BCT Editorial – 1/25/07

This page was last updated on January 30, 2007.

Smoked out; Editorial; Beaver County Times; January 25, 2007.

This is at least the 11^th anti-smoking editorial since March 2005. There have been so many the Times is recycling editorial titles. The previous 10 editorials were “Momentum,” “Banned in Beaver,” “Get used to it,” “Trendy #1,” “Straggling behind,” “Salutes & Boots,” “Smoked out #1,” “Smoked out #2,” “Trendy #2,” and “Smoke free.” The comments in those critiques apply to this editorial as well.

Maybe it’s just me, but if I were writing an editorial to convince readers to agree with my position, I wouldn’t use “Trendy” as the title. To me, it conveys messages of smoke (no pun intended) blowing in the wind and/or being a slave to fashionable positions.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“The writing is on the wall as far as people wanting smoke-free environments.

“The latest indication comes from a poll of 301 Pennsylvania residents conducted by the Institute for Good Medicine at the Pennsylvania Medical Society.”

[RWC] Hmm, a poll allegedly “conducted by the Institute for Good Medicine at the Pennsylvania Medical Society.” I wonder what the results will be. <g>

“Participants were give four options when it came to where they would prefer to dine: a smoke-free restaurant, a restaurant with a non-smoking section, a restaurant with a smoking section or it didn’t matter.

“A whopping 56 percent said they preferred a smoke-free restaurant. The remaining 44 percent was split fairly evenly among the other three choices - 15.5 percent for smoking sections, 14 percent for non-smoking sections and 14.5 percent for it didn’t matter.”

[RWC] No kidding, Dick Tracy. Given that smokers are a minority, what result did the Times expect?

Here’s what the editorial didn’t tell us. According to the Centers for Disease Control, as of 2005 only 20.9% of us are smokers. That means 79.1% are nonsmokers. If nearly 80% of us are nonsmokers, why wasn’t the “whopping 56 percent” much closer to 80%?

Further, the editorial felt a need to break out the other three choices even though they tell the same thing. In other words, 44% of us either don’t care about whether or not a restaurant allows smoking or are happy as long as we have a choice.

Once you put on your thinking cap for more than five seconds, that “whopping 56 percent” isn’t so “whopping” after all.

Bogus poll numbers aside, the issue has never been about what the majority of people desire. It’s been about the right of a property owner to decide whether or not smoking would be allowed on his private property.

“It’s only a matter of time before businesses, politicians and smokers realize the new reality and adjust to it.”

[RWC] Using the Times “logic,” it should “realize the new reality and adjust to it” and go out of business because the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette circulation is greater than the Times.