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| Valerie Parnell, Seminole County Watch columnist |
Response to
my last column did not surprise me. In fact, it reflected some of the very thoughts with which I wrestled before opining that the Oviedo City Council was wrong to change its ordinances specifically to allow the opening of a cigar bar within city limits.
Patrick in Oviedo summarized the reaction very well:
It is a function of government to encourage business growth in the community. As smoking is still a legal activity, a cigar bar seems a relatively inoffensive adult-themed establishment. I have seen nothing that suggests that such a business would attempt to cater to underage children, or compel non-smokers to enter their premises. Based on your argument I suppose the City Fathers should ban fast-food establishments (the health issues generated by such places are well-known!), computer stores (they sell machines that allow our children to be exposed to pornography!), and perhaps even churches (dare I mention the Crusades, or the repression of Galileo's ideas of celestial mechanics?).
I concur with your attitude towards smoking. It is an abhorrent habit with no positive values. But I believe that businesses should be allowed to cater to the legal habits of the citizenry, and that governments have the responsibility to encourage and regulate all business within their purview. The wonderful thing about living in a free society is being able to enjoy that which gives me pleasure, regardless of your personal biases.
In conclusion, I firmly believe that you (and I!) should be able to live in a smoke-free environment. But I believe, as firmly, that members of a free society should be permitted to journey to Hades by whatever conveyance they so choose.
His points have merit, and speak to many of the same factors I considered before reaching my previously-expressed conclusion, about which I had some doubts.
But after considering Patrick's points, I am now resolutely convinced without doubt that the Oviedo City Council did the wrong thing in manuevering to allow the cigar bar to operate. It is a shame that they chose to do so.
It is one thing for a city to want to expand its tax base and encourage commerce within its boundaries. It is another to do so at the expense of the health of its citizenry.
Were there not already laws established that would have prevented the opening of the cigar bar, no objection would be stated. But the city intentionally and deliberately sought a way in which they could approve the opening of the bar. To do so, they changed existing laws.
Patrick compares tobacco to other products, such as fast food and computers, and I thank him for doing so. Patrick's doing so allows me to repeat a point made in that first column.
Tobacco is the only legal product that, if used as intended, has a detrimental effect on one's health. It also provides no true beneficial impact from its use.
Those qualities alone distinguish it from the other products Patrick mentioned, and all others. Whether legal or not does not matter. It is harmful. Harmful enough that a good deal of governmental spending has occurred with the goal of discouraging people from starting or continuing to smoke.
Now, Oviedo's governmental leaders have done exactly the opposite. They have gone out of their way to aggressively change laws to facilitate the establishment of a cigar bar within their city limits, putting their seal of approval on smoking.
Even worse, it is recreational smoking that they are endorsing. One of the "selling" points of the cigar bar was that it would feature high-end, expensive products, lending the smoke-filled air of a "gentleman's club" to the establishment.
This is not just a place for people to come to smoke. It is a recreational retreat that allows the boys to get together and light them up in some sort of collegial frathouse gathering.
Smoking from habitual addiction takes enough of a toll on our health and lives. It is incredulous that we have now gone the next step and actually changed laws to alllow the encouragement of recreational smoking.
Although I have said it before, I will now say it again, with much more emphasis:
It is sad when city officials undercut the attempts of those messages by giving approval to an establishment whose primary product will only do harm to its users. It is sadder still when those same city officials go far out of their way to do so.
Thank you, Patrick, and those others of you who expressed agreement with him. You have helped me to realize there was no need for the previous doubts that existed about my position.
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