"Golf and cigars go together like a hand in a glove''
Seems the city of Spokane and golfers are battling over a smoking ban. While I'm in the school of people repulsed by the smell of those Rottweiler terds, I do support the rights of those who want to increase their chances of some form of really awful cancer.
"Golf and cigars go together like a hand in a glove,'' said Dale Taylor of Tacoma, president of the Cigar Association of Washington, a smokers' rights groups. "That may be the only time some people smoke.''
Washington state is among the least hospitable places for smokers, with no smoking allowed in any public indoor space, or outside within 25 feet of a door or window. But the proposed smoking ban on public links has struck a nerve, in part because of the vastness of golf courses. Playing a typical 18-hole course, such as Downriver in Spokane, means traveling easily more than three miles.
"If I was just walking and somebody was 300 feet away, I'm bothering them?'' avid smoker and golfer Greg Presley told the Spokane parks board during a public hearing. "We've got to have some common sense.''
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 06:22 PM
Reader Comments (9)
Common sense is always in extremely short supply when dealing with environmentalist/smoking ban groups.
These groups are never happy with compromise, but only the furtherance of their extreme views. Unfortunately they are quite vocal, and most politicians bow down to their demands in the name of PC and illusion of more votes come re-election time.
My alma mater, the University of Michigan, is now making plans to impose a campus wide indoor/outdoor smoking ban, joining at least a couple of other Big Ten schools (Iowa and Indiana, I think), and who-knows-how-many-other schools. Of course smoking in all university buildings has long been banned (execpt, apparently, for graduate assistants teaching Eastern European Languages, by the smell of fumes coming from under their office doors). Smoking in Michigan Stadium has long been banned. The new rule would presumably ban smoking on the University's two golf courses. This is coming, golfers, to a course near you.
The justification is not, and cannot possibly be, "the protection of non-smokers from secondhand smoke." Rather, it is an institutional landowner saying, "We propose to use our landowning status to enforce our view of the undesirability of smoking on you."
I think many cigar smokers are very aware of others and try to keep our admittedly bad habit away from non-smokers. A golf course is one of the very few places left to do this.
If I can't smoke on 200 acres that are populated with fewer than 100 people then where can I?