WESTMINSTER, Mass. (AP) – A proposal that would have made the town the first in the nation to ban all tobacco sales has gone up in smoke.
Westminster’s board of health voted 2-1 to drop the proposal at its regular meeting on Wednesday, a week after rowdy opposition led board members to end a public hearing early.
Board members Ed Simoncini and Peter Munro voted to kill the proposal. Board chairwoman Andrea Crete voted to keep it under consideration.
The board had initially said the ban would help keep a variety of tobacco products from young people, but businesses strongly opposed it.
First up, a “Tobacco-Free Town” won’t do crap. There are Dry Towns all over the country, including Massachusetts, and it does little but inconvenience the drinkers. Hell I’m sipping a Martini right now, and not a drop of this fine beverage was purchased in Massachusetts. There’s a liquor store right up the street, but the prices are high enough that I generally just swing by and buy my booze in New Hampshire whenever I get the chance. A
Of course I get a little aggravated that they include e-cigarettes in their “Tobacco Products” list. One is a little more semantic, in that there is NOTHING in an e-cig that comes from a tobacco field. The more serious concern comes from the nanny-staters crusade against e-cigs, and their attempts to consider them exactly the same as conventional tobacco products. I’ve lost a BUNCH of relatives to cigarette smoking, have and had many who’s lives were harmed from side-effects of tobacco use. I also know lots of people who currently smoke and know that if they don’t quit their health too is at serious risk. Because of that, I see the e-cigarette as one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century because it has the best modes of nicotine replacement and virtually no known side effects. Now some negative health effects may be discovered, but certainly it can be said that whatever negative effects that can be found will be SIGNIFICANTLY less than inhaling lungfulls of smoke.
The idea this would stop kids from smoking is laughable. It is illegal for kids to smoke. It is illegal for kids to buy smokes. It is illegal to furnish tobacco products or nicotine to minors.
Oh and it’s illegal to use recreational drugs. How do kids get their pot or coke? They have it smuggled in illegally and buy it. Substitute tobacco and you have the futility of this argument.
Now for the amusing part. This town was trying to ban tobacco products in a state where it is not a criminal offense to smoke marijuana, and marijuana can be prescribed as “Medicine”.
That is some full-blown “Progressive Logic” right there!
Either way, it’s dead, and I’m fine with that!
I was hoping they would pass it to see what they were going to do about med MJ…LOL