more on smoking ban

[waider]

Well, that's amusing. On the late evening news just now the only complaining bar customers they could find were a bunch of Whingin' Poms[1] visiting one of the Border counties. Even a 60-a-day smoker said he was happy to see the ban in place, and the barstaff interviewed for the news segment said they'd seen no drop-off in trade and noone attempting to infringe.

No doubt it's biased reporting, of course.

[1] Q. How do you tell if a just-arrived plane in Sydney originated in the UK? A. The whining contines after the engines have stopped.

Comments

[boutell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the New Yorker made a similar attempt to locate folks with strong objections, and mostly found smokers expressing the hope that the ban would help them quit.

Wow.

The editor of Harper's Magazine, Lewis H. Lapham, is the most high-profile New Yorker I can think of who strongly opposes the ban. His militant libertarianism on all matters smoking-related has certainly been convenient for his publication's bottom line; Harper's can always be relied upon to contain tobacco advertising.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

... Not that a magazine almost certainly read almost exclusively by adults or, at least, people smart enough to know better is a terrible place to advertise deathsticks, I should add.