RYAN BAKKEN: Smoking ban will broaden in Grand Forks parks
December 8, 2012 at 6:00 pm in Grand Forks Herald
North Dakota’s public smoking ban doesn’t just cover the indoors. It also rules over the soccer fields and baseball diamonds in our rectangular slice of heaven. Continue Reading
After all this they will need to complete the transition by passing a “No bodily gas emissions in public ” standards. Golfers…Get ready to add corks and surgical masks to your golf bags…..Never leave home without them
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When are the people in North Dakota going to realize that what you vote for is not what you’re going to get. Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Somehow the city thinks a vote on one thing gives them the mandate to change it completely.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Your freedom to express yourself unhindered ends at your front door & my openings to the outside world. Your freedom to be you ends when it infringes upon me. It really is that simple.
It would have never crossed my mind to smoke in the bleachers or on the sidelines. I smoked for 20 years. During most of hat time it was illegal to smoke indoors in the states I lived in. It was also illegal at sporting events.
You went to the smoking area & hung out with the other “bad” people. You had commradrie.
My favorite was the smoking area at University Medical Center in Tucson. It was outdoors looking into the treadmills in the Wellness Center. Irony at its best.
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Does anyone remember the waiting rooms in the Obstetrics section where expectant fathers would smoke?
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My first job in healthcare was as a nursing assistant on an ortho floor when I was 16 (circa 1978). You could smoke in the med room 100% of the time and at the nurses station (in front of God and everybody) after 2100. Patient’s could smoke in their rooms provided oxygen was not in use and they were mentally capable. Most went to the end of the hall to the smoking area.
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“She’d like to go even a step further, making all park district property — indoors and outdoors — tobacco-free, meaning it also would include smokeless tobacco.”
This shows the true nature of most anti-smoking advocates. It’s not really about protecting non-smokers from second hand smoke. That just gives them cover for their true agenda; to control people’s behavior and get everyone to quit every form of tobacco use.
Once they feel they’ve done all they can do to make smokers lives miserable, smokeless tobacco users will be fully in their sights.
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Like alcohol, I have no problem with you using. What I do have a problem with is me paying your healthcare bill. There is an easy way around this that many companies employ: you get tested at least once a year. If you have nicotine in your system your insurance rates are 1.5-2.0 times higher than the non user.
This is fair, equitable, and respects everyone’s lifestyle choices. You are free to use, but you will pay for it.
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Following that rationale, let’s get of the “click it or ticket” nonsense, whose only purpose is to fill government coffers, and have insurance companies refuse to cover anyone not using a seatbelt.
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Your just being a crumudgeon again Gene. Personal responsibility is out of vogue, but never out of style.
As for insurance companies not paying up: the insurance company for the ambulance company I used to work for would not pay if you were not wearing a seatbelt. For that reason not buckling up would get you fired; no warning, no three strikes your out. You could steal narcotics & keep your job, but God forbid you get caught without a seat belt.
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@ flyingnurse:
So you think testing for nicotine, and then charging twice the “normal” health insurance rate for people who test positive “is fair, equitable, and respects everyone’s lifestyle choices.” Since I use chewing tobacco, does that automatically mean I am twice as likely to get sick as you are? There haven’t been many studies done on smokeless, but most of the ones that have been done show a much lower risk than smoking.
So you say I should pay double for my health insurance; Am I more likely to get sick than someone who abuses alcohol? Or eats too much salt…or sugar…or fat? How about people who skydive? How about auto mechanics, since they spend their days with their hands covered in oils and other chemicals that are “Known to the State of California to be carcinogens”?
Here’s what’s really going on; there are way more non-smokers than smokers, so they win. Plain and simple. Most people wouldn’t really care either way, except that they remember that one time when an inconsiderate smoker blew smoke in their face. Add that to the scare tactics constantly thrown in our faces by the health fanatics, and you end up with anti-smoking laws.
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So FN – If a law were passed that you had to dress in a rubber suit upon leaving the hospital every day so that you would not expose anyone to the pathogens that you come in contact with every day you’d be ok with that?
Ultimately that is what you are saying. You chose to be a nurse, why should my family and I be exposed to the virulent forms of streptococcus or god knows what else that you will leave on your shopping cart handles. And don’t tell me you wash your hands. Studies have been done that prove that nurses and doctors are the worst when it comes to cross contamination.
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Mike: using tobacco in any form significantly increases your health risk. Does chewing increase your risk as much as smoking: no. Do people who chew have a significantly higher rate of heart disease & certain cancers: yes.
If you chew you will cost your insurance company more over the course of your lifetime. Because of that you should pay more.
The same can & is being said about obesity. Most insurance will pay for gastric bypass because it saves money in the long run. The complications of obesity cost more than the surgery. Look to be charged more in premiums if you are overweight or obese.
It makes sense. If you do not have any accidents you get a good driver discount. If I do not smoke, work out regularly, eat well, am not obese, and don’t drink alcohol why should my insurance cost as much as someone who does?
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Mav: your argument is emotionally satisfying but false. I did not give you the bad bug, you gave it to me.
Remember the brouhaha over TB. Hospitals are not nice places, but when it comes to public health they are not that dangerous. If you are worried about catching something: do not fly commercial airliners & do not stand in line at Hugo’s & Walmart.
It is the general public who is contagious; not me.
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@FN really because statistics and research say that you are wrong. While people want to believe that hospitals are these extremely clean places, again studies prove you wrong. Also while the general public may be the ones bringing the bug into the building, you become the general public as soon as you leave the door and are just as much a carrier as anyone else.. even more so depending on the department in which you work. You forget that I have been through nursing training (4 years). I just chose not to be the doctors scape goat.
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Has anyone considered that smoking outside in a park might be better for one’s health than smoking indoors? And that there’s no way that someone over 20′ away is going to breathe in second-hand smoke?
Park District Commissioner is an office I’ve never really been interested in researching and voting on, until now.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I’m really sensitive to smoke so I might, but then it most likely wouldn’t bother me because I still get stronger hits around doors at truck stops. So to answer your question there would be those who might be bothered. I think it’s an overkill myself
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Gay sex caused the spread of aids but can’t outlaw or legislate that
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Then asgain some say it was the neocons around Regan who created it and infected the gays to lesson the numbers…..Or that too could be dumb ass crap….
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Stay on topic, please, everyone–that’s the smoking ban.
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How is talking about something else that causes thousands of deaths and personal choice off topic? Where do you want to draw the line?
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And before somebody comes back with second hand smoke don’t forget blood transfusions and unprotected sex as ways this disease is spread. You might have a partner but that doesn’t he/she doesn’t have other partners.
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While that may have been true in the very early transmission of AIDS, currently more people worldwide are infected with the virus who are either heterosexual or are born with it. Your larger point is, and let me paraphrase, that we should not bother with controlling any diseases we are capable of controlling unless ALL diseases are addressed simultaneously. This is what I call a bad argument.
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None: how do you make it through life being wrong all the time? How do you hold a job? I certainly hope your children do not ask for your help with their homework. Poor kids would never pass.
HIV/AIDS is caused by a virus. Sex is the route of transmission.
Sex does not cause AIDS.
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My bad: apologies to None. I just re read his initial post. He said sex causes the spread of AIDS. He is correct.
When I initially read it I read “sex causes AIDS.”
My bad.
PS: I omitted gay because there is nothing intrinsic about homosexual acts that leads to HIV transmission. How you choose to exchange body fluids is up to you.
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This is bad news for the people that smoke pot in Lincoln Park while playing Frisbee golf. I’ve seen it more than once while out for a walk. I get a chuckle out of watching them try to hide their activity when a car drives through.
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If Gershman can syphon off taxpayer’s money to build a skateboard park, the pot will travel there.
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Many ways to induldge the weed besides smoking….Brownies and/or tea anyone?
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Your family’s recipes, I would imagine, handed down from generation to generation.
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You cannot regulate all of the great outdoors. Or more importantly waste time enforcing it.
The kids will find a tree to hide. Behind in between rounds, just like we did.
The ban is for common sense times when smoking is not appropriate.
BTW a friend of mine who is a home health nurse was telling me about this cool old lady who is on her last leg who uses marijuana so she can use less narcotics (side effects make her miserable).
A family member “acquires” the drug for her & brings it up. I guess grandma can no longer write because of tremors but can roll a world class blunt with no problem.
Probably half of the people with medical marijuana cards do not deserve them. That does not bug me. Half of the people with a prescription for Oxycodone after spraining their ankle don’t need them either.
If medical marijuana makes one person like grandma’s last few months better; then it is worth it.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I wish we could leave smokers alone in the outdoors. I have to say, though, that it’s so nice to go to bars, fund raisers, Ducks Unlimited, Deer Hunters fund raisers and not be exposed to smoke. North Dakota lawmakers are slow on the uptake, but smoke-free living has actually come to North Dakota in spite of the lawmakers. Please leave our outdoor smokers alone. Charge them a little more for health insurance, but, otherwise, lay off!! Oh, one more thing….I really miss t.j. and look forward to getting an update on their situation. I’m hoping for good news.
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She hangs out on the Duluth paper blog
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What’s your definition of a ‘concern troll’…?
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You have said some very unkind things in the past but this tops them all.
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I’m still the king of unkind things
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The smokers stink up my clothes. How would they like it if I brought a can of smelly room deodorizer and spray their clothes with it?
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The older I get the more sensitive I get to smelling smoke from smokers clothes. Even outside and from several feet. The diference is that I don’t get quite as bothered by it now days because that stuff just doesn’t seem to linger the older I get. I walk outside some truck stops and they’re smoking at the door, and in some states they don’t have no smoking laws so they often do a very pitiful job of creating a no smoking section which is a group of tables set next to the smoking section…..You get the fortune of smoking without having to light up….See…No Smoking section.
When I was younger I thought of creating an areosal with an aroma that smelled something like hangover gas if you’d been eating chilie with a lot of spice or Brats with the works and a lot of beer. I figured I’d make a fortune selling it as “Smokers Repellant.” I don’t know if I could have found the right formula, but I have the feeling it would have been a rags to riches to even worse rags story if I had….I have the feeling that somehow the first shooting of someone who used it would somehow lead back to the person who sold the repellant…
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