BCT Editorial – 2/27/08

This page was last updated on February 27, 2008.

Fear factor; Editorial; Beaver County Times; February 27, 2008.

The editorial’s subtitle is “State lawmakers are so afraid of offending anybody that they end up doing very little.”

This is at least the 28^th anti-smoking on private property editorial since March 2005. There have been so many the Times is recycling editorial titles. The previous 27 editorials were “Momentum,” “Banned in Beaver,” “Get used to it,” “Trendy #1,” “Trendy #2,” “Straggling behind,” “Salutes & Boots,” “Smoked out #1,” “Smoked out #2,” “Smoked out #3,” “Smoke free,” “Survey says smoking ban popular,” “Inertia,” “Doing harm,” “Smokey state,” “Quit stalling,” “Snuffed out,” “Cleaning the air,” “Keeping up,” “Smoking ban,” “Life and death,” “Poor excuses,” “Banned,” “Smoky City,” “No more delays,” “Haunting fear,” and “Sad state.” 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. Also, note how these editorials frequently engage in name-calling, as did this one.

Though “Snuffed out” conceded the Times is calling for a smoking ban in private spaces (bars, clubs, restaurants, etc.), the Times reverted to form in “Cleaning the air” and is back to referring to private property as “public spaces.”

I wish someone would explain the real reason behind the crusade against smoking on private property. As I’ve detailed in previous critiques, the reasons cited by the aforementioned editorials don’t hold up under scrutiny. Could it be “the camel’s nose under the tent” strategy to open the door to other nanny government directives? What’s the next “unhealthy behavior” the Times will want to ban? See my critique of “Food fight” to see what I mean. When will the Times find a study that asserts getting information from anywhere other than a local newspaper is unhealthy? <g>