BLOOMBERG BUTTS IN.(New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, proposes to completely ban smoking in restaurants and bars)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 09-SEP-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

You might suppose, at first thought, that the opposition to Mayor Bloomberg's recent proposal for a complete ban on smoking in bars and restaurants would be both passionate and powerful. Like the owners of guns, the consumers of cigarettes are so attached to their cylindrical objects of desire that they are willing to court death for them. And there are more than a million cigarette smokers of voting age in this city. This is a figure that might be expected to give pause even to a politician as unconventional as our billionaire Republicrat mayor. It's about the same as the number of rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments, and although these programs have their own equivalent of secondhand smoke--to wit, the fact that everybody else's rent is a little bit higher on account of them--rent control and rent stabilization are sacred cows. Ciggies are oxen to be gored at will.

The assent of the City Council will be required to change the current law, which, while forbidding smoking in restaurants that seat more than thirty-five patrons, exempts...

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