Smoking Ban in some homes now, this is getting nuts!

[Raineyrocks]

 It's Official -- Belmont Bans Smoking In Some Homes

NBC 11 | October 10, 2007

The Belmont City Council on Tuesday night adopted a landmark ordinance regulating secondhand smoke in the city.

The ordinance passed on a 3-2 vote and will go into effect in 30 days, according to City Manager Jack Crist.

The ordinance was introduced by the City Council on Sept. 11, and then approved with a few wording changes at its Sept. 25 meeting

Thought to be the first of its kind in California, the ordinance declares secondhand smoke a public nuisance and extends the city's current smoking ban to include multi-unit, multi-story residences.

Though Belmont and some other California cities already restrict smoking in multi-unit common areas, Belmont is the first city to extend secondhand smoke regulation to the inside of individual apartment units.

Smoking will still be allowed in single-family homes and their yards, and units and yards in apartment buildings, condominiums and townhouses that do not share any common floors or ceilings with other units.

The ban for multi-unit apartment buildings will not take effect for an additional 14 months after the ordinance is passed, so that one-year lease agreements will be unaffected.

Smoking will be permitted only in designated outdoor areas of multi-unit housing.

Additionally, smoking will not be allowed in indoor and outdoor workplaces, or in parks, stadiums, sports fields, trails and outdoor shopping areas.

Smoking on city streets and sidewalks will be permitted under the ordinance, except in the location of city-sponsored events or in close proximity to prohibited areas.

City officials have said that enforcement of the smoking ban will be complaint-driven.

The issue was first brought to the attention of the Belmont City Council last July, when residents at a senior housing complex complained of complications arising from secondhand smoke in their apartments.

Proposal Prompted Death Threats
City leaders were targets of strong opposition -- even death threats -- in what some suspected was a well-orchestrated campaign against the proposal.

NBC11 reporter Noelle Walker said three City Council members have received more e-mails about the proposed ban than any other issue ever. Belmont Mayor Coralin Feierbach told NBC11 her mailbox was filled with the hate-filled e-mails.

Upset citizens are comparing the proposed ban to Nazi rules.

"Following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler with your no public smoking ordinance ?," writes one opponent of the ban.

Many of the letters are littered with expletives.

"If America is lucky, someone will cut all of your *** throats," one letter said.

Another letter threatens, "Your friends will get a 747 loaded with fuel?"

The same letter ends with "Have a nice day."

Feierbach believes the strong opposition is part of an organized effort from the pro-smoking site speakeasyforum.com.

Part of the group's mission, according to their Web site, is to provide a forum for smokers to express concerns about, "? discrimination against smokers in all of the many forms that it takes these days."

Feierbach said she also received e-mails supporting the ban.

[Lasse]

Ban on smoking in private homes - I wonder how they're gonna enforce that.

I guess they'll use the friendly neighborhood SWAT team. Protect and serve, their lives on the line, your safety, blah blah.

[Puke]

I love this free country. 

[Raineyrocks]

I love this free country. 

Yup, it keeps getting freer every day!

[Puke]

I love this free country. 

Yup, it keeps getting freer every day!

What really gets me pissed off is that whenever stories like this are reported it is never mentioned that this is a removal of our liberties. It is so sad how blinded people are.

[Otosan]

It is  just a ploy to pit smokers against non-smokers.  To divert their attention away from more important things.   Divide and conquer.

The ole my neighbor is smoking in his house, well my neighbor did not mow his grass,  while the gov raises taxes so they can "protect" the neighbors from one and other.

[Lloyd Danforth]

Good to see you are alive George

[kola]

This will be a way to snatch kids from their parents.

If the parent is smoking in his/her home around the kids it will be child abuse.

Snatch.

Kola

[Raineyrocks]

This will be a way to snatch kids from their parents.

If the parent is smoking in his/her home around the kids it will be child abuse.

Snatch.

Kola

Yup, that's what I think too!  There's already been custody cases where the spouse has used the he/she smokes around the kids and the non smoker has won on a couple of occasions.  My mom and dad smoked around me, my sister, and brother, we lived.

[Pat McCotter]

My mom and dad smoked around me, my sister, and brother, we lived.

How Did We Survive?




Looking back, it's hard to believe that we've lived this long...

As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt!

We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians,army, cops robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or the BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing.

Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers.

We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pool, the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors.

I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge (amazing we aren't all brain dead from that), and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for about the next two weeks.

Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I just can't recall how bored we were without Computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, or Cable TV. I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot? He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of mercurochrome and then we got butt-whooped. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got butt-whooped there too... and then we got butt-whooped again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know lawn mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall a neighbor coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive????? 

[dan_sayers]

The issue was first brought to the attention of the Belmont City Council last July, when residents at a senior housing complex complained of complications arising from secondhand smoke in their apartments.

So if that housing complex wishes to impose such a regulation into their contracts, providing current contract holders a grace period of at least a year, that's their choice. You don't need a law for this.

The biggest burr in my saddle is the recent smoking ban in Ohio. Not because I smoke, because I don't. No, it's because I feel it is a sign that we've gone too far. See, the Ohio smoking ban started as an issue. Which means the people asked for the power to control their neighbors. In biology, this is called cancer.

More importantly, everything in this world that is allowed to pass alters the climate to allow things like it to pass more freely in the future. In terms of law, this just paves the way for more "legislation of morality."

AND if you want my opinion, smoking bans are unConstitutional. It violates business owners their Fourth Amendment right to be secure in their possession and now here, residents to be secure in their home. It violates all of the above's Fifth Amendment right against the loss of liberty without due process. It deprives all of the above of their Ninth Amendment right to the pursuit of happiness.

[Raineyrocks]

My mom and dad smoked around me, my sister, and brother, we lived.

How Did We Survive?




Looking back, it's hard to believe that we've lived this long...

As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt!

We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians,army, cops robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or the BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing.

Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers.

We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pool, the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors.

I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge (amazing we aren't all brain dead from that), and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for about the next two weeks.

Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I just can't recall how bored we were without Computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, or Cable TV. I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot? He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of mercurochrome and then we got butt-whooped. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got butt-whooped there too... and then we got butt-whooped again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know lawn mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall a neighbor coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive????? 

[Raineyrocks]

The issue was first brought to the attention of the Belmont City Council last July, when residents at a senior housing complex complained of complications arising from secondhand smoke in their apartments.

So if that housing complex wishes to impose such a regulation into their contracts, providing current contract holders a grace period of at least a year, that's their choice. You don't need a law for this.

The biggest burr in my saddle is the recent smoking ban in Ohio. Not because I smoke, because I don't. No, it's because I feel it is a sign that we've gone too far. See, the Ohio smoking ban started as an issue. Which means the people asked for the power to control their neighbors. In biology, this is called cancer.

More importantly, everything in this world that is allowed to pass alters the climate to allow things like it to pass more freely in the future. In terms of law, this just paves the way for more "legislation of morality."

AND if you want my opinion, smoking bans are unConstitutional. It violates business owners their Fourth Amendment right to be secure in their possession and now here, residents to be secure in their home. It violates all of the above's Fifth Amendment right against the loss of liberty without due process. It deprives all of the above of their Ninth Amendment right to the pursuit of happiness.

[J’raxis 270145]

Our baby cribs were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

Uh, lead actually is rather poisonous I remember reading an article where the author connected the fact that throughout the twentieth century, people have become so docile, apathetic, and government-dependent with the prevalence of lead in the environment. (Among other things, lead poisoning causes reduced cognitive functioning and lethargy, and pretty much anyone who lives near a road has slight amounts of lead in their system.)

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge ...

Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) ...

And now the writer just sounds like a grumping social conservative.

By the way, he should know that Pledge was written by a socialist. Pledges of allegiance are part of the state-worship that collectivists try to push on people.

[Spencer]

The issue was first brought to the attention of the Belmont City Council last July, when residents at a senior housing complex complained of complications arising from secondhand smoke in their apartments.

Ah, the media missing the sweet, smooth, unfiltered irony of elderly people complaining about the health risks of other elderly people smoking.  If smoking is supposed to kill everyone quickly, then how is it possible that a senior housing complex could have any smokers in it?