The city's Regulated Industries Division and the Health Department joined forces to bust Neighbors Lounge this week for at least seven violations of of the city's smoking ordinance.
Undercover officers routinely check establishments for various violations, acting director of the Neighborhood and Community
Services Department David Park tells The Pitch, and they witnessed people lighting up three times at the bar at 9025 East 35th Street, not far from the Truman Sports Complex. Park says Health Department agents saw puffing patrons an additional four times.
After being given a warning for the first offense, and tickets for the next three, Park says it was time for Regulated Industries to take harsher action. The bar agreed to serve two days of the suspension, from 6 a.m. July 19 through 1:30 a.m. July 21. Neighbors won't have to close the remaining eight days as long as it doesn't get busted in the next year.
When owner Patricia Holler was confronted with the evidence, she said she thought her staff was doing better and getting her clientele to comply, says Gary Majors, manager of Regulated Industries.
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I don't believe in it either but is it fair that Neighbors takes business from the other bars on 40 highway that obey the laws..there are buzzers on the doors those can work just so long...the altoid cans that were handed out to the smokers...Smoking will not stop at that bar.
Keep on spamming, laprade!
Is despoiling innocent message boards with garbage your full-time job?
""It's pretty clear: Don't let the customers smoke. "
It should be pretty clear you have no justifiable right to stop them. Smoking is legal, ever since prohibition was repealed.
Its pretty clear the Nanny Nation Fascists have arrived. Call it Public Health or protecting the children or anything you like in the funny papers. A sign on the door providing choices with personal autonomy respected, is the only legal authority we ever needed to be involved here.
Riding high on the myths of second hand smoke and global warming, there is only one reality to see here; that any excuse will do, and no tambourines were ever necessary in the micro management of other peoples lives by imperial decries. "Tell a lie long enough and it becomes the truth" Or so these Public Health Authoritarians will have you believe.
Property rights are no obstacle and personal rights are a delusion, backed by what self sanctimonious tin pot republic dictators will allow you to enjoy, as a privilege granted.
If there is any criminal activity afoot in this whole situation, it was never found in the act of smoking in a bar, but by the financially conflicted interests and their lobby stooges, being allowed to dictate the law to suit their corporate interests, while inventing pseudo-science, residing only within a calculator, as their claim to entitlements.
The same human evaluation process was utilized to prove the Ayrian race was superior to Blacks and to Jews. they called it "science" and "irrefutable" back then as well, we understand it now to be somewhat less than acceptable behavior. Just as the mainstream media entitlement babble today is of the same flavor.
By comparative studies with a predetermined outcome which only allows one perspective to be published, we compare one group of people to another, until the other, becomes other than human. What a disgusting way to see the world and your neighbors. A long term in a jail cell is what these people deserve, not a place in the credible world in positions of authority. Vote them all out. We deserve much better.
GOVERNMENT INTRUSION BIGGER HAZARD THAN SECOND-HAND SMOKE
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat of "second-hand" smoke.
Indeed, the bans are symptoms of a far more grievous threat, a cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved � the cancer of unlimited government power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or is in fact just a phantom menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: If it were harmful, what would be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force people to make the "right" decision?
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than trying to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect "public places," they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops and offices � places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don't like the smoke. Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid "second-hand" smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only his own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Smokers are a numerical minority, practising a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behaviour.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the unlimited intrusion of government into our lives. We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our behaviour.
Thomas Laprade
Thunder Bay, Ont.
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