Smoking Ban
- wadE
Ahhhh, Madtown... The stories I could tell, but I've been sworn to secrecy. Too bad Wade's child is a girl,
if it had been a boy, sometime in the future I could regale him with stories of his old man. I guess I could
with SoRae, but I'd better wait until she's at least 30.
But that's beside the point. The point is that Madison has passed a
smoking ban which goes into
effect in July of 2005.
My favorite part of the article is, "Tavern owners oppose the ban, saying it could hurt sales."
Have you been to Madison? I don't think a smoking ban is going to curb the drinking. Oddly enough,
the reverse would be true...a drinking ban would definitely curb the smoking... but I digress.
There is so much drinking going on in Madison that even if every bar could only serve beer outside all
year round, that wouldn't make a dent in the drinking...in fact, it'd probably go up.
Regardless, "In New York, tax receipts from bars and restaurants jumped almost 9 percent in the 10
months after the public smoking ban went into effect, according to a study."
Duluth and a couple other smaller cities have enacted a ban here in Minnesota. When will Minneapolis and
St. Paul enact one? Probably never. Duluth loosened the restriction not long after. And have you been out
to the bars lately? People in this city chain-smoke with the best of them. You'd swear
you were in the heart of North Carolina.
Anyway, with more and more cities enacting bans, hopefully one day we all can go out for a drink, and not come
home smelling like an ashtray.
What do you think? Drop us a line at webmaster@simpleprop.com and give us some
feedback. Maybe we'll even run your letters in future Gambits. 'The Daily Gambit' is updated every weekday.
