Bar owner says bylaw unfair -ON
C-K scores first smoking conviction against a proprietor
By Ellwood Shreve
Local News - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 @ 09:00
After months of delays, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent has a conviction under its no-smoking bylaw.
Kosta Tsinias, owner of the Metro Lounge Restaurant and Bar, was fined under the section of the bylaw that states a “proprietor or person in charge of a public place did permit smoking.”
Tsinias received a $255 fine.
This charge is not among the several pending against other establishments and individuals, which have been delayed because of a charter challenge in
Toronto.
The municipality has seen several individuals charged under the bylaw simply pay the fine and not contest it in court, said Lee Holling, chief bylaw
enforcement officer.
“Things are moving forward,” said Holling. “We’re continuing to charge . . .we laid charges (under the bylaw) as late as the weekend.”
Tsinias told The Chatham Daily News he defended himself during a hearing at the Provincial Offences Court on Friday to make the point that the bylaw
needs to be amended.
The bar owner said he supports the bylaw, but was upset the charge laid on Oct. 9 resulted from two people smoking in a dark corner around 1 a.m. while
the place was full.
Tsinias said he didn’t find out about the charge until the next day.
“I would have enforced (the bylaw). But, I cannot have eyes in every corner.”
There’s no justice in the bylaw, said Tsinias, adding, “it doesn’t deter (patrons) from smoking.”
He noted the downtown Chatham bar attracts people from outside the community where there is no smoking bylaw.
He said the first question he asks someone who lights up in his bar is where they are from. He noted most often the customers are from out of town,
adding they normally comply when informed about the bylaw.

how many milions $ did it take to get $255 fine?

Governor releases proposed budget -OR

Electronic slot games would be added to benefit state troopers

STEVE LAW Statesman Journal December 1, 2004

Gov. Kulongoski today proposed adding electronic slot machines to the Oregon Lottery, a move that would provide stable funding to keep state troopers on the highways.
The governor made his recommendation as part of his proposed two-year state budget for the upcoming 2005-07 biennium.
His proposals will be used by the 2005 Legislature as a starting point to frame the budget when lawmakers arrive in Salem next month.
The governor said adding so-called “line games” to the lottery was his toughest decision in the budget. Despite his long-held opposition to expanding the lottery, he realized his budget would not halt a more than 20-year slide in trooper strength on state highways. Kulongoski said the plan would end a long period of instability for the Oregon State Police and its troopers.
Kulongoski’s nearly $12 billion general fund and lottery budget would provide $5 billion for public schools. That’s about $100 million more than current state funding, which is not enough to keep pace with rising enrollment, salary and benefits demands and other inflationary costs. However, Kulongoski noted that school districts can anticipate much-higher federal funding to serve low-income students, plus significantly higher local property taxes.
He also wants school districts to save money by pooling all their workers into one health insurance plan, and by consolidating their payroll and other administrative functions under the auspices of regional Educational Service Districts.
The governor flatly opposed a proposal to restore a 10-cents-per-pack cigarette tax that was canceled by voters in January, as well as an increase in the minimum corporate tax. Kulongoski also said he wouldn’t sign those tax-raising bills if they are passed by the Legislature.
The governor’s recommendations also would:
•Provide money for pay raises for state workers, ending the current wage freeze.
•Put pressure on state workers to pay more in doctor’s visit co-pays and monthly health insurance premiums.
•Reduce the state work force by about 800 people, primarily affecting four-year universities.
•Anticipates university tuition increases in the 5 percent to 7 percent range for each of the next two years.
•Ends state funding for advocacy commissions for women, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans, but provides money for a single commission that would focus on diversity matters.
Kulongoski also proposed a new rainy day fund that would begin to build up state reserves for future economic downturns. However, new money wouldn’t go into the fund until the next budget cycle in 2007-09.
http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041201/NEWS/41201002/1001

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted unanimously (2-0) yesterday to start development of a mandatory safety standard for cigarette lighters.  The mandatory standard could be based on the current voluntary "Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Lighters" (ASTM F-400) to prevent mechanical malfunction of lighters.
    (Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030904/USCSCLOGO )
    "Reducing fire deaths is one of our top priorities," said CPSC Chairman Hal Stratton.  "A mandatory standard for cigarette lighters -- along with standards for the flammability of mattresses and upholstered furniture -- would help reduce fires, deaths, and injuries."
    There are approximately one billion cigarette lighters sold in the U.S. annually.  About 400 million of those are imported from China.  From 1997 through 2002, CPSC estimated that 3,015 people went to hospital emergency rooms for injuries resulting from malfunctioning lighters.  Most of these injuries involved thermal burns to the face, hands, and fingers.  For the same time period, CPSC received 256 incident reports related to cigarette lighter malfunctions and failures; 65 percent of these cigarette lighter failures resulted in fires, leading to 3 deaths and 6 serious injuries.
    The voluntary standard for lighters addresses the risk of fire, death, and injury associated with mechanical malfunction of lighters.  A mandatory standard would apply to imported as well as domestically-manufactured products.
    "Fires are a leading cause of consumer product related deaths," said Chairman Stratton.  "By developing fire safety standards for mattresses, upholstered furniture, and cigarette lighters, CPSC can help save many lives while maintaining reasonable cost to consumers and manufacturers."
    CPSC Commissioner Thomas Moore said he voted to grant the petition because it would allow additional fact-finding about deaths and injuries and about industry compliance, which would help determine whether federal regulation is warranted in this area.
    CPSC already has a mandatory standard for child-resistant cigarette lighters which addresses the hazard of children under 5 years of age starting fires with lighters.  That standard for child-resistance applies to imported as well as domestically-manufactured disposable and novelty lighters.
    Fire deaths associated with children playing with lighters dropped dramatically since the mandatory standard for child-resistance became effective in July 1994 -- from 230 in 1994 to 130 in 1998.  Children under age 5 accounted for 170 of the deaths in 1994 and 40 of the deaths in 1998.  In
1994, there were 10,400 residential fires associated with children playing with lighters.  By 1998, that number declined to 5,500 fires.
    Even lighters with child-resistant mechanisms are not child-proof, so all lighters should always be kept out of the reach of children.
    The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction.  Deaths, injuries and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $700 billion annually.  The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard.  The CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products -- such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters, and household chemicals -- contributed significantly to the 30 percent decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 30 years.

new lighter regulation talks

All Things Considered, December 1, 2004 · The world's first public health treaty is set to become international law, but the United States has yet to ratify it. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control will change the way cigarettes are marketed and sold around the world. Hear NPR's Debbie Elliott.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4195576

By Richard Black  BBC environment correspondent

Emissions of greenhouse gases have more than doubled the risk of European heatwaves similar to last year's, according to a study by UK scientists.

In 2003, temperatures across western Europe soared by several degrees Celsius above normal - and five degrees in the case of Switzerland.

It is thought that the unusually hot summer caused tens of thousands of excess deaths.

Details of the study appear in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

Oxford University and UK Meteorological Office researchers behind the new study say it may soon be possible to hold nations and companies responsible for such events.

"This study suggests a way in which one might be able to link greenhouse gas emissions to actual harm," Oxford's Professor Myles Allen told the BBC.

He co-authored two pieces in Nature - the scientific analysis which calculated the risk, and, in an unusual collaboration with barrister Richard Lord from Brick Court Chambers in London, a commentary looking at how the law might view this science.

"I'm not suggesting we have done the whole thing yet, to the satisfaction of a judge and jury, but we are showing how a method could be applied in this direction," he said.

Taking responsibility

With other forms of environmental damage, it is relatively straightforward to assign responsibility and so determine who is liable for reparations.

Climate change is much more complex in that it is a global phenomenon, and has many causes.

This study is one of the first attempts to link rising levels of greenhouse gases to specific weather events.

Last year's European summer appears to have been the warmest for five hundred years; and by running computer models of climate, these researchers calculated that greenhouse gases from human activities have more than doubled the chances of such heatwaves occurring.

Professor Allen believes this approach could one day allow individuals harmed by climate change to seek compensation - and makes an analogy with how the courts deal with cigarette-smoking.

"People have always got lung cancer, before they started smoking," he said, "but obviously smoking significantly increases the risk of lung cancer; and on those grounds courts have, in a number of jurisdictions, decided that smoking was therefore an effective cause.

"Now, a lot depends on how much the court would want the factor in question to have increased the risk before they were prepared to intervene.

"But the interesting result coming out of this paper is that we are seeing human contributions to risk of a half, three-quarters or so, which is the kind of substantial increase in risk which starts to get the courts interested."

Legal obligations

Already, a number of legal cases have been filed citing damage from climate change.

Just last week a delegation of conservationists and lawyers filed a petition with Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) asking it to rule that governments must cut back greenhouse gas emissions in order to conform with their legal obligations under the World Heritage Convention.

These scientists believe that more sophisticated computer models of climate will soon make it possible to assign blame for environmental harm stemming directly from increasing temperatures.

But calculating the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions to other extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, will be more difficult.

It looks like being a hot issue for Europeans - Nature's scientific paper suggests many more summers like 2003 are on the way.

"We estimate that the risk is increasing all the time as a result of the warming of the climate," Dr Peter Stott, another author on the paper, told the BBC.

"In fact, our predictions say that if we carry on without serious attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then we could be experiencing a summer like the one we had in 2003 in Europe every other year."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4059497.stm

NICOLE Kidman, who infuriated anti-smoking groups by lighting up at a press conference last year, is facing renewed calls to quit - at least in public.
The Hollywood star's nomination by NSW this week as Australian of the Year, coupled with her public puffing, sends the message to young women that it's OK to smoke, lobbyists warned today.

"Her public smoking does reinforce the wrong message, that smoking and glamour and success go together for young women," Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Australia chief executive Ann Jones said.

"I would hope that, with this latest award, she's conscious of how her smoking does affect young people," Ms Jones said.

"She's in a very unique position now to contribute to improving the health of women, not only Australian women but worldwide."

The 35-year-old Oscar winner was named NSW Australian of the Year on Tuesday. That places her in the running for the prestigious national gong, which Centrebet has her odds on to win.

However in May 2003, Kidman, who campaigns against breast cancer, smoked through a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival while promoting her film Dogville.

The film's director, Lars Von Trier, sitting beside her, quipped: "Oh Nicole, don't do that, you promised."

A year later, an Australian government-commissioned report predicted smoking could soon overtake breast cancer as the nation's biggest killer of women.

Already more than 6,000 Australian women die from smoking-related illness each year. Over one-fifth of Australian women are smokers.

"There's a great opportunity for Nicole to improve the health of Australian women by actually not smoking in such a public way," Ms Jones said.

"Why are young women taking up smoking? We have too many pro-smoking messages in films that have glamourised smoking and associated smoking with success and glamour and independence - all of the things Nicole embodies."

The Cancer Council Australia's anti-tobacco chair, Andrew Ellerman, said Kidman had sent the wrong message when she "quite clearly and publicly flaunted her smoking when it was quite unnecessary at those press conferences."

"At the very least, you'd have to say that it'd be much more responsible for her to not smoke in public, if not to make a decision to quit."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11567423%255E1702,00.html

By TONY MESSENGER Wednesday, December 1, 2004

Monday is smoking night.

Actually, it’s bowling night, but judging by the reaction of my family when I return home each week, I might as well have been sucking down a pack of Marlboros rather than rolling a ball down a lane and trying to hang on to my pitiful 136 average.

Each Monday night, I proudly don my "Big Mess" bowling shirt, and several hours later I immediately take it off and try to protect it from a ceremonial burning as I walk into my house to shrieks of "Gross!"

There’s no doubt that I arrive home smelling like a giant smoldering cigarette even though I haven’t smoked one all night. In fact, except for a couple of college nights of foolishness and the occasional celebratory cigar, I’ve never smoked. Such is life in the bowling alley world, however. Many folks in the Monday night league are smokers. They have their section, back away from the bowling area, and those of us who don’t smoke play a weekly game of trying to get a table that keeps us from direct contact with wafting smoke. It’s impossible really, but we try anyway. Even on nights when we’re successfully free of the blowing smoke zone, we still come home reeking.

A group of Columbians is in the process of trying to change that. Along with like-minded folks all over the nation and the world, the group is trying to move Columbia into the realm of a smoke-free society. The movement is picking up steam in the United States, with places from Boulder, Colo., to New York City banning smoking in public places, even restaurants and bars, even bowling alleys. Like a fast-moving locomotive, support is building for a vote that will add Columbia to the list of healthy cities that make it possible to go out and have a night of bowling without coming home and smelling like an ashtray.

It sounds like a fair enough idea. Smoking is unhealthy. With the exception of a few stubborn teenagers who believe they’re invincible, every breathing human being in the United States knows that. Smoking kills. Secondhand smoke kills, too. Besides that, it smells. It’s dirty. You can’t walk into a smoky bowling alley or a bar without coming out smelling like somebody flicked ashes all over you for a couple of hours.

It’s why this issue is so important to Columbians. It’s time to take a stand.

That’s why - with apologies to my wife and children, and particularly to the abuse I heap upon my poor bowling shirt each week - I stand firmly for the only value that should matter when it comes to banning things in Columbia or anywhere else.

I stand for freedom.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t smoke. It doesn’t matter that I don’t like the smell. It doesn’t matter that I think the industry puts profits over health. It doesn’t matter that I hate the fact that my 21-year-old son smokes and that my grandfather’s life was cut short because of years of tobacco abuse.

It matters that our country, in the name of one group’s vision of a healthy society, has found it appropriate to ban legal substances and cause irreparable harm to businesses whose only sin has been following the law. My friend Ron Leone, another nonsmoker who believes in freedom, put it best in an opinion piece he wrote a few years ago: "Freedoms once lost are all but impossible to restore."

How perverted have the attempts by healthy special interests been to change our laws by banning legal activity? The latest health bandwagon has been the anti-obesity efforts, built on what many scientists have called flawed statistics that show America getting wider around the middle. Last week’s announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that its recently released obesity morbidity statistics were off by 80,000 or more is a case in point. Advocates pointed to the numbers as a sign that obesity is overtaking smoking as the leading cause of death, but the fact is it’s not true.

Meanwhile, we have local governments forcing changes in what our children are eating, affecting market economies because of special interest pressure.

It’s un-American, I say.

Smoking is still legal in this country. So is sucking down an extra-large Imo’s pizza. Healthy? No. But until pizza and cigarettes are illegal, then it’s not government’s place to affect their status in the marketplace.

Unless government commits to the same process that occurs when it takes a person’s land so it can build a new highway - reasonable compensation determined by the market - this movement to ban smoking in private businesses that make their living on folks who want to come in and have a beer and a cigarette is an unconstitutional taking.

How silly will Columbia look if it bans smoking months after passing an ordinance to make it easier to possess marijuana, an illegal drug? How inconsistent is it that some of the same folks who rail against the Patriot Act for taking away our freedoms want to do the same thing to merchants who happen to participate in a business that some folks simply don’t approve of?

On Mondays, I smell like smoke because I like to bowl. That’s my choice. Just like it was my grandfather’s choice to smoke cigars until it killed him. I still remember a birthday one year when my grandmother bought a cake for me. My party had to be moved back a day because of a snowstorm, so she stored the cake in her refrigerator. When she and my grandfather came over the next day, all of us bit into our first bites of birthday cake and stared at each other as we tried to determine the flavor.

It was Cohiba, I believe. After one day at my grandfather’s house, nothing escaped the stench of cigar smoke.

I ate the cake and asked for a second piece.

Smoke be damned, I thought. It’s my birthday, and I’m eating my cake.

Let the anti-smoking crusaders eat their cake, too, I say. But keep their unconstitutional laws off our books.

Otherwise, our freedom will go up in smoke.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2004/Dec/20041201Feat001.asp

By HEATHER McCRACKEN03 December 2004

Next week's smoking ban will see pokie players abandoning their machines for a cigarette - and some may not go back.

The Gambling Problem Helpline Service says the ban, which comes into effect next Friday, will lead to an immediate reduction in gambling.

But chief executive Gary Clifford says after an initial drop off, he believes the industry will adapt and eventually recover.

"There will be a short term downturn, but by this time next year we are predicting it will be back up," Mr Clifford says.

Forcing gamblers to go outside for a cigarette could have a big impact on playing habits, he says.

"For many people that will mean a break in concentration, and they may not go back in.

"The major symptom of problem gambling tends to be the amount of time spent playing. Forcing the concentration to break can prevent the problem occurring."

It may lead to a new trend of more people playing the pokies for shorter periods, he says.

"There will be other attractions to bring people back, and one of the attractions will be a smoke free environment."

Gaming machines are operated by licensed corporate societies who funnel the proceeds back to the community through grants.

Gaming venues receive a set operating fee for each machine.

Manager of gambling operator the South Auckland Charitable Trust, Shane Cosgrove, says the smoking ban will affect them, but he's not sure how much.

"It will have an impact on gambling because people will go outside to have a cigarette which reduces playing time.

"But I support the ban, it's clean air and a healthy environment," he says.

He has looked at the effects of similar bans overseas, but says the impact will depend on the proportion of gamblers who smoke.

Barry O'Shaugnessey, owner of the Prospect of Howick, estimates between 80 and 90 per cent of gamblers at the bar are also smokers.

He believes the ban will affect the gaming machines, but this won't greatly affect his business - serving drinks.

"There will be a downturn in money going through the pokies," he says.

"But people who play pokies and the people who drink in the bar - there is some cross over, but they are two different beasts," he says.

Duty manager Peter Lomas at the Crook and Flail in Meadowlands says he will wait and see what happens after next week.

"It's one of those questions everyone's got an opinion on, but until it happens, no one really knows," he says.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/sundaystartimes/auckland/0,2106,3115874a6497,00.html

By KAMALA HAYMAN 02 December 2004
A Banks Peninsula publican is prepared to risk having his establishment closed down by flouting the new anti-smoking law.

John van Buren, who runs Teddington's Wheatsheaf Tavern, is urging other publicans to back his stand against the Smokefree Environments Amendment Act, that requires all pubs, bars and clubs to be smokefree from December 10.

His decision to allow smoking in his tavern could lead to him being fined or losing his licence.

"The District Licensing Authority, I believe, will step in and close us down. It's a risk you have got to run," van Buren said. "Our tavern will continue to operate as it has since 1875."

Not only did he smoke, van Buren said, but his four staff all also smoked and 90 per cent of his regular drinkers smoked.

"We feel we are not impinging on anyone's civil rights by exposing them to second-hand cigarette smoke.

"We think people that drink are generally the people that smoke and after a day's work they want a beer and they want to have a cigarette."

Non-smokers came for the social interaction and had no complaints about others smoking, he added.

Van Buren became publican at the Wheatsheaf 10 months ago and said it was a struggling country pub. "It was a tough winter and now I'm getting another kick in the guts from the Government."

There should have been a referendum on the smoking ban, he said.

Van Buren, who has smoked for 30 of his 41 years, said he was not concerned about the health risks of smoking.

"At the end of the day it's a choice thing, and I enjoy smoking."

Wheatsheaf Tavern patron and smoker Ken Boswell wholeheartedly supported the stance taken by van Buren.

"If it's non-smoking it will put a lot of people off coming here.

"It would stop me going to the pub," said Boswell, who visits the tavern three or four times a week.

"I have always got a smoke in my hand when I have a drink.

"One goes with the other."

Tavern duty manager Sharon Burke said she wanted the right to smoke as she worked, just as she had done for 20 years.

She supported the tavern's stance despite the risk it posed to her employment.

"We are not quite sure what is going to happen," Burke said.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/0,2106,3114888a6009,00.html