Retired city firefighter Andy Fardy writes if the City Council approves a proposed smoking ban in city parks, they must also extinguish charcoal grilling. From Fardy:
I would like to comment on the recent meeting of the ordinance committee in which they discussed a smoking ban in the parks. My question is why pass another law that will not be enforced and if it is do I want to tie up one of the few patrolmen we have in the streets with this nonsense? It’s like the curfew law. How is that going?
I am a former smoker who 10 months ago was found to have COPD. I have that disease and I have no one to blame but myself. I still feel we should not pass this law. If we do ban smoking, shouldn’t we ban the use of charcoal grills in the parks? I know that sounds silly but there is a health hazard in burning charcoal.
Dr. Michael Roizen MD in Internal Medicine states charcoal produces soot that irritates respiratory conditions such as Asthma and releases carcinogenic VOC Benzene so stay away from the smoke. He also states stay away from quick-start charcoal soaked with lighter fluids.
So I guess if we are going to protect the public in the outdoors from smoking then we have to do the same with charcoal grilling.
Andy, you may be correct, but also as a former smoker, it is a filthy, disgusting habit. People have died of lung cancer. People who smoke directly influence those who do not. A ban on on smoking would be a start. Writing about charcoal grilling can wait for another decade or two. The effects of cigarette smoke on millions of people including cancer and emphysema is enough. Cigarette smoking is no longer glamorous, sexy or cool. I took me a year to quit and if a guest needed to light up in my home, I would not protest. But honestly, anyone who has the balls to ask if you mind is not too bright. We would all be better off with this ordinance not to mention the litter of cigarette packs, cellophane wrappers and butts.
Steve, you should not ban one for health reasons and leave the other in place. Steve, a charcoal grill gives off a lot more smoke than a few people who are smoking. Just go in the parks in the summer and see the smoke generated by charcoal grilling fires. I am not in favor of banning either one.
While ACF blames himself for smoking, he does not seem willing to bear the cost of it. COPD is expensive and its costs add to federal expenses, increases the national debt and enables his blogging career to continue uninterrupted. He’s privatizing the blame but socializing the cost while complaining but tolerating a stranger’s barbecue! You want a free C.O.L.A. with those ribs?
(wink)
You are a heartless bastard. Why don’t you just place him on an ice flow and set him adrift at sea?
Even under adverse conditions, ACF is a strong swimmer with proven survival skills. He wouldn’t allow himself to be set adrift at sea.
You really are a moron and contribute nothing to this blog with your idiotic posts.
You really are an intellectual superstar and make major contributions to this blog with your superior posts.
Kiss my butt. I’ve discussed my smoking addiction here plenty of times. Is this really a major concern, smoking in parks? This is just more smoke and mirrors by fools who obviously know nothing or have nothing better to do or say. A man gets smoked with bullets to the head in front of children and we are talking about this.
When they can stop city workers from smoking in city vehicles and on city property, then they should worry about city parks. What a joke and waste of time and money. Clean up your own house first, MORONS!
The City doesn’t enforce the leash law in city parks. Wait ’til someone sues the city for negligence in lack of enforcement. I’m not barking up the wrong tree!
I posted this because I was wondering how far our politician are going to go in trying to regulate our lives. Sure it’s a popular thing to go after smoking and in almost all instances I agree with the campaign. But with so much out there worse than a ban on smoking, let’s take a small look at what we are dealing with. We have allowed a company to come in and disturb a dumping place where every toxin known to man is buried. We were on the cusp to vote for medicinal marijuana use. We have bus and trucks and diesel cars spewing toxins in the air far greater than cigarette smoke in parks. The list goes on and on. It’s time for government, especially this city’s government, to stop passing these feel-good laws that impede people’s right to a choice. What next, no coffee drinking in public?
Andy, everything you say is true, more or less. We clean our environment and bodies one step at a time. Your thought process is either we ban all issues that negatively contribute to our health and environment or none at all. Small steps Andy. Westport has banned plastic bags and the greenest and largest city in the State has plastic bags stuck in trees and blowing in the wind. One less butt is a good thing. When I started smoking, cigarettes were 55 cents a pack. When I quit, they were $1.25. Now they cost more than the minimum wage. We would all be better off as well as the smoker who might take advantage of the situation and quit.
Really? We are worried about secondhand smoke in a huge park on the seaside? What about our tax base? No economic development, willfully underfunded schools, crime, crippled city administration, commissions and boards. Right. Let’s go after those smokers in Seaside Park–they are clearly the root cause of all evil. Jeez …
Yuppers, Baffled. The smokers did it.
Those blasted smokers with all of the AB fraud they cause because of secondhand smoke. The driveways smokers make the city pay for. The jobs created for all the Finch-friendly cronies, smokers no doubt forced Finch’s hand. Those damned smokers. They probably killed the Kennedys.
You are probably right. 🙂
This law will not require lots of police enforcement. It is mainly a law that will be based on public pressure. Do you see police patrolling for litterers, or spitters or any number of quality of life violations? It is has been proven that secondhand smoke outdoors affects bystanders. It ends up as litter on the ground. It is a fire hazard. And 500 cities in the county have banned smoking in public parks, including NYC, Chicago and LA and 12 towns in CT, and it was not proposed by any government entity but by a Bridgeport citizen and concerned students.
There is only one reason to pass a law or ordinance no one plans on enforcing, and that is to have it available for discriminatory enforcement. Park or city police want to chase people out of the park, fine them for smoking. The chief spoke up about the curfew but he is not addressing this useless ordinance. But maybe he sees this value to it.
I can remember being separated by just a seat smoking/non-smoking on my earlier trips to Puerto Rico on airplanes.
In 1998, Connecticut became one of 46 beneficiaries of the multi-state, $246 billion Tobacco Settlement, a deal hammered out in backrooms between Attorneys General and the four major tobacco companies. For Connecticut, the settlement amounts to between $3.6 and $5 billion over the first 25 years of the in-perpetuity agreement. At the time, public health advocates and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who represented Connecticut in the lawsuit, expected tobacco prevention and treatment programs would receive much of these funds. Ten years later Blumenthal was calling the state’s handling of the tobacco revenue a moral and social failure.
Andy, you should know by now, where there is smoke, there is … not necessarily fire, if you are a politician … perhaps other subjects you would rather not touch, but you just have to do something if you want to look productive. So priorities to your constituents be damned, let’s go after smokers in the outdoors. I am not against such a ban, but as previous writers have noted, enforcement will not be even or perceived as fair. (Will the ‘linear park’ along St. Mary’s qualify as such a park? Or the park created from half a front lawn of the Annex downtown be deemed a park where City employees on occasion smoke?)
Priority issues to me might be why the City Council that passes ordinances has never caught on to the fact a purchasing ordinance passed more than a dozen years ago authorizing an annual purchasing report and triennial audits has not been tracked, reviewed and missed. (Was the Ordinance necessary? Why did it lapse into darkness? What could it tell us about companies getting City contracts with all the school construction and Mayoral campaigns getting contributions?)
Priorities might include studying how actual City excess revenues in a recent year exceeded actual extra expenses (above budget) by $3 Million but the budget only balanced by a little. Where did the money actually get spent? Would the answer be in that purchasing report that is never done?
Priorities might also include seeing how revaluation data (purchased by but not shared with voters) affects City land and building assets. Do we still have a Net Worth in the City? Or is the Net really worse? Time will tell.
What happens if someone is smoking in their car with the windows closed; does that count as a violation in the event of an ordinance?
John, one of the things councilwomen Brannelly should be looking into is the loss of approximately 70 police officers in the past year or so. We are now down to 370 police officers with many, many more ready to retire. What is the administration doing about this upcoming problem? You don’t just pull people off the street and make them cops. It takes 10 months of training and a lengthy period of working with another cop. Sure, we have 17 cops in training, that won’t put a dent in the shortage of cops. So councilwomen Brannelly, instead of worrying about smokers in the parks how about worrying about a police shortage and tons of overtime?
Being that Our University sits on Park property, will it become a non-smoking campus also, will it only be name-brand cigs or could you roll your own or relax with a pipe or cigar? Lastly, why now? Why did we wait so long? The sale of cigs is legal but the smoking of them not?