The Daily Caller

The Daily Caller
US

New York City readies for public smoking ban

1:45 PM 02/02/2011
Will Rahn
Deputy Editor

The New York City Council is preparing to ban smoking in all parks, beaches, boardwalks, and even Times Square, reports The Wall Street Journal.

“When this legislation is passed, all New Yorkers will be able to enjoy a walk in the park or a day at the beach without having to inhale secondhand smoke,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn when she and Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled the proposed bill last year. ”This bill will save lives and make New York City a healthier place to live.”

A compromise measure floated by Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr., would have allowed smoking in certain areas around parks and beaches but is not expected to pass. “It still has a lot of support,” Vallone told the Journal. “I’m disappointed leadership chose to move the original bill and not my compromise.”

City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, a medical doctor, was the man who convinced an initially hesitant Bloomberg to support the measure. “Cigarettes kill some 7,500 New Yorkers every year, and thousands more suffer smoking-related strokes, heart attacks, lung diseases and cancers,” he said last September. “New York City’s Smoke Free Air Act has greatly reduced the harm that cigarettes cause to nonsmokers. By expanding the act to cover parks and beaches, we can reduce the toll even further.”

The bill is expected to pass when the council meets Wednesday afternoon. It will take effect in 90 days.

Tags: Smoking
  • CarolT

    The anti-smokers commit flagrant scientific fraud by ignoring more than 50 studies which show that human papillomaviruses cause at least 1/4 of non-small cell lung cancers. Smokers and passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus for socioeconomic reasons. And the anti-smokers’ studies are all based on lifestyle questionnaires, so they’re cynically DESIGNED to blame tobacco for all those extra lung cancers that are really caused by HPV. And they commit the same type of fraud with every disease they blame on tobacco.

    http://www.smokershistory.com/hpvlungc.htm

    And, all their so-called “independent” reports were ring-led by the same guy, Jonathan M. Samet, including the Surgeon General Reports, the EPA report, the IARC report, and the ASHRAE report, and he’s now the chairman of the FDA Committee on Tobacco. He and his politically privileged clique exclude all the REAL scientists from their echo chamber. That’s how they make their reports “unanimous!”

    http://www.smokershistory.com/SGlies.html

    For the government to commit fraud to deprive us of our liberties is automatically a violation of our Constitutional rights to the equal protection of the laws, just as much as if it purposely threw innocent people in prison. And for the government to spread lies about phony smoking dangers is terrorism, no different from calling in phony bomb threats.

  • samac

    Freedom loving people of the US to NY facists: Drop Dead. For real this time.

    When this city faces its inevitable bankruptcy, their whole complex of nanny-state do gooders and lifestyle facists needs to be put out of work. They can’t clear the snow, but they can hire all of these ahole bureaucrats to tell people how to live, what to eat, etc.

    What a crock of sh*t that a wiff of smoke in a park represents harm. A straight up lie to justify facist encroachment.

    And no, I don’t smoke.

  • mapletree

    Folks in NY have been electing liberal politicians for generations: You deserve these nanny state laws that micromanage every area of your lives. I have no sympathy. Next it will be salt, then mandatory dual flush toilets and the list goes on and on.

  • mojo

    Oh yeah, that’ll fly. Like a lead balloon. Expect New Yorkers to get nasty about their failure to comply, too.

  • Pingback: Big Apple smoking Nazis get their wish | Babalú Blog

  • Pingback: Tweets that mention New York City readies for public smoking ban « The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment -- Topsy.com