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Massachusetts town weighs nation's 1st tobacco ban

slimvictor

slimvictor

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Dec 29, 2008
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Westiminister, US: The cartons of Marlboros, cans of Skoal and packs of Swisher Sweets are hard to miss stacked near the entrance of Vincent's Country Store, but maybe not for much longer: All tobacco products could become contraband if local health officials get their way.

This sleepy central Massachusetts town of 7,700 has become an improbable battleground in America's tobacco wars. On Wednesday, the Board of Health will hear public comment on a proposed regulation that could make Westminster the first municipality in the United States to ban sales of all tobacco products within town lines.

"To my knowledge, it would be the first in the nation to enact a total ban," said Thomas Carr, director of national policy at the American Lung Association. "We commend the town for doing it."

Town health agent Elizabeth Swedberg said a ban seemed like a sensible solution to a vexing problem.

"The tobacco companies are really promoting products to hook young people," she said, pointing to 69-cent bubblegum-flavored cigars, electronic cigarettes and a new form of dissolvable smokeless tobacco that resembles Tic Tac candies. "The board was getting frustrated trying to keep up with this."

cont at
http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/massachusetts-town-weighs-nations-1st-tobacco-ban_1496482.html
 
That town can go fuck itself people with just go to the neighbor town. Have fun losing tax money and not making a difference. My town just raised the age to 21, it's a joke I just drive less than 5min to get butts (I'm 20).
 
I bet big tobacco is gonna make this go away soon - it's much more expensive for them not to.

Plus, if one town does it, others may follow. So yeah, it won't be too long now until this is magically swept away into the political ether.
 
Fuck off with this shit.
I hate cigarettes with a passion but a fucking town has no right to tell people what they can and cannot do.
BTW nothing makes something more appealing to kids than deeming it illegal
 
i looked on google maps to see where this place is and that whole region of the state is boring dull and in general not somewhere i would stay (i'm from MA.) and they want to make it suck more? damn.
 
.:Holy::Toast:. said:
Fuck off with this shit.
I hate cigarettes with a passion but a fucking town has no right to tell people what they can and cannot do.
BTW nothing makes something more appealing to kids than deeming it illegal
Click to expand...

It's just one single town, and I don't see anything wrong with it. Everything else is illegal. Why not tobacco?
 
theWhiteLarryBird said:
It's just one single town, and I don't see anything wrong with it. Everything else is illegal. Why not tobacco?
Click to expand...

Fuck that defeatist attitude, because in this day on age fascist archaic laws should be taken off the books not more added to them.
 
Isn't the drinking age 21 everywhere in the us? I don't see this passing...and if for some reason Philip Morris or RJ Reynolds can't grease everyone's wheel people will just go a town over to buy their smokes causing a substantial revenue loss for biz that rely on the sale of tobacco items. Let's ban caffeine while were at it and all the NA and AA ppl Will all go put and relapse hah.
 
ro4eva said:
I bet big tobacco is gonna make this go away soon -
Click to expand...

lol right?

talk about moving backwards, i mean criminalizing tobacco?! it's so ironic how some of these busy-body types try to do 'good' w/o ever thinking-through what "good" actually is :\
 
.:Holy::Toast:. said:
Fuck off with this shit.
I hate cigarettes with a passion but a fucking town has no right to tell people what they can and cannot do.
BTW nothing makes something more appealing to kids than deeming it illegal
Click to expand...

I am pretty sure that our viewpoints are extremely similar.
I don't mind a town telling people not to kill others, but they absolutely do not have the right to tell people what to put in their own bodies.
I hate cigarettes, but I love freedom more.
 
Fascinating!

Although I cannot stand tobacco & lost both my parents at least 10 years early to the stuff, I cannot see how banning it would make it's users any safer or healthier. My only concern about drugs use is how to reduce & minimise the harms related to it. The only drugs use that I feel should be prohibited is dangerous or foolish drugs use. Ignorance should be banned, not drugs.

Banning alcohol didn't work, it's plain the laws against drugs have failed to make them safer or reduce their use & I am sure the same thing would happen if tobacco were banned.
 
Wow so now people have to drive to the next town over. Dumb.
 
f33lg00d said:
Fuck that defeatist attitude, because in this day on age fascist archaic laws should be taken off the books not more added to them.
Click to expand...

I tried explaining to people when bath salts got banned that even though they never did them and never would, they still lost another right. I want the right to smoke even though I don't smoke. I want the right to do crack too, even though I wouldn't actually do it. My rights are important to me.

"69-cent bubblegum-flavored cigars"

Lets just admit what those are for. Instead of having a racist war on inner city culture lets try to convince kids to vap instead of smoking a blunt.


"electronic cigarettes"


Never mind, I just give up.
 
Just to point out, generally new law/public policy like this don't start out and spread from small towns or municipalities to large cities or metro areas. It's the other way around. It would be cause for concern, perhaps, if that were the case, but from a tiny puritanical town in New England? Not betting on this catching on as is. Can't forget that while a wonderful part of the US, some parts of New England are, well, still puritanical in their laws (don't know how else to put it - it's where puritans are from after all...).

I wonder how policies spread like this in other countries, or if it's similar, which would be what I'd expect I guess
 
What Were They Thinking? Massachusetts Town Tries to Ban Tobacco

What Were They Thinking? Massachusetts Town Tries to Ban Tobacco

Tony Newman | 11/18/14 said:
A small town in Massachusetts made national news [3] recently when the local health board moved to make Westminster, MA the first place in the country where no one could buy cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.

You can predict the rationale behind the proposed tobacco ban.

“Cigarettes kill!”

“400,000 people die prematurely from smoking every year!”

“We need to protect the kids!”

“The Board of Health permitting these establishments to sell these dangerous products that, when used as directed, kill 50 percent of its users, ethically goes against our public health mission,” said Ms. Andrea Crete, chairwoman of the Board of Health, in an article [3] in the New York Times.

While I sympathize with the urge to protect people from dangerous products, banning of all things tobacco is a major move toward the slippery slope of making cigarettes illegal. If towns and cities - under the rationale that cigarettes kill - can prohibit selling cigarettes today, it is easy to imagine the next step of prohibiting them completely tomorrow.

But with all of the good intentions in the world, outlawing cigarettes would be just as disastrous as the prohibition [4] on other drugs. Let’s imagine what our country would look like if cigarettes became illegal.

People would still smoke, just as they still use other drugs that are prohibited, from marijuana to cocaine. But now, in addition to the harm of smoking, we would find a whole range of "collateral consequences" that come along with prohibition.

A huge number of people who smoke would continue to do so, but now they would be considered criminals. We would have smokers hiding their habit and smoking in alleys and dark corners, afraid of being caught using the illegal substance.

We would have cops using precious time and resources to hassle and arrest cigarette smokers. Our prison overcrowding crisis would rise to an unprecedented level with "addicts" and casual cigarette smokers alike getting locked up.

We would have an illicit market, with “outlaws” taking the place of delis and supermarkets and stepping in to meet the demand and provide the desired drug.

Instead of buying your cigarettes in a legally sanctioned place, you would have to hit the streets to pick up your fix. The cigarette trade would provide big revenue to "drug dealers," just as illegal drugs do today.

Cigarettes are prohibited in many state prison systems, like in California, and we have seen that smoking continues, with cigarettes being sold on an underground market. There is a violent, illicit market that fills the void and leads to unnecessary deaths over access and the inflated profits.

Fortunately, the people of Westminster get it and they are furious with the proposed banning of tobacco. Smokers and non-smokers are uniting in their outrage against the ban. 500 people (out of a town of 7,800) showed up at a board meeting and were so passionate, the meeting was shut down after 20 minutes.

They are right to draw a line in the sand. We have seen towns, cities and states copy each other when it comes to restricting not only smoking, but products like e-cigarettes than help people stop smoking.

We need to stop this prohibition virus before it spreads.

We need to realize that drugs, from cigarettes to marijuana to alcohol, will always be consumed, whether they are legal or illegal. Although drugs have health consequences and dangers, making them illegal -- and keeping them illegal -- will only bring additional death and suffering.
Click to expand...
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/what-were-they-thinking-massachusetts-town-tries-ban-tobacco
 
Yeah I don't see banning them would work at all, as outlined in the article.

Measures like we have here in Aus seem to have made an impact (afaik) in reducing smoking, things such as no advertising on tv, in mags or news papers etc, not even in the shops that sell them, the products have to be behind cabinets or cloth coverings so no one can see them basically, and also the packs themselves have no branding on the packets, just horrible graphics of smokers dying and stuff like that. But the main thing I think that is forcing alot of people to cut back and quit would be the huge amount of tax on them and the price they are here now. I wont discuss the prices, but a pack is VERY expensive, I wouldnt be surprised if it's the most expensive in the world. People on low incomes and welfare who are majorly addicted must be really struggling to afford to keep up with their addiction.

In saying that about the prices I guess it may mean more stealing from shops (robberies) to obtain them or people selling on the blackmarket etc.
 
There is a huge blackmarket in cigarettes, like in New York City, where they have some of the most expensive smokes in the country AFAIK. I always wondered what a black market in cigarettes would look like though, outside that of those untaxed cheap Chinese smokes I used to get when I was in New York.
 
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