Results tagged “smokingban”

Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg stepped back from a plan to make smoking in public parks and beaches illegal, cautioning that the proposal would stop short of completely outlawing smoking on Parks Department property. Bloomberg boasted at a press conference, "Nobody is more of a believer in saving lives and stopping smoking. In fact, we already ban smoking, for example, in playgrounds." However! "There's also the practical aspect of how we can enforce it. Our Police Department has enough to do. They can't be going around giving tickets." Not with all those photographers and superheroes on the loose, anyway. The mayor explained that the ban would not cover entire parks, only select areas where large crowds might gather. He also acknowledged that if you, the embattled smoker, are "sitting in the middle of Sheep Meadow and you’re the only one there, are you doing any damage to anybody other than killing yourself? Probably not." At the same time, Bloomberg reaffirmed his tough anti-smoking stance: "Make no mistake about it. This city is not walking away from our commitment to make it as difficult and as expensive to smoke as we possibly can." So smoke 'em while you can still (barely) afford 'em.

One day after city health commissioner Dr. Thomas A. Farley revealed his intention to expand the city's smoking ban to parks and beaches, something terrifying happened: We woke up this morning to find ourselves in complete agreement with conservative NY Post demagogue Andrea Peyser. Obviously, this means that we were wrong in supporting the ban and ought to start smoking Lucky Strikes at once. Peyser opines:

Visiting the beach or the park should no longer require an oxygen mask. If one wants to smoke, there are places to freely enjoy that activity. Like China... The idea won't sit well with the pathologically addicted few who continue to force innocent citizens to unwillingly breathe their poisons. But this is a scenario whose time has come... Few things are more aggravating and disgusting than being forced to swallow fumes emitted by a mother, father, grandpa or stalker whose bond with nicotine prevents them from stepping outside the city's precious, toddler-filled recreation areas in order to slowly kill themselves.

First they came for the smokers in bars and restaurants, and we said nothing—we simply enjoyed breathing air without carcinogens. Now the Mayor is coming for the smokers on park benches and beach towels, and we're still saying nothing! As part of an ambitious new public health initiative, city health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced that the Bloomberg administration would seek to ban smoking in all city parks and beaches. Public health advocates like Dr. David A. Kessler are elated; he tells City Room, "The issues with secondhand smoke are very real and the majority of the population today doesn’t want to be breathing in tobacco smoke, whether indoors or outdoors." Farley says the proposal to proscribe cigs may require the approval of the City Council, and health department spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti tells Bloomberg News that officials haven’t yet devised "a specific strategy for reducing smoking in parks." But if cops can be as militant about busting smokers as they are ticketing people for public drinking, we're sure this'll be a big cash crop for the city.

While smoking is already banned inside hospitals, the NY City Council is considering a bill that would prohibit puffing away outside hospital entrances and on hospital grounds. The AP reports, "The measure seeks to ban smoking on hospital property and within 15 feet of any hospital entrance or exit. It would apply to public and private hospitals, as well as residential health care facilities and diagnostic and treatment centers." However, if the bill passes, those 15 feet from hospital grounds should get some ashtrays ready: When smoking was banned on a Buffalo health facility's campus, the smokers moved across the street—and in front of residential houses. One smoker admitted he was going to throw his cigarette butt in the street; when a TV station reporter asked, "Why can't you throw butt in garbage can?" the smoker answered, "I will. I didn't think of that."

After passing a bill (back in April) forcing casino gaming floors in Atlantic City to go smoke-free earlier starting October 15, the Atlantic City City Council voted 5-4 to delay the ban. Why? The Press of Atlantic City reports the five members wanted "to help ease a decline in casino revenue, a move industry executives say could prevent further employee layoffs." However, one person yelled, "You gave us a death sentence!" and some union members heckled a union leader who supported the delay. And one man who worked at the Tropicana for 26 years before being laid off last year and blames his lung cancer on secondhand smoke from the job said, "It will never be a good time for (the casinos). It will come back next year and it will be the same story."

Image credit: Nature abhors a vacuum

href="http://londonist.com/2008/01/6_years_on_amne.php">Amnesty International bringing Guantanamo Bay to the American embassy to raise the profile of the continuing campaign to close the detention center.

According to The New York City Department of Health, New Yorkers have a longer shelf life than those in the rest of the country. NY Mag has some astounding stats including: a New Yorker born in 2004 can now expect to live 78.6 years, which may not sound that long but it's in fact nine months longer than the average American. Note that the average gets brought down anytime a young person dies, which seems to happen all too often around here. Still, since 1990 New Yorkers have added 6.2 years to their lives while the average American has only added 2.5!

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a picture displaying the woes of cruising in a tacky limo on the streets of San Francisco.

We've heard of paintings getting CT scans, but how about $100K cleanings? Maxfield Parrish's 25-foot King Cole mural, owned by the St. Regis Hotel, just got restored to its original splendor at that exact price. The $12M painting hadn't been cleaned in 40 years, and since there wasn't a smoking ban for most of that time, and the painting hung in the hotel bar - the appearance suffered. This cleaning was one of the last parts of a $35 million refurbishment of the hotel.

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to!

Between fake terrorist alerts and scandals big and small, this just might be the Best Best of the -ists ever. We're exhausted just thinking about it.

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost.

This week's New York cover story is about Mayor Bloomberg's presidential possibilities. It's a great look at how far the Mayor has come from the dog days of 2003 when his approval ratings were in the 20-30 point range and how, somehow, many New Yorkers seem to like Mike.

It’s the Tuesday after Labor Day, and Bloomberg and I are having lunch (though his idea of lunch is coffee and a slice of incinerated toast) at a diner in Tribeca. Bloomberg is dressed in a charcoal suit, a pink pin-striped shirt, and a pale-blue tie patterned with tiny yellow snails. He’s telling me a story about what a fabulous time he had the day before at the West Indian–American Day parade in Brooklyn—but the real subject is the affection, nay the devotion, the city has come to feel for him.

Continue reading "Bloomberg in 2008 Would Be a Sane Perot"

Yesterday the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene held a public hearing about banning trans fats in city restaurants. Overall, most people said it was a good thing, with health and diet experts noting the "historic nature of these hearings" and that 22% of heart-related deaths are due to trans fats consumption.

Let's see, people who hate the Mayor: Besides conservative Republicans and super left Democrats, smokers who hate him for the smoking ban and public school students who hate him for the cell phone ban. But now Mayor Bloomberg could lose any affection for that 18 years-20 years and 364 days age group if the city does raise the cigarette purchase age to 21. The current legal age to buy cigarettes is 18, but the city really wants to stop smoking. And though the city has cracked down establishments that sell cigarettes, not all store owners do pay attention to the age of purchasers. So, those kids may legally be adults, but they can't buy smokes. Or drinks either.

No way, man. No way is the government going to tell me what to do, man. No square in a tie is going to tell me how to live my life. Oh. It’s for my own good? Oh, ok.

One of the Health Department's big initiatives has been to help New Yorkers quit smoking, and it's been working, especially with the smoking ban and the cigarette tax. However, after looking at numbers that reflect a slight rise in smokers between 2004 and 2005, the Department of Health would like another cigarette tax to hit its goal of 250,000 more former smokers. Health Commissioner Tom Friedan said, "It is now more critical than ever that New York State grant New York City the authority to raise the city's tobacco tax." To the tune of 50 cents, smokies! But don't fret too soon - amNew York says that it's unlikely that Albany will allow the tax. amNY also recalls a quote from Representative Charles Rangel: "If a guy makes a million dollars and a guy makes $10,000 they pay the same taxes on cigarettes... It is regressive."

Smoke Gets in Your Clothes

Last November, Gothamist fell in love with the idea of congestion pricing for the city. The Partnership for New York City has been investigating the opportunity to make the city less crowded with cars - or if it is crowded with cars, then drivers will have to pay. However, there is quite a bit of opposition to the plan, and with the Mayor saying that the city would investigate using congestion pricing to relieve city traffic, people freaked out. Mayor had to backtrack a little, by saying, "The real world is, not everybody is going to use mass transit. I think it's relatively impractical to take a whole bunch of city streets and say we're just not going to allow cars on them." But congestion pricing doesn't necessarily have to be about eliminating streets for drivers - it's about making people weigh whether or not they really want to use their cars (we suspect that people who can afford to pay for their SUV's gas will pay to drive around). The NY Times reported that the Queens Chamber of Commerce released a report that basically said congestion pricing would lead to a $1.9 billion drop in revenue daily, but pro-congestion pricing groups say the report (which was sponsored by - you guessed it - owners of parking garages) doesn't factor in the productivity lost to traffic. Gothamist doubts that Mayor Bloomberg will allow a full-up congestion pricing plan for the city, but given his somewhat iconoclastic ways (hello, noise ban; hello, smoking ban), he might be ready to do something dramatic with city traffic.

While it's not completely official (a vote needs to take place), the City Council has selected Christine Quinn, the Democratic Manhattan member who represents Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and Clinton, to be the new speaker. She secured her bid when the powerful Queens city council bloc decided to support her instead of Brooklyn member Bill deBlasio. Quinn will be the first female city council speaker, as well the first openly gay speaker, and Gothamist enjoyed news stations showing footage of her City Hall protest against the mayor's lack of work for gay rights - Quinn had a stack of waffles (or pancakes) and maple syrup, making us wonder if the secret cache of City Council maple syrup is what caused the smell. Quinn has supported workers benefits, better healthcare and gay rights, as well as being a loud opponent of the West Side Stadium. She also backed the smoking ban.

More than two years after New York City instituted the smoking ban, and hot on the heels of the announcement that midwestern bastion of second-hand smoke Chicago was following suit with its own ban, comes a new poll commissioned by the State Health Department that says that 75.5 percent of New Yorkers (from a 2,000 person sample) would favor even banning smoking in front of building entrances.

And in case the cover of the Arts and Leisure section left any doubts, "with one caveat in mind," The New York Times enthusiastically endorses "Michael Bloomberg for mayor."

Ashlee Simpson

LAist editor Jason Toney was in town, and he captured this photograph of one of the city's fixtures. And some thoughtful passer-by made sure the bloated rat wouldn't be lonely on the street until the Department of Sanitation swept him up. Even though Gothamist is not always excited to see a rat, we have to say this is a pretty great, if gross, picture.

Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, best known to Gothamist as the Assemblyman who wants school kids' weights to be graded, is looking to ban smoking from NYC housing projects. Okay, it's really just a measure to make 50% of housing projects smoke-free, but the goal would be to make housing projects completely smoke-free by 2010. Ortiz's argument is that hotels have smoking and non-smoking rooms, and "housing complexes are not so much different than hotels." Gothamist understands the issues of smoke smells coming from neighboring apartments, and, yes, secondhand smoke is a health issue, but we worry that this would start a trend towards banning, oh, pungent cooking from apartments or slightly loud but not that loud music or the occasional dog barks and arguments. It seems more feasible for smokers to pay a deposit for a filter or deionizer, but how would a smoking ban in a residence even be enforced? The Post interviewed some housing complex tenants, who hate the idea of this bill, saying, "If you don't want people to smoke, then make cigarette sales against the law" (watch what you wish for!) and classic "Stop the drugs out here before you stop the smoking."

In a blow to the members of The Players club, a judge ruled that New York City's smoking ban also applies to their exclusive club. The club, founded in 1888 by Edwin Booth (John Wilkes' brother), sued in 2003 on the basis that the law was unconstitutional. Judge Victor Marrero cited an earlier decision of his, "individuals have no 'fundamental' right to smoke tobacco." Hmm...next thing you know, Marrero might be taking all our guns away! We jest, we jest.

The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will give the first 45,000 callers to 311 free nicotine patches, as part of a campaign to help New Yorkers stop smoking. The Daily News says the Pfizer-donated kit includes "a six-week course of nicotine patches, instructions, educational information and online support." Health Commissioner Thomas Friedan says the 2003 free-nicotine-patch program helped 11,000 New Yorkers quit smoking, but Gothamist isn't sure if there's follow-up after that; he hopes this year's program will help at least 5,000 to quit. Of course, many know that our Mayor has aggressively put smokers in the corner with the smoking ban at bars and restaurants. If anyone does call and get the kit, let us know!