The temptation to legislate good behavior is just about irresistible, but in the case of the Pike Plan smoking ban, the mayor and the Common Council should have resisted.
Passing laws that are either unenforceable or can only be enforced sporadically or anecdotally isn’t a good idea. It promotes disrespect for the law in general and tends to make people think that whoever cooked up the law in the first place isn’t properly connected with reality. What are they going to do, paint a white line directly under where the canopy ends? (They’re gonna have to, if they want to make these tickets stick.) Compel meter people, who are not really trained or equipped to confront lawbreakers, write these tickets? (Here’s your Taser, Blaber!) Worse yet, are they going to distract city cops, who really do have their hands full in Kingston, by making them write these tickets? (Any crime in the state Penal Code is more worthy of police attention than somebody smoking under a canopy.)
Look, we know smoking is bad for you. We know — we really do — that the cig-butt situation in Pike Plan-land is pretty gross. And we know that someone dropped the ball by not anticipating that butt-cans or some other sort of means of disposal of finished cigarettes would be needed to keep the streets looking tidy.
But we also know this: People like to hang out in Uptown, and many of those people like to smoke. (Nobody likes seeing barf and worse on the steps to the parking lot, but if you want people to support nightlife in Kingston, such things have to be put up with. If you don’t want nightlife in Kingston, there are still the people who work and smoke in Uptown.) Harassing and vilifying them for no real reason will just encourage them to take their party-money elsewhere, which could well result in the one thing Uptown really doesn’t need — more empty storefronts.
What are your thaughts? Is the correct question. Yes, ‘thaught’ is correctly spelled and ‘thought’ has to do with ‘think’ that is concerned with ‘directions’ for the ‘assembling’ of something…
WARNING: Chemical is cigarettes contain proven carcinogens and are dangerous to your health… On a package of “organic” grown cigarettes, there is a WARNING: contains carbon monoxide….. And absolutely NO cancer warnings and yet, the automobile does not have carbon monoxide warnings….
Cannabis was the biblical tobacco, cannabis was the indigenous tobacco; habitual abuse of smoking came with the King James Puritan’s. proclaiming ‘pleasure is ‘evil’ while dressed in their “mourning-black” and in the “new-world” the “Holy Ghost” of ‘corporatism’ was designed to the rule by the “separation of church & state” in all ‘conversations’ enabled the “Holy Ghost person” of the future “Corporate_Citizen” of the New_World as we are viewing as being the RePublican’s “public” and people the consumer of sickness commodity for the Prophets of Masonic_Corporatism, to reap their profits…
In 1938 cannabis was deemed by John Deere Farm Equipment Co. to be a “heavenly” gift because there was inclusively sufficient economic reasons to build the HEMP HARVESTER for production of the ‘billion’ dollar economic healthy biblical Cannabis_Hemp for inclusive huemanity plus the investment society of Wall & Main Street in 1938…
What happened; you ask? A crowning LATE TERM ABORTION is what happened and NOT a PEEP out of the news media even though the “Birth_Announcements” were already on the magazine covers showing who far back the daily DIE_T maintained a ‘blank’ never to question “Authority” mindset of King James religionist’s…
A “CARBON_MONOXIDE” warning on EVERY_AUTOMOBILE is what our esteemed Mayor should be speaking about and NOT intentional cancer chemicals in the cigarettes because there must absolutely be no regulations upon the CEO’S and their Ghost_Person “corporations” as being ‘godly’ gifts to rule over Mother Earth with 14-STATIONS of Puritan Love for all that seek the attributes of pleasure instead of the sufferings of the biblical “Prince Of Peace”….
B.S. this is not what is happening in the ‘born-again’ mindset of Masonic_RePublicanism….
http://www.marijuanalibrary.org/New_Billion_Dollar_Crop_1938.html
http://www.thc-ministry.net/untoldstory/pmpage1.html
Then we have the Corporate Christ GWB Era and the “cannabis extract” patents with one of them being>>>
http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6630507.PN.&OS=PN/6630507&RS=PN/6630507
I think the editorial is way way too late: Dan knew the law was coming. That was the time to speak out. It’s not as if Ulster Press isn’t right on Wall Street and had a hand (or could have) in how the vote came out. Then you have the notion that it was supported 9-0 with the mayors support as well.
So what is the thinking? Is KIngston business ultimately doomed by bad thinking with full support for poor decisions by the Common Council?
Nah, this editorial is way too little too late. Yes, I weighed in in a timely fashion. Yes, I engaged in a dialog with KUBA on Facebook. No, I got no answers. And no, you will note, there are no signs posted alerting people that there is no smoking under the canopies. So (so far) the whole process is basically a curse: we’ve passed a no smoking under the canopies ordinance! There!
But, the good news: with O+ coming, there might be lots and lots of violations! and income for the city.