Clean Air... You Bet

A San Francisco suburb, Belmont, is considering a total ban on smoking anywhere in their city except in single unit detached homes in their fair city by the bay.

Well and good, one supposes, but a few questions arise.

Smokers who already live in the area... will they be grandfathered in and excluded from the ordinance? After all, when they moved there, smoking was legal, so if the city decides to now outlaw smoking--the national practice of using a legal, federally supported product--will they compensate the smokers they are forcing their new rules on? Will the city buy--at fair market prices--the businesses, townhouses and condos presently owned by smokers? Will they pay for the "quit smoking" programs that Belmont smokers will need to kick the habit in order to stay legal?

I'm not a smoker, no one in my family is. But these people who want to ban smoking for the good of my health worry me, special-interest groups who create "laws" without consideration of the consequences, particularily the legal ones.

One Belmont resident, a 51 year-old woman with asthma, says:

"We have a right to breathe clean air. I think it's a great ordinance …"

Give me a break. That's the bay area they're talking about. They haven't had a whiff of clean air since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

I live a ways outside the Dallas/Fort Worth megaplex in the wide open spaces. When my wife and I drive into the city, smells of all manner assault our nostrils. Garbage, automobile exhaust, chemicals, dog poo, you name it, it's there. Same with the Bay area, I've been there many times.

The people who live in areas like that become accustomed to it all and notice nothing. That's the way our noses work. Get away from it for awhile--come back--and then you'll smell it all. That's the real deal with second-hand smoke, there 's so little of it by comparision, your nose notices it immeadiately, so it gets all the bad press.

I'd be willing to bet that Belmont's number one health problem with unclean air is not second hand cigarette smoke. All they need to do is walk over to the nearest freeway, take a take a big sniff and discover where their clean air problems really lie.