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REPLY: Since the recent passage of the smoking ban by the Tyler City Council, I have been scouring the Constitution, as well as other historical documents, striving to find any justification for a government entity to deny owners of private businesses the right to free trade without due process of law.
I was unable to locate any language in the Constitution that would support the recent action, but I did locate a couple of key phrases in a political document published in 1848 that seem to support their position.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production into the hands of the State," "Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property," and, finally, "Their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of existing social conditions."
I located these phrases supporting the smoking ban in the Communist Manifesto.
Kevin Braly
Tyler
14th amendment
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States
US CONSTITUTION BEFORE IT BECAME TOILET PAPER harleyrider1978
Considering that smoking is just about the largest public health problem in the US as well as being extremely irritating to non-smokers I consider regulating or banning it in restraunts, bars and other public spaces to be completely reasonable. I do not think the sales of tobacco, or any of the other banned drugs, should be made illegal, but should be restricted to adult citizens, quality regulated and taxed by the government to pay for the medical and rehabilitation costs associated with the use of the drugs. I would also ban all drug, alcohol and tobacco advertising as part of this regulation.
I do not see regulation of drugs to be an effort to install communism in this country but to take measures to protect the public health.
Car Exhaust Causes Heart Disease
Colin Grainger
19th February 2008.
Just when you thought it was okay to blame all of mankind's ills on smoking, those crazy scientists actually get a little closer to the truth.
Pity they didn't start looking at this source of illness decades ago. So tunnel-visioned were they, they completely overlooked the obvious.
For years and years they subjected lab rats to tobacco smoke. No tumours, no cancers, no ill effects. So then they started painting the rats with nicotine. Despite using enough nicotine to cover the Forth Bridge, the rats still did not contract cancer. Oddly enough, rats exposed to exhaust fumes did contract tumours. I mention this not to put you off your lunch, but to illustrate a point. Scientists tend to look for animals with similar cell structure to humans because testing on humans is not permitted.
In this case, the scientists used zebra fish. Apparently their hearts act like ours do. The British Heart Foundation were not happy to hear this news. Like ASH, and like Cancer Research UK, they have been content, for many years, to blame all illness on smokers.
This new study tells them that something else might be to blame. And they are terrified. The study uses real science, and this is a notion they are completely unfamiliar with. Like our inept government, they prefer to make it up as they go along. Much more difficult to refute, see?
But if we wait long enough, the pharmaceutical companies will come up with something to "relieve" the inhalation of these deadly exhaust emissions. A patch perhaps?
There are many, many more causes of cancer, and we at F2C believe that exhaust emissions, particularly diesel, are killers of note. Those killers have been getting away with murder for years, and the scapegoat was tobacco, in many cases. We aim to bring you a fascinating piece on this subject in the coming days.
Thank God for smoking bans!! Just becuase you wanna smoke doesn't mean I want to. I'm pretty sure every non-smoker would agree. Who likes eating at a restaurant and the people behind you have to have a cigarette lit while they eat. Most of the time, they never even take a drag off of it. It just sits there annoying the living sh@t out of everybody else.
Its also nice to go to a bar and actually be able to come home and not smell like a smoke stack.
I am not a smoker, and I never have been. I enjoy going to a bar and not coming home smelling like smoke, but I've never really understood this law, as it's currently on the books in New York State too.
Since I was a child, I've learned the ill-effects of smoking or second hand smoke. Why can't bars or restaurants decide for themselves if they want to allow smoking and have a sign out front showing their designation? If it's the governments belief that more non-smokers are negatively effected by smokers than smokers effected by the ban, wouldn't the non-smokers naturally choose to frequent designated non-smoking establishments? If they don't, they're making an active, informed decision to remain in an environment that is hazerdous to their health. I imagine that capitalism would tell us that the smoking designated establishments would slowly dwindle away.
If the government believes so strongly that smoking is national concern, why don't they just outlaw the sale of tobacco products, rather than slowly trying to coerce smokers into quitting (increased taxes, warnings, smoking bans etc.) My guess is they fear a prohibition-esque result.
Now I've read that some politicians in NYC would like to advertise the caloric intake of fast food meals on chain restaruants' menus. Do people really need to know how many calories are in a Big-Mac, right next to the price, when ordering? If in five years this doesn't curb obesity, what's the next step? Will we decide that you must be 18 or older to buy fast food? Will burgers of over X calories be banned from menus in an effort to save the children? I know this is taking things to extremes, but it's not far from the smoking ban's logic.
Unfortunately, the very same people that the funds are appropriated for to treat medical conditions are the same lower income people that refuse to give up smoking. So raising the taxes on it just puts more of the burden on the people it is hoping to discourage.
If people want to kill themselves that is their prerogative just please don't do it in public so I have to inhale your smoke, and stink every time I go out for a drink.
A public ban seems an excellent idea to me. And the vast majority of people who do object to second-hand smoke too .
Why should anyone be able to poison my air because of their addiction.
If I started piping in mustard gas in tiny, tiny amounts through air-vents I suspect this would be deemed as being a danger to the public ? Quite rightly so.
Smoking is a vile habit which takes away from people's enjoyment of public spaces.
By all means smoke as many cancer sticks as you wish in private , at home or in private smoking-rooms/clubs. If it's a public space, then the majority of people ( non-smokers) should not have to put up with this.
My civil liberty and health is infringed upon every time I go out and inhale smoke.
The ban in the UK has been wonderful. Pubs are now places to enjoy rather than endure. Places one can spend an entire evening in without feeling nauseous, coughing or stinking like an ashtray.
It is working here, is working elsewhere. I just don't see why it is such a big issue for people who smoke. It's not like we are banning smoking. Just banning public smoking.
it is time to retake our public spaces.
Smoking is anti-social, it's bad for you and it's much better without it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Man,ive been hitting the blogs and when the population is hit with the facts
they end their argument with nothing but hate towards smokers period.
I guess we have come to the point where political correctness has demanded hatred towards smokers and the obese. The reality tv shows aimed at humiliating fat people just goes further to eminate this hatred.
What has happened to our society that people no longer care about their fellow man or their rights. We had the COMPROMISE in place with smoking sections at public facilities. Now are they going to go to fat people sections next and then go to prohibition on more citizens. As we have seen they really wont go to fat sectional seating they will go straight for criminalization if you seat them and feed them........My inlaws are fat
but I take no hatred or any other form of emotional action against them. I see them for the good people they are not as some form of fat eating hoglet at the trough as many do today. If this is what america has come to
I know not that I care to be involved as one of its citizens.....I served the country in the military for many years,had I come home from a war zone or even in peacetime to find my rights had been diminished by a hateful society. I think that my perceptions and attitude towards the slogan land of the free would be gone,my patriotism would be tested.........
Our these things today going thru our military men and womens minds
that their country is practicing what al quieda preaches in its indoctrination
against smoking as they tried on the iraqies befor they threw them out and took up alliances with american forces...........Have we in effect become the enemy we fight...................It leads me to believe the war zone is a freer place than the local coffe shop now comandeered by the govmnt as a smoke free zone with criminal charges to follow.......at least they wont cut our heads off but simply imprison us for the rights we have always enjoyed........
Is a free societies freedom measured by its liberties or its exclusions of those liberties. Are the rights of private property in jeopardy when the govmnt can take control away from the owner..........
I ponder the illusion again and again of what america was to what america is fast becoming.........A totalitarian state, where not the rights guaranteed and protected by the constitution are no longer valid but where lobbyists and corporations can dictate thru television shows and our supposed elected officials what our rights will be......subject to change during pharmecutical commercials of course................
I know what my idea is of a free society where all americans are free to choose and free to live as they see fit............where the attacks of one group can not change the rights of all guaranteed by the founding fathers.
We now live in a troubling time, but fear not as we as a country have lived thru troubling times as this. Nearly 100 years ago the prohibitionist crowd rallied and put forth laws that discrimnated against their fellow americans for partaking in their liberty that others did not like............
That time lasted 14 years before america came back to commonsence and common rights............today we call those rights civil rights,human rights, our constutuional rights........... We shall in the end recover from the darkness of these times where a freer mind and freer time will be enjoyed by all again............
Do people really need to know how many calories are in a Big-Mac, right next to the price, when ordering? If in five years this doesn't curb obesity, what's the next step? Will we decide that you must be 18 or older to buy fast food? Will burgers of over X calories be banned from menus in an effort to save the children?
Did you hear about the Mississippi law makers trying to ban fast food establishments from serving obese ppl?
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