Smoking ban proposed, smoking ban approved -- it's starting to seem inevitable isn't it? On occasion, though, there's a vote that goes against the trend:
Beech Grove will keep its smoke-filled bars for as long as possible.
The City Council voted 5-2 Monday night against a proposed smoking ban identical to those passed in Indianapolis and Lawrence. The council approved the ban on first reading July 23, said Mayor Dennis Buckley, but four bar owners speaking against the ban convinced the council Monday that a ban would hurt their business.
Buckley supported the ban, and at one time, he said, so did most of Beech Grove’s bar owners. Then smokers started congregating in the city.
“At the time Indianapolis imposed it, three bar owners here were ready to do the ban also,” Buckley said Tuesday. “But after the city of Indianapolis imposed the ban, these bars got busy. The bar owners had a change of heart and decided their financial worth was of much greater importance than the health of patrons.”
This wasn't any one-vote victory that could change the next time it comes up -- 5-2 is pretty decisive.
". . . their financial worth was of much greater importance than the health of patrons" -- that's just a little bit snippy, isn't it? These awful, rapacious whisky peddlers are actually making their evil money by providing a legal service to people who want it. The bastards!
Comments
"The bar owners had a change of heart and decided their financial worth was of much greater importance than the health of patrons.”
The Indy Star is stating an opinion not borne out by scientific fact. The most intensive study performed on second-hand smoke mortality (which has never been refuted), covering 39 years and 118,000 people in California concluded:
Our study found no relation between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and tobacco related mortality among never smokers in California, although it did not rule out a small effect. These findings are similar to those of most of the other US studies that have related ETS to lung cancer mortality and coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality. These findings are also consistent with the fact that ETS is much more dilute than actively inhaled smoke and the fact that typical exposure to ETS is equivalent to smoking no more than 0.1 cigarettes per day. Active smoking of 0.1 cigarettes per day is not associated with a measurable increase in risk of lung cancer or CHD.
If 0.1 cigarettes is hralthful. how mant timts a day can one smoke before it becomes dangerous?