For those living in the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the world, you may be interested in knowing that as of Sept. 1, 2005, you will not be able to smoke in any public place in Austin.
An ordinance passed over the weekend banning smoking in all public buildings and within 15 feet of all entrances to public buildings. This includes bars, billiard halls, restaurants and bowling alleys. A fine of $2,000 could be applied to anyone violating the ordinance.
But don't lose hope, Austinites. Until the year 2012, there are seven places around town in which you can smoke. Only a couple are obscure, the rest you probably wouldn't want to go to anyway.
The striking thing about the measure passing on the weekend was the turn out. First, it only passed by some 3,000 votes. Second, a good 60,000 people voted. In a city of a million people, that's a decent percentage of voter aged adults getting out on a Saturday to curtail someone else’s personal freedoms.
You heard me. Let's step aside from the fact that this bill sounds the death knell for bars and musicians in Austin. Let's forget that tourism will suffer because the cool places to go to will have to shut down or will be fined into closure because they choose to ignore the ban. Let's instead talk about personal freedoms.
Now, smoking isn't a constitutional right. It shouldn't be, don't get me wrong. However, if drinking (another legal narcotic) is allowed and causes just as many traffic deaths as does exposure to second hand smoke, why not ban liquor? Did Prohibition work? Did it? Of course it did. It worked so well we don't have it now.
I'm actually trying to quit smoking, so I can appreciate going to places that are not very smoky. Not because of the smoke in the air, but because of the desire it creates to light up myself. I'm also a parent, and I appreciate that people are looking out for kids. What I don't think happened when people voted for this was a good look at some facts about Austin and its apparent rampant smoking hoodlums terrorizing senior citizens and babies.
- Of 46,000 businesses in Austin, over 99% are smoke free.
- No smoking is allowed anywhere children under 18 are present.
- Over 2000 restaurants are smoke free. Only 6 allow smoking.
- Over 400 bars are smoke free. Only 200 allow smoking.
- Over 150 live music venues are smoke free. Only 63 allow smoking.
- Only 211 businesses and their employees have chosen to allow smoking in Austin.
(from Keep Austin Free)
Article comments
1 - Sebastian
You miss the point. All places should be smoke free. And a smoking ban is no smoking-prohibition, smokers can smoke as much they want, they only need to go outside.
If you ban dogs in a bar, you did not ban dog-owners, so also no one hates smokers, but smoke.
Like New York Tourism and -sales, also in Austin Business will grow after a smoking ban.
NO one needs to have indoor smoking places, because everyone can step outside for a cig.
Smokers can still smoke as much they want, and will still have the freedom to smoke where they wan't â€" with the exemption of indoor places.
2 - Dave Nalle
What gets me about the current smoking ban is that it's about the 5th different set of smoking regulations passed here in Austin in the last 10 years. They pass a ban of some sort, then the city council changes and they repeal it and pass a new one, and it happens over and over again. I have absolute confidence that this ban, which is the most severe yet, will get the boot pretty quickly and a whole new set of rules will be proposed and voted in.
And of course, the great irony is that even without the ban most restaurants wouldn't allow smoking and a reasonable number of clubs and bars would restrict it appropriately, and the free market would push them in the right direction.
But the bright side is that this is good for the surrounding communities. We've got some fine new restaurants out here in Manor and we allow smoking in ventilated smoking sections, so take the quick drive out 290 and stop in for a beer a steak and a smoke at the Cafe 290.
Dave
3 - Eric Olsen
HI Ben, well-presented but I have to disagree. We've had this general discussion several times now, but my quick position is this: there is no good reason to allow smoking indoors in any public building. The health and nuisance negatives simply outweigh the positives. And I can't recall a nonsmoker disagreeing with this, so I can't help but think there is some personal identification going on somewhere inside with indoor smoking defenders.
4 - Erik
There is no right to spray asbestos dust or cancer causing cigarette around.
I support people being able to smoke as much as they want. I would even in indoor spaces except that the activity causes other people's health to be damaged.
An indoor smoking ban is acceptable to a great majority of people unless one believes there should be no regulation of food, air, or working conditions of any kind of restaurants.
5 - -E
Heh, I didn't even know they held the vote on it. Though, I probably still wouldn't have voted. Why? I honestly don't care if people can smoke in a bar. The restaurants I frequent are already non-smoking facilities. And I don't really go down to 6th Street all that often that coming home smelling like an ashtray is really that big of a deal. I don't smoke. I know that if I don't want to be around it I can choose not to go to those bars. It will be nice that when I go to shows at some of the small venues I don't have to inhale so much smoke (most of which, in Austin anyway, seems to not be from a cigarette anyway).
Whatever, it really doesn't have all that much bearing on me other than how I will go home smelling.
6 - RedTard
I'm glad to see Austin is taking more small steps towards complete government control of our lives.
Why doesn't our government just drop the slippery slope babysteps crap and get to the real three point plan.
1)Go ahead and jam a goddamed GPS and camera enabled tracking device up all our asses. (note: camera can detect "deviant" sexual behavior and device can also serve as a national ID/credit card/wal-mart rewards card)
2)Get rid of cigarettes, alcohol, fats sweets and anything except government contracted (think Halliburton-Kraft-RJ Reynolds) vitamin, mineral, and prozac enhanced tofu. We can all live to be a hundred and fuckin fifty as long as we continue to work and be productive members of society.
3) Tax everything. Everything that can be taxed can and must be monitored and controlled. And just remember when you are waiting in line every 37 feet to drop that change in the toll booth that you money is going directly to some cat food eating elderly or needy schoolchild, never to line the pockets of some well connected no-bid government contractor.
7 - -E
And who is going down that slippery slope again?
8 - Dave Nalle
Y'know, we disgruntled Austinites ought to get together and start a group blog or something.
Dave
9 - -E
Sure, but I don't think I count as being disgruntled.
10 - Dave Nalle
Man, how can you live in Austin and not be disgruntled?
Surely you at least drive a car? Does the toll road scam mean nothing to you?
Dave
11 - -E
HA! I think the "super highway" they are planning is about the most retarded thing ever. And yes, the toll road crap is just that, crap, esp since I live off 183 for the moment. But traffic doesn't bother me. Yes, I am one of *those* folks that traffic doesn't get to. The one thing that ever made me "disgruntled" was when I lived relatively near campus and there wasn't parking. But whatever. I tend to let things roll off my back more than not.
So what, pray tell, has you so disgruntled?
12 - Cerulean
I'm a former cocktail waitress who is now disabled by a respiratory disorder brought on by exposure to second hand smoke.
One of the the characteristics of addicts is that they don't see how their behavior is affecting other people, only their own wish to indulge. By your reckoning, about five hundred business did still allow smoking, so that made at least 5,000 working people being subjected to a Class A carcinogen at work. That was wrong I'm glad that the people of Austin voted to stop that.
13 - Dave Nalle
Well, E. I don't like paying tolls to build roads which have already previously been fully funded with both bonds and federal highway funds. I also don't like the city of Austin dumping all of its waste and all of its problems in Eastern Travis County - where I actually live. I'm also really not at all fond of the SH 130 plan which builds a highway from nowhere to nowhere through a bunch of family farms which they've condemned and seized, and which according to all studies will not alleviate traffic on IH35 and likely won't even get much use for the next 20 years or so. Oh, and I also don't much like that my district is represented by the most corrupt state rep in the area who keeps getting reelected because part of the district is in east Austin where the voters are too brainwashed to throw her ass out. And I could go on.
Dave
14 - dbj
God, why do all these posts include whiners who think that a smoking ban is somehow another excessive government control?
Uh, let's see how it developed:
Democratic vote? Check.
Campaigns For and Against? Check
Early Voting? Check
So, explain again why this is somehow the most undemocratic thing you've ever heard of?
Plus, what's with this desire to ignore the scientifically proven health effects of secondhand smoke? Study after study shows that secondhand smoke causes cancer, respiratory illness, and heart problems - and the impact is felt in a person's body almost immediately.
It kind of annoys me that the same people who are pissed about the Bush administration ignoring the science on global warming or the science around evolution are some of the first people to ignore the proven effects of secondhand smoke on others.
What's up with this? If it is harmful to others, why are you trying to force it on them? At the very least, stop sounding like the right-wing wackos who never met a scientist they didn't try to discredit.
15 - -E
HAHA, because I am not disgruntled doesn't mean I am ok with those things. I've ranted and raved so much about that stupid SH idea that noone I know will let me mention it anymore....And I agree the toll idea is beyond stupidity. But I've lived here since I was 13 and know the back way to anywhere I need to go, so I will simply refuse to pay it. So yeah, I think all those things are bad and I can rant with the best of them, but it takes more for me to be disgruntled.
The snake I found in my kitchen in the middle of the night last night took care of that part for me.
16 - Dave Nalle
It took your gruntles off?
I would submit that Austin is still a damned fine place to live compared to most of the country, and creeping governmental socialism is a problem in city governments from coast to coast.
But perhaps because it is such a potentially nice place, each incremental implementation of idiocy is that much more offensive.
Dave
17 - Anne Nonymous
You write: "Let's step aside from the fact that this bill sounds the death knell for bars and musicians in Austin."
Yes, let's. Because it isn't true. It's a lie promulgated by (Guess who?) Big Tobacco, which fears that being around less smoke will help addicts to quit. See
http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0145.pdf
for accurate statistics.
Austin's smoking ordinance is flawed in that it discriminates against certain employees (those who work in bars with "smoking rooms") rather than protecting all of them.
18 - Dan the Man
Wow.... someone compared global warming to smokers... nice.... except for the fact that cigarettes kill thousands of people if not hundreds of thousands? either way... global warming has to deal with killing what.... everyone? oh ya or even better lets live in waterworld! Yay
Either way... to the real point. Everyone has the choice to work or go to the environment that they want to be in? What about hookah lounges or bars? people choose to go to those. If you have a problem with any inside smokers, dont go to a place where it is allowed.... its that simple.