Apr 22 2008
Spartanburg Council Says No to Smoking Ban
Spartanburg City Council gave an initial thumbs-down Monday to banning smoking in bars and restaurants in response to a state Supreme Court ruling allowing a ban in Greenville.
Council members frowned on the idea, saying - for now - they didn’t want to tell business owners how to operate and espousing fears that bars and restaurants would not locate inside city limits. Mayor Bill Barnet also questioned how police would enforce the ban inside businesses.
“I don’t think we want our public safety team chasing down a smoker in the back of Wild Wings for $25,” he said.
This is because in Spartanburg there is a City Council made up of logical common sense individuals who have respect for property rights. This is the antithesis of the Greenville City Council which is comprised of authoritarian freaks who send out the cigarette patrol to bars to ticket people because apparently the Greenville PD have too much time on their hands.
At last one city that looks at the broad picture of what these smoking bans do to the businesses.
In Myrtle Beach, every day another restaurant goes to no smoking. They’ve cut their desserts in half, alienated those of us who might have chosen them as a favorite restaurant, and lost business…all in the name of political correctness…and apparently a refusal to install some kind of air purifying system that could take care of the problem.
Surfside Beach has even made it illegal to smoke on the beach now. Let’s see how that affects their tourism…they already struggle for the vacationers that they do have. In a couple of years all the smokers will make sure they go to back to Myrtle or North Myrtle. The whole thing is ridiculous!
Here in Chicago, after waiting nearly four months, quite a few owners of “shot and beer” places got impatient waiting for all the new non smoking customers who promised to “flock” to all the places. They now allow smoking, figuring any fines imposed as just another cost of doing business. They say they will not go down without a fight.