It's Started - Outside Smoking Ban
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The following was written by Michael Siegel on his blog.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It is now official. The mainstream tobacco control movement is now
pushing for an extension of smoke-free protections to the outdoors and
specifically -- to sidewalks. The American Lung Association of
California has released its 2008 State of Tobacco Control report,
and one of its criteria in grading the strength of anti-smoking laws is
"smoking restrictions on sidewalks in commercial areas." Another
criterion is "smoking restrictions at parks, beaches, trails, sports
fields, and other similar recreation areas."Following this advice,
the Nova Scotia town of Truro recently banned smoking on a downtown
street. Earlier, the town of Bridgewater in Nova Scotia had banned
smoking on "all public property, including streets, parks, and other
recreational areas. The bylaw was softened from a previous proposal to
ban smoking outdoors in the whole community."The Rest of the StoryThe
importance of this story is that the push to extend smoking bans to
widespread outdoor areas where nonsmokers can easily avoid substantial
exposure to secondhand smoke and where there has not been scientific
documentation of any serious public health problem is now officially a
part of the mainstream tobacco control movement, not simply the whim of
an extremist outlying organization. While it was my feeling that these
policies were being supported by many tobacco control groups, this is
the first official documentation of an organized movement to promote
such policies.Apparently, there has been an official shift in
the goal of the nonsmokers' rights movement (unbeknownst to me). Rather
than simply trying to protect nonsmokers from the serious health
effects of exposure to secondhand smoke, the movement is now trying to
protect nonsmokers from having to even see a smoker.The
movement has gone too far, and in doing so, it has crossed the line
from being a public health movement to being a moral crusade. It has
gone beyond the science and instead of controlling exposure to
secondhand smoke, it is now attempting to control lifestyle