NYC outdoor smoking ban

bigpern23 · May 24, 2011

The Big Ragu said:

bigpern23 said:

Anyone who can't deal with someone smoking outside is just an obnoxious jerk. It's OUTSIDE. The smoke dissipates in .5 seconds. Fucking walk around the smoker in question. Seriously, if you're close enough to have to inhale it, you're walking too close to the smoker in the first place and you're probably invading their personal space.
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Have you ever gotten off at the 6 stop at 77th Street, for example, at around 7 p.m., and walked up the stairs behind a large swell of people moving slower than molasses, including, say a dozen who are lighting cigarettes before they are out of the station? You know what it is like to navigate the people stretched across the sidewalk, walking slowly and paying more attention to their cell phones than the people who want to pass them? Do you have any concept of what it is like to live in a place where there are often hundreds of people occupying only a square block?

I spend half my life speeding up my walk to get past people blowing smoke behind them. Try doing it in midtown Manhattan during the day (when half the world is standing on the sidewalk blowing smoke at everyone who walks by). Forget them, though. I don't walk too close to people and invade their personal space, the way you ridiculously imagine. I live in a place where public sidewalks are more crowded than perhaps you're used to.

You'd think it would be a particular reason to try to be self-aware. Not walking 10 across when people who walk faster than you want to pass. Not blowing smoke like a chimney behind you at the dozens of people who are heading in the same direction.

If being bothered by it makes me an obnoxious jerk, I am guilty. But when you throw the label at me, at least have a clue about what you're talking about. I (and everyone else who lives here) genuinely am in situations EVERY day in which I can't avoid other people's second-hand smoke -- and I do everything I can, including speeding up my walk, crossing streets, avoiding the areas they have congregated. ...
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I don't live in New York City, but I've been there I'd guess a minimum of a hundred times. I have family who live in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, so I go to the city often. Maybe the difference between living there and visiting there is drastic, I don't know, but I've never suffered the suffocating second-hand smoke you speak about.

If someone is lighting up before leaving the subway, yeah, that sucks, but my point wasn't that smoking in a confined space is OK. I was saying that when you're out in the open air, second-hand smoke is really nothing more than a momentary nuisance.

I've been all over the city and just never come close to experiencing what you describe.

It sounds like you're a non-smoker who is irritated by smoke and you exaggerate how bad the problem is in your everyday life.

Piotr Rasputin · May 24, 2011

Another unfair law by the nanny society. I don't understand why smoking outdoors is banned.

Smoking has a lot of positive benefits, for the smoker him (or her) self, the people around that person, and the environment.

The Big Ragu · May 24, 2011

Pern, I am not exaggerating anything. I never once used the word suffocating, as you just did, and I wasn't saying the entire city is being overrun by cigarette smoke. I'd actually guess on a per capita basis, less people in NYC smoke than in most parts of the country.

I still hate walking behind people who leave a trail of secondhand smoke for me to have to breathe, and that is WAY more common than apparently you believe. I deal with that every day. I am constantly having to speed up my walk to pass people who are smoking, so I don't have to breathe the health hazard they are leaving behind for everyone walking behind them.

I hate having to walk down a street when people are congregated outside blowing smoke at passerbys. It's disgusting. And it can be overwhelming.

And I hate it whenever I am in Central Park and someone is ruining things for me by smoking. Good riddance, to the extent they can enforce this.

The Big Ragu · May 24, 2011

Piotr Rasputin said:

Another unfair law by the nanny society. I don't understand why smoking outdoors is banned.

Smoking has a lot of positive benefits, for the smoker him (or her) self, the people around that person, and the environment.
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"Nanny society" implies this is designed to somehow protect people from themselves.

I think smoking is an incredibly stupid thing to do, but my wanting to see it banned from public places (including outdoors) isn't because I want to protect smokers from themselves.

I want to protect myself from them.

outofplace · May 24, 2011

MisterCreosote said:

Bob Cook said:

MisterCreosote said:

You all very well may have talked about this before, but New York City's new smoking ban went into effect yesterday:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/23/new.york.smoking.ban/index.html

I'm a smoker, and I really have no problem not being able to light up in restaurants, bars, etc. I don't have a problem with a ban at local beaches. I don't litter - I always make sure I'm near an ashtray and have one in my car so I'm not throwing butts out the window.

But at this point, it's getting ridiculous. In Central Park, for instance, why can't you put up a few "smoking stations" that are far enough off the beaten path that nonsmokers can avoid them?
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New York is hardly the first to ban smoking in parks. My Chicago 'burb, not exactly flaming liberal central, has such a ban, which is why during kids' baseball and softball games you see parents retiring to the curb across the street for a mid-game smoke.

The issue -- to me, anyway -- is the littering, though being next to a smoker at a park sucks, too. So many smokers who would otherwise never throw garbage on the ground seem to have no compunction doing that with their spent cigarettes.

Chicago has banned smoking at beaches and parks since 2007, after a one-day beach cleanup found hundreds of thousands of butts. By the way, the city also bans feeding birds, so there isn't more bird poop to foul beaches and force e coli-related closures.
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I absolutely agree with the littering aspect of it, as I said above. When the indoor ban started in Philadelphia, I went back for a weekend and saw a shitload of people smoking on the sidewalk and chucking butts into the street. I hate that too.

But why not set up stations? If not, then let's just make cigarettes illegal and be done beating around the bush.
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Now that last bit is a wonderful idea. Too bad it'll never happen, for the reasons BYM laid out.

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NYC outdoor smoking ban

bigpern23 Well-Known Member

Piotr Rasputin New Member

The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

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outofplace Well-Known Member

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NYC outdoor smoking ban

bigpern23 Well-Known Member

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The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

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outofplace Well-Known Member

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