10/17/02  Are our priorities just a little smoky?

Being someone who never smoked, whose parents smoked like chimneys, who can't go into a smoke-filled bar without weeping and coughing within minutes, you would think I would be right up there with those control freaks who want to ban smoking in all public places.  You would be thinking wrong.

Remember how horrible it was when people smoked on elevators?  How many jackets or shirts or dresses did you have ruined by some jerk touching your clothes with their lit cigarette?  Worse, how many times did you have some jerk burn you when they waived their lit cigarette around as they talked and blew dirty air out their mouth?  It was awful to be trapped in an elevator with one smoker, much less multiple smokers, which frequently happened in office buildings.   Those were really bad times.   Some of us geezers can remember actually having to work next to a smoker or sit in a cramped office lunch room with a selfish co-worker puffing away while you were eating.  Truely bad times. And, what about those stinking airlines flights when you were trapped in a cabin with smokers and smelled so bad when you got where you were going you wanted to shower and change clothes?

Polly Hill: Got myself some bad lungs: The KLIF disciples  for smoking need to let go and allow Mayor Miller to lead.      In the first place cigarettes should be in the same class as heroin.  They are deadly.        And, eating establishments should be under more strict health guidelines than are now required.  (Only this week, I reminded an employee to wash as she was leaving the bathroom.)      I have apartments, and all kinds of laws are levied on what I can and can't do with prospective tenants.  There is no difference.  It's bidness! > PS I am still seething over having to build a three sided fence around my dumpster -----to collect more trash, flies, and rodents, outside the container.  Code requirement for pleasing eyes??????  Not only that, but there are dumpsters all over the city without a 3-sides eye shield.  Go figure!   Oh, Well!

Bill Gordon: Dear Laura,      You must have spent too much time in California this summer!  You've come back with a severe case of nannyitis.     With all of the issues facing the city, how could you jump on this pc puff crusade?  This is Texas, not Wisconsin.       Don't lose your base by pushing intrusive and overbearing ordinances that fly in the face of people's rights to choose.       Sure, smoking sucks, it's unhealthy and repulsive to many of us, but so are drinking alcohol, gobbling fattening food, and myriad other behaviors.  If you don't like smoking, go to restaurants that don't allow it; the free marketplace is simply a better regulator than any "benevolent" bureaucracy.     You've been doing a great job, but this is a truly bad move, philosophically, economically, and ultimately politically.     Slap! Slap! Snap out of it.

A friend of mine says he lunches at a place in Addison, and there are smokers there.  I would suggest to him that he not eat at that place anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I hate cigarette smoke and really can't respect people who smoke.  I know a big shot like Herb Keliher smokes, but then he likes Ron Kirk.  So, what does that tell you about the guy?  I feel the same way about someone smoking over a meal as I do about the birdbrains who walk through the grocery store talking on their cell phones.  Whenever I see either of those kind of jerks, I wonder why they waste their money that way.  Either behavior annoys me and diminishes my comfort level, but neither behavior is going to do me permanent harm.

Why aren't we banning cell phones in restaurants?  

The decibel level of one obnoxious jerk with a cell phone may not be high enough to harm our hearing, but what if you had a room full of cell phone talkers while you were dining?  Not likely to happen, because the management will want to discourage that kind of disruption.  Second-hand smoke in a restaurant where you are unlikely to spend more than an hour is not going to harm your lungs anymore than having to listen to a bunch of cell yackers will damage your hearing.  

It's a comfort issue.  It's a nuisance issue.  It's an I-don't-like issue.  It's also someone else's property.  

That's what it comes down to for me.  If a restaurant owner values his smoking customers over his non-smoking customers, then that's his call.  It's my call as to whether I go back to his eatery.  

What about those people who claim that any perfumes or hair sprays cause them to have allergic reactions?  Are we going to ban any kind of perfume from restaurants?  

If you say all smoking should be banned from public places to protect the wait persons and staff in restaurants, Gary Cunningham on WBAP made a good point about that perspective.  He said he was driving behind a stage at the fair where some group was performing.  With his windows up, he could feel the vibrations and hear the bass.  That level of sound has to be harmful to the ears of the band members and their crew.  Is someone going to pass a law that no noise can be above a certain level out of concern for the hearing of the band members or their audience?  There is no way you can deny that loud music damages one's hearing.

Why do some elected officials think they have to protect the rest of us?  Why do they think they are so much smarter than of us, and we cannot make intelligent decisions for ourselves?  Our elected officials certainly think we are capable of paying our taxes.  

With all of the problems we have in Dallas, this entire issue of banning smoking in restaurants and bars and other public places is just petty.  It's almost a smoke screen (no pun intended) to divert our attention from the really important matters that are not being resolved.

Our city council passes laws all the time that get ignored.  Is that a good thing?  No!  When you pass a law you know will be violated and you do not have the staff to enforce, you trivialize government.  Like that stupid dog poop law from a couple of years ago!  Has it kept your neighbor's dog out of your yard?  Have you seen one person get issued a ticket for leaving their hound's poop in a public place or on your private yard?  Would you just be annoyed to no end to see a uniformed officer writing that kind of a ticket when there are not enough officers to catch the little punks who broke into your car?

How much council time has been spent on this silliness in the past couple of weeks?  Don't forget all the hours the "Environmental Health Commission" must have put into their proposal which is the source of the council's current debate.  If second-hand smoke in a restaurant is the city's most urgent concern, things are a little better than the recent budget squabbles led us to believe.

Here's a couple of health issues the Environmental Health Commission should be considering:

1.  We have laws prohibiting drinking alcohol in our public parks, but every weekend there are folks boozing it up in our parks, if not every night.  The drunks leave behind trash, and empty cans and broken bottles.  All of which are health hazards to families.  We don't enforce the no-drinking in public parks ordinance very effectively.

2.  We have laws against physical and/or sexual contact between lap dancers and the perverts who watch them, but guys come in from Ft. Worth to get serviced under the table at topless bars on Harry Hines and other such fine establishments elsewhere in town and nothing happens except diseases get spread around and the perverts go home and infect their spouses or significant others.  We have anti-prostitution laws, but we don't enforce those laws either.  We don't have the manpower to enforce these laws either.

So, we are going to pass more laws that we can't enforce?  Really smart!

It's about priorities.  Having drunks in your neighborhood park is much more of a threat to your personal health than sitting near some jerks who smoke while they eat.  You can just imagine how often they brush their teeth.  Having whores servicing their customers on your neighborhood streets and leaving used condoms in your yard is much more of a threat to your family members' health than smelling second-hand smoke for a little while.  It's a lot easier to walk out of a smoky eatery than it is sell your home if it's near a trashy park or hookers trash your street.

Last weekend, I was walking in a neighborhood just north of Ft. Worth Avenue.  There were some children riding their bikes in a narrow street.  On one side was an abandoned house that looked like it was being cleaned up.  The area between the fence and the street (where a sidewalk should be) was littered with broken glass.  It was obvious trash had been piled there and the bulk trash guys had scraped it up.  If one of those kids falls off their bike too near that glass littered area, they are going to be really hurt.  That's a health hazard, a real health hazard that needs to be eliminated right now.  

When we have sex clubs on Northwest Highway openly operating without a license or a special use permit, we clearly have more important issues to address than telling restaurant owners they cannot allow smoking in their businesses.  It's illegal for a lap dancer to touch body parts with the perverts/patrons in the sex clubs, but they do it without too much repercussion.  It's illegal for prostitutes to do what they do, but they are out there every weekend.  It is not illegal to smoke cigarettes.

We are talking about raising taxes on cigarettes, which means the lawmakers proposing those taxes are already planning where they are spending that money and factoring the tax income into their budget plans.   It is not illegal to smoke cigarettes.

Until we can control the stuff that is illegal and really ruins lives and communities -- like public drunks and public lewdness and prostitution, it sure seems silly to be worried about second-hand smoke in a place where you chose to go.