Digest #21: This Month in Smoke-free News [Part 1]

Man, oh man there is a lot of hullabaloo about the New York City smoking ban (no rhyme intended)! It's like I totally forgot how stubborn and irritating New Yorkers can be when I initially said that they would suck it up after a couple of weeks. Anyway, as promised, the public's reaction to the NYC smoking ban:

From the get-go, the issue of enforcement has been in the limelight. Mayor Michael Bloomberg made it clear that New Yorkers themselves would be the primary enforcers of the ban--not police officers, who threaten to issue $50 fines for ban violations. So, like a bunch of little kids testing the leniency of a new babysitter, journalists took to the city's parks and simultaneously tested patrons' sense of civic duty and police officers' resolve to hand out fines to smokers. The New York Times came to the following conclusion:

"...while New Yorkers may care about a lot of things — rent, sex, Derek Jeter’s batting average — some blowhard smoking in a public park is not high on the list." --The New York Times

With a decoy smoker deliberately blowing smoke in people's faces, it took over an hour and a half for someone to finally have the nerve to speak up and tell him to butt out. What a shame.

The New York Observer provided insight on how strict police officers are with regard to the new law. This was actually a really great piece of journalism (not that The Times article wasn't), even though I'm finding it difficult to handle the truth that it reveals about the ban's enforcement. Their conclusion:

"Fear not, smoke-happy brothers and sisters. The world is still our ashtray." --The New York Observer

(Gross.) The point that stuck with me after reading this was that park rangers--not police officers--are the only ones who have the authority to hand out the $50 fines. It makes sense, though, because most of the area covered by the ban consists of city parks, which is why the journalists from The Observer found it so easy to get away with smoking right in front of a cop in the middle of Times Square. What's even more troublesome to me is that park rangers are required to give smokers a verbal warning before issuing a fine. The New York Post similarly reports that smokers must refuse to put out their cigarettes before receiving the penalty. Even so, it took a Daily News photographer six whole hours to receive the city's first ticket.

My conclusion (albeit from 3000 miles away): The ban is hardly being enforced. Even though many would question the purpose of a 'biting' ban without any 'teeth', I think that this ban is much better than no ban at all. That said, enforcement needs to be ramped up, pronto, or else this is going to turn into a running joke very quickly, which really means one thing: the ban's repeal. And I don't necessarily think that government should be devoting more manpower to enforcing the ban. As Mayor Bloomberg said, enforcement will depend mostly on the integrity of citizens. However, I sincerely hope that Bloomberg plans on running a series of encouraging PSAs to rouse citizens to speak up to those who knowingly or unknowingly violate the ban.

In my mind, this is a real litmus test for, and pivotal point in, the future of American public smoking. If New Yorkers can toughen up and use the undeniable power of peer pressure to enforce this ban, this will be a huge step toward a smoke-free United States. If New York City fails, the media will eat it up, deterring other major cities from moving forward with their own bans. Don't get me wrong--smoking will eventually be banned in all public places--I just think that success in NYC can be a big catalyst in making this happen sooner.

Part 2 to follow...

P.S. - I can't decide what's worse: the purpose of NYC C.L.A.S.H. (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment) or their awful website. Oops, was that harassment?