Comments

1
Or smokers could stop poisoning their bodies and mine.
3
These letters bring up a good point about disproportionate enforcement. However all that matters in the end is what we define the intended uses of a public park to be and whether or not cigarette smoke gets in the way.
4
Going to a new comment thread on this site now is like showing up to a party and finding a turd floating in the punchbowl. May as well just walk out at that point.
5
By this logic open containers and drunkenness should be legal in all parks too because, you know plenty of homeless people drink.
6
What @2 & @5 said.
7
I'd be fine with dropping the ban on smoking if the penalty for throwing a butt on the ground could be summary execution.
8
if its a legal activity (and tobacco smoking is), there should be a place where it is legal to do said activity. I support this and I don't smoke tobacco.

@1: a bum smoking in the park isn't poisoning your body all that much. for 2nd hand smoke damage, you really need to be in an enclosed space with smokers, and usually for years on end, which virtually no one in WA state is these days.
9
@8:

Plenty of legal activities are regulated. And there are plenty of legal places to smoke tobacco even if it is banned from parks.
10
On the one hand, I agree with disproportionate enforcement.

On the other hand, Teletubby Hill gets absolutely disgusting with cigarette butts by July. I'm sure other parks are the same.
11
"However all that matters in the end is what we define the intended uses of a public park to be and whether or not cigarette smoke gets in the way."

For the win.

Aren't cigarettes expensive? I'm puzzled how homeless people would be smoking that much. (Not a snark - I really don't get it.)

As someone who cleans who uses (and cleans) one part of Green Lake every single time I go there, I would appreciate the ban because of the cigarette butts. I don't pick them up unless I have a tissue to pick them up. And there are a LOT of them. (But I would also like people who go to the park after hours to quit smashing their liquor/beer bottles as well. That, too, is no fun to pick up.)
12
People made the same sort of idiotic arguments for the indoor ban. "Oh, you're punishing the working poor and the working class who smoke!" "Your publishing musicians! Nobody will go and see live music if they can't smoke!" On and on went these stupid fucking arguments.

They were stupid arguments then and they are stupid arguments now.

And just like when the indoor ban was proposed a bunch of whiners freaked out (including the Stranger if I recall correctly). And then five years later nobody remembers what fuss was and in fact everything is way better since the ban.

Same thing is going to happen if and when this parks ban passes.

In five years nobody, including the poor and homeless, will remember what the fuss was about.

Among the plethora of other reasons this ban should be approves is that allowing smoking in our publicly funded parks is basically a tax payer endorsement and subsidy of the most evil corporations on the planet - the tobacco companies.

You all go ape shit over Shell Oil. But apparently RJR Reynolds is just fine. Tobacco companies usurp democracy all over the world, they pollutes the planet and ravage ecosystems and whose product kill millions of people every year - more than Shell Oil will in fifty years - that just a-okay.
13
If smokers had the courtesy to properly dispose of their butts, then I wouldn't mind terribly if they smoked in parks or outside. I don't know why portable ashtrays aren't a thing, but the Japanese use them to great effect.

To me, banning smoking prevents a lot of litter, which is especially a problem with young children (e.g. 1 year olds) picking things off the ground.

Maybe the city needs to supply vapor cigarettes to the homeless, as a matter of public health?
14
Couple of questions I'd like answered --

1. Where are the studies that document the health risks created by outdoor exposure to tobacco smoke?

2. How many unsolicited complaints has the City of Seattle received about smoking in city parks?

Let's make decisions based on evidence, not merely on emotions.
15
@8 There ARE places where you can legally smoke cigarettes. Preventing people from smoking in parks does not ban them from smoking altogether.
16
Since smoking most definitely is a lifestyle choice, why aren't the fundies concentrating on programs to pray away the smoke? They'd have a much better success rate than messing with, say, teh gay.
17
Dang, I miss living in Seattle. Such trite issues to worry about. I miss the old days of silly stress over nothing. Wake me up when you have some serious issues to discuss.
18
How do the homeless smoke?
Panhandling, buying the cheapest rolling tobacco available, bumming smokes, picking up half smoked cigs from ashtrays and off the ground.
In your replies, spare us your elitest responses. We are talking about people who are mostly unhireable here. Lets stop picking on them like they're the real problem around here.
19
I'm fine with the homeless hanging out in parks so long as they're not bothering other park-goers (where else are they going to be, right?), but allowing smoking in parks is a bad idea. Hey, want to help the disadvantaged poor who don't have a home to smoke in? Offer them free smoking-cessation counseling and nicotine patches or similar so they're no longer prey to an addiction they probably can't afford.
Smoking means butts littering the ground and a filthy stench in the air.
20
You are right, this potential new law would be disproportionately enforced against one group, smokers.

Please wait...

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