Oh, thank GOD.
May. 25th, 2007 05:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosThey repealed the smoking ban in Scranton.
I'm not a smoker, but I don't give a damn if anybody else smokes near me. And in a bar I kind of expect to walk right into a cloud of smoke. You want to smoke, I don't care. I get bothered, my legs work and I can walk away.
A while ago the Scranton city council passed a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants in the city limits. The majority opinion was that it was dumb and ill-conceived, the most important reason being because it was costing bars lots of money in lost revenue. The way the area is structured means all you had to do was drive five more minutes in any direction and you'd find a bar in a smaller town outside Scranton where you could smoke.
It's not so much the ban that bothered me and a lot of other people -- it was how it came to be. Apparently a local high school class was learning about how laws are passed and their teacher encouraged a group of them to make up a law and take it to a city council meeting to try and get it passed. When they took it there the council thought it was so fabulous they just passed the damn thing. No warning, no announcement to the community that there'd be a vote on it so they could get their thoughts heard -- nothing. Just passed it.
Not that I think the kids did a bad thing, really. I'm sure they didn't think it would just get passed and I'm positive they didn't think about what a ban like that would do the businesses in Scranton.
But I did wince when they had a big picture of them in the newspaper soon after the ban was passed. Way to identify them to a pissed-off city full of smokers, Times-Tribune. *eye roll*
Stupid city. *pokes it with a stick*
I'm not a smoker, but I don't give a damn if anybody else smokes near me. And in a bar I kind of expect to walk right into a cloud of smoke. You want to smoke, I don't care. I get bothered, my legs work and I can walk away.
A while ago the Scranton city council passed a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants in the city limits. The majority opinion was that it was dumb and ill-conceived, the most important reason being because it was costing bars lots of money in lost revenue. The way the area is structured means all you had to do was drive five more minutes in any direction and you'd find a bar in a smaller town outside Scranton where you could smoke.
It's not so much the ban that bothered me and a lot of other people -- it was how it came to be. Apparently a local high school class was learning about how laws are passed and their teacher encouraged a group of them to make up a law and take it to a city council meeting to try and get it passed. When they took it there the council thought it was so fabulous they just passed the damn thing. No warning, no announcement to the community that there'd be a vote on it so they could get their thoughts heard -- nothing. Just passed it.
Not that I think the kids did a bad thing, really. I'm sure they didn't think it would just get passed and I'm positive they didn't think about what a ban like that would do the businesses in Scranton.
But I did wince when they had a big picture of them in the newspaper soon after the ban was passed. Way to identify them to a pissed-off city full of smokers, Times-Tribune. *eye roll*
Stupid city. *pokes it with a stick*
