BCT Editorial – 4/27/08

This page was last updated on April 27, 2008.

No joke; Editorial; Beaver County Times; April 27, 2008.

This is at least the 34^th anti-smoking on private property editorial since March 2005, and the ninth in the last four months. There have been so many the Times is recycling editorial titles. The previous 33 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,” “Sad state,” “Fear factor,” “Pay up,” “Banned in Bristol,” “Escape artists,” “Lapped,” and “The right thing.” As it has in some previous editorials, this one goes with the “but they did it” approach. This editorial also threw in the we’re “a national joke” card.

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>