McAuliffe on smoking ban: For the children
By JR Hoeft | Sunday, February 8th, 2009 | PoliticsI was joking a few days ago when I said that the Democrats were advocating for stronger smoking regulations “for the children.”
Either Chairman Terry McAuliffe reads this blog or I was more right than I thought. Perhaps both.
From a recent McAuliffe email:
“Look, I think free citizens should have every right to do as they please, but not when you’re putting someone else’s health at risk – especially the health of our children.”
So, I gather that Mr. McAuliffe feels eliminating the free market is for the children too?
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About the author
Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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12 Responses to "McAuliffe on smoking ban: For the children"
Jim and others, something is weird with the records of this legislation. On Friday the substituted bill HB 1107 showed up on the legislative info system (the details are a real mess, and have a sort of slapped together quality). It showed then as reported out 16 to 6. If you look it up now, the substituted version is gone, and both Cosgrove’s and Northam’s original bills show up with votes of 12 – 6 with 4 not voting, including at least one screaming lib (Bulova). Does this mean the bill is in trouble administratively or legally? And does the AG (still McDonnell for another 10 days) have to render an opinion on its ability to stand court challenges?
Thanks for any insights!
The bill isn’t 1107, it’s 1703….
Sorry!
If Terry cares so much about children, he should talk about the number one issue that is most dangerous to children, abortion. Of course he won’t, but lets not let hypocrisy stand in the way.
I am a smoker and a strong advocate for protecting a significant portion of Virginia’s economy (Virginia is a tobacco state).
But I can live with my understanding of the proposed legislation. I am slightly torn in that I feel the owner of a resteraunt should be allowed to decide for himself/herself whether to allow smoking. But my experience is that market forces are causing many resteraunts to become 100% none smoking anyway. I also understand the argument that none smoking customers and employees should not be forced to expose themselves to second hand smoke against their will.
We smokers can live with this. We smoke before we walk in. We get our seat at the table and wait to order. After ordering we take a quick break outside. Shortly after we get back our food arrives. I can live with that.
What busts my chaps is how both of our Senators in the Federal Government voted to fund the SCHIP increase by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes to $1.00 a pack. This borders on an act of betrayal to the state they represent.
This tax increase might cost my wife and I (both smokers) an additional $1,000 a year to continue enjoying that which gives life pleasure for us. However if we are willing to give up the pleasure we can avoid the taxes by quitting, right?
Kind of like giving into extortion. The increased taxes on tobacco are not aimed at fiscal responsibility, they are aimed by the anti tobacco lobby to force more people to quit through economics.
But those who depend on tobacco for their livelyhoods do not have such “easy” choices. Our Senators have voted to run many Virginia citizens out of business and many citizens into the unemployment lines. Virginia is still a tobacco state and these two men seem to have no willingness to represent the “special needs” of the state they represent.
In the face of the dire economic situation we all face, they voted to place an additional burden on their/our state’s economy.
LittleDavid, how will their votes affect your votes in the ballot box? Still going to support them?
Let’s stop wasteful govt. spending. Let’s stop growing the size of government. Let’s stop government intrusion on our daily lives. Let’s do this Terry McAulliffe………..let’s do this for……..the children.
People need oil to heat their homes and keep their children warm. Drill here, Drill now. Drill for the children.
Britt Howard,
I am willing to cut Warner some slack. He was not there to support John Warners attempts to strip tobacco taxes as the means to fund the SCHIP increase.
But I give Webb a HUGE red check mark in the unfavorable column. Problem for me is that in many ways I still like Webb. If the Republicans can nominate someone like Webb who is also loyal to Virginia’s economy that Republican will get my vote. However if the Republicans nominate someone like George Allen, I’ll hold my nose and cast my vote for Webb.
I am not that difficult to please. John Warner (that damn RINO) had my vote as long as he asked for it.
The Stimulus bill has made me respect Webb even more. Webb shot right out the gate, whether we liked it or not, on is area of expertise with defense-related issues back in 2007….so where is Warner? Mark Warner is alwasy held up by the Democrats as the business-Democrat and was so embarced by the darling media at the convention and YET over this issue to jump start the economy, create or save jobs, bailout banks etc Warner is silent.
You can bet John Warner would have had plenty to say. I think it goes without saying Virginia is already missing John Warner. We have exchanged leadership for intellectual truancy in Mark Warner. You would think a guy as heralded as Mark Warner would be center stage selling this bill, especially to moderates.
Webb at least has spoken directly to the excess in the bill and has question the merits of some of the components.
He’s gonna ban smoking in bars to save the children?
You know what else Terry can do for the children?
Advocate a school voucher system. Extra portions going to schools with more costly programs for special needs. The private sector can educate each child for fewer dollars than the public sector. A better education and cutting the budget. Let’s do it for the children.
The most sickening displays of cold hypocrisy in this “smoking” brouhaha are enacted by public officials and others in the “protect the kids” arena.
These are the same officials etc who have approved and ignored Added Burn Accelerants in cigarettes…despite decades of resultant fires that have killed and injured kids, and taken their parents and homes.
These are almost uniformly the same officials, news outlets and even medical professionals who have, for perhaps decades, allowed, ignored and benefited from some of the worst child-damaging industrial substances on earth…specifically pesticides and chlorine…two horrific classes of still “legal” cigarette contaminants.
Chlorine’s by-product, dioxin (remember Agent Orange?) is especially harmful to mothers, fetuses and children…yet chlorine pesticide residues and chlorine-bleached paper are allowed to remain legal, and virtual secret, parts of cigarettes. Many, if not most, so-called “smoking related” or “tobacco related” diseases are biologically impossible to be caused by smoke from Any Plant…but are already well-documented effects of exposures to pesticides and dioxin. Some of these effects are: fetal damage, learning disorders, immune system damage, ADHD, crib death, pregnancy disruption, and nervous system damage. ”
Anti-smoking” officials who help the cigarette makers and the chemical firms cover up for that by scapegoating mothers (or the public-domain tobacco plant) have lost all traces of conscience and human empathy. Maybe this is more of a psychological matter than criminal.
“Concerned” officials, perhaps in the pockets of chlorine interests, do not even have the human decency to tell or warn anyone or, of course, to provide compensation to cover almost inevitable health costs.
Virginia could be the first state to reverse this grotesque injustice by moving to prohibit chlorine and pesticides, and any known harmful or untested non-tobacco substances from cigarettes. Virginia could start by at least requiring Specific Warnings and complete lists of non-tobacco cigarette constituents…including the radiation from phosphate fertilizers. Any prohibition must be aimed directly at the perpetrators, not at the victims, and at Mother Nature. As if “Reefer Madness” wasn’t…isn’t…bad enough.
If this country is “for the people”, and not “for the chlorine cartel”, that is the only just and humane route towards addressing the harms of….not tobacco…but of Industrially-Contaminated Smoking Products.
No studies of real or expected harms of plain, adulterated tobacco have been introduced in legislatures or courts. True. Without necessary qualifying terms in the studies we do not know what was studied. We don’t know what we are even talking about. Considering also that any number of low-end brands may contain not a shred of tobacco…using “tobacco substitute material” instead…and that no one studied indoor smoke to determine if it was tobacco smoke or even Contaminated Tobacco Smoke…the laws focused and based on “tobacco smoke” claims may all be patently, essentially invalid.
There are, however, laws that prohibit Perjury (under-oath claims that “tobacco kills…” or etc) and that prohibit Obstruction Of Justice…by misusing the legal system to evade criminal and civil charges.
Speaking of “concern for kids” and abortion etc….if one wants an idea of how much Chairman Terry McAuliffe cares about kids one needs only to check his record on a few things:
And if one is concerned about harms to fetuses, it’s the same thing:
* Actions regarding pesticides and chlorine and dioxin (chlorine by-product) that are especially harmful to children, and are notorious for causing fetal damages, pregnancy disruptions and stillbirth.
* Perhaps at least Warning About such substances in typical cigarettes.
* Perhaps working to prohibit smoking of chlorine- and pesticide-contaminated cigarettes in work places….leaving tobacco, itself, out of it.
* Asking for testing of pregnant mothers for body burdens of fetal damaging and pregnancy-disrupting industrial chemicals. This ought apply especially to doctor and hospital patients with problems known to be linked to those chemicals.
* Demanding removal of chlorine substances (cleansers, pesticides, disinfectants, etc.) from schools and playgrounds and home-day-care sites and the like. There are benign alternatives for those substances.
* Asking for govt subsidies for organic foods that do NOT contain child-damaging industrial chemicals, and requiring removal of all pesticide- contaminated foods, and chlorine-contaminated food containers, from schools, etc.
Bottom line: If one cares nothing about fetal-damaging industrial chemicals, one is exposed as being quite hypocritical in any claims to be concerned about children or fetal life. It’s as if to say that it’s ok for a chlorine or pesticide or similar industry to harm children or terminate births…but it’s not ok for women (no matter the circumstance) or for “smokers”, virtually NONE who know about the child/fetal damaging parts of what they believe and are told is just tobacco.
Tobacco itself cannot cause those health harms. The stuff Mr. McAuliffe
ignores, or doesn’t know about, on tobacco products is notorious for causing exactly those harms.
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