

“multifamily units”



Nothing Orwellian going on there, then. Do they mean blocks of flats?

John Gray said...

Ah nostalgia! I remember having a run-in exchange of e-mails with dear Coralin Feierbach many years ago. She got really shirty when I questioned her motives and laughable science. She stated that I had no right to tackle her motives in Belmont, Kalifawnia, as I lived in the UK. I, of course replied that what she did there might soon affect me in the UK but this cut no ice at all. She is truly a prick politician who jumped on the emotive bandwagon in order to present herself as someone heroic. Sad thing is, Dick, unlike you, I begin to wonder if the tide will ever turn and that we shall be landed with moralistic epsilon sub-morons forever. I do agree, however, that one can at least have a good laugh at them all...

Ian B said...

I've just been reading some history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and their theocratic magistracy system. It seems to have made a spectacular comeback.

This is why I have come to the belief that the primary cleavage in Anglo society is not between, say, socialism and free markets, or left and right, or any of those things. It is two social systems which we may call Puritan and Liberal. The defining characteristic of the Puritan is the mind-body dichotomy; the belief that the person (mind) is corrupted by the physical (body) and thus there must be an authoritarian regime that suppresses by any means possible the corruption of the spiritual by the mundane.

Liberalism is defined by the philosophical belief that that is a load of old cobblers.

V Hale said...

You have to say "family", y'see, because it evokes kiddies playing.

Quo Vadis said...

E-Cigs accounted for $2 Billion worth of sales in 2013 ,not surprising the
Drug barons are pumping the big bucks into the purses and pockets of
their chattering puppets,forcing through a county by law must be worth about $10-15,000 in a jiffy bag
Anyway when the persecution of Vapers starts they can allways go back to being normal smokers and stop being cringing silly billies,, dont worry about
tobacco prices,our dear friends in Asia and the Balkans are geared up to keep the costs down
PS Is it true, there are still some ethnic Britons still buying in British shops
just how dim and stupid can anyone get, bad enoough being cowardly and
passive but to contribute financially to their persecutors is beyond belief
Still waiting for fighters........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Junican said...

It was always bound to happen. When people were taught to believe in witches, witch-hunts were inevitable. It is sad that people who are, presumably, sufficiently knowledgeable to be elected to a city council, are capable of believing that a tiny bit of tobacco smoke, and only tobacco smoke, can cast spells through walls and vents - not just little annoying spells, like aromas, but really violent ones, like bullets and bombs.
We really need a system where people who stand for election are obliged to answer questions put to them by the electorate. For example, it would be interesting to hear what a candidate may answer to the question: "Should restauranteurs be obliged by law to refuse to serve clearly obese people?"

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Nice to see you Junican, your enquiring mind might be interested in this which was sent by my NorCal jewel robbing friend Dave G.

The Glantz Family Foundation had its base in San Rafael - just north of Corte Madera - until 2009.

http://www.taxexemptworld.com/organization.asp?tn=1370489

Marin County is home to doctors at UCSF, Glantz's university. Perhaps the junk science is heavily promoted to town councillors in that neck of the woods.

Don't know what happened to the Foundation, but I'm sure this (also in 2009) is totally unrelated. ;)

http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_11691468

Junican said...

Curious.
The Glantz Foundation is described as "private non-operating foundation" as at 2009. The link with (Richard) Glantz, who funnelled funds to Madoff, is most certainly very intriguing.


I noticed in the video that when the woman who was frothing at the mouth finished pontificating that she got a round of applause. I would have been more inclined to ask :"Would any of you trust your children to that woman for an instant?"

Longrider said...

Assuming they intend to use snitches in order to police this (how else?), there is still the issue of gaining access to prove the offence took place. Ah, yeah, I get it, the accusation will be sufficient, won't it?

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