As of this Sunday, Nov. 13, there is no smoking allowed on outdoor platforms, ticket and boarding areas of New York terminals and stations of the MTA Metro-North and Long Island Rail Railroad lines.
In a press release from the MTA, Metro-North President Howard Permut said, “The new law is a benefit to our customers, helping us in our efforts to provide a healthier and cleaner environment on our platforms and in our ticketing and boarding area. We appreciate the action taken by Governor Cuomo and the Legislature to protect New Yorkers and improve public health.”
Along with the ban comes a PR campaign to educate riders of the law, including permanent signage, customer email alerts, social media outreach on Facebook and Twitter, and public service announcements from celebrities like New York Jets Super Bowl legend Joe Namath and James Lipton, host of TV's "Inside the Actors Studio.”
Outdoor smoking bans are a contentious issue—as evidenced by the comments on yesterday's story in Nyack Patch.
While customers are expected to comply with the law immediately, there will be a grace period when MTA police will issue warnings to violators and not summonses.
What do you think of the ban? Let us know in today’s poll.
Defiant Long Island Rail Road smokers lit up as they waited for trains yesterday -- and lit into the new law that prohibits them from puffing on the platform. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/hey_lirr_butt_out_HYO6JItL6eA4X9OiA6JmrM#ixzz1dkxoe4Nw
Rob, I would agree, but I *did* find it interesting that at one point in the 90s Winston yanked all the additives out of its tobacco and advertised itself as being 100% pure tobacco leaf. Guess what? The Antismokers immediately started screaming high holy hell to the government and forced Winston to add a note to its advertisements saying "No Additives Does Not Mean A Safer Cigarette." Which obviously also means that the government is telling us that all the additives do NOT make smoke more dangerous. Interesting what happens in your brain once you begin believing the Antismokers, eh? - MJM P.S. David, and SRT: I've heard nothing from either of you since I asked for some specific and substantive actual criticisms of researched and referenced material. Don't you have any?
Issy, unless I am remembering incorrectly, Winston hadn't actually made any such claim: their ads had simply added a tag about being "made with 100% all-natural, additive free tobacco" or something close to that. - MJM
What budget book are you talking about? No MTA documents I've looked at have shown the bridges are making money.
Today's "Prohibitionists" are a lot smarter than the ones running around a hundred years ago. They learned an important lesson: the soil has to be tilled and the seeds well planted before you can haul in your crop. This time they've put a lot of effort into changing public perception and securing perpetual funding: neither of which Carrie Nation ever had for her work. And once the nutsos are done with smoking, they WILL move on alcohol. - MJM - MJM
- MJM
Well who didn't see THAT coming? After all, this is a campaign. He's not wrong. He'll never be wrong. He _can't_ be wrong--his whole life is wrapped up in this nonsense, & he spams the globe pushing it; even the finest minds in science and medicine can't sway him. That's how he got to the exalted position he enjoys today(!) Google his book for over 80,000 links(!), many his own posts on msg boards. All those links he posts? More chances to buy his book or donate to his causes. The links, now google-able at The Patch's sites, help raise his book's profile, and his sites' rankings. They're spammed ads, pure and simple--"viral marketing." Other out-of-state activists here: magnetic, smartin and cyzane. They're only a handful, but they have these websites and emails where they alert each other to vulnerable, sucker sites. Then they swarm, trying to make it look as if there's dissent. Imagine if this were done by a tiny group of Birthers, 9/11 Plot nuts, JFK theorists, Holocaust Deniers & Flat Earthers? Where would local boards be if these groups descended on every story that mentioned JFK, or flying "around" the world? A turgid mess, as here. Left alone, locals would appear in support of the ban here, as usual. And the spammers can't have that. They have to make it _look_ as if there's local debate. But really, there isn't. Only spam.
Anyone interested in seeing the history of it can simply google: GeneBB AND McFadden and then make their own judgment as to who abuses internet bulletin boards and who posts meaningful material and arguments addressing their topics and engaging in discussion. Apologies to the Patch editor for attracting GeneB to your home, but I really have no control over it. - MJM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5Lec0PtqIU :/ MJM
Maybe we should stop using deodorants, bar soap, toothpaste & hair spray since they may contain carcinogens. Maybe carpeting should be banned because it contains a petrolatum-based chemical that can "outgas" into the home and cause cancer. Or maybe we should all own cows because certain milk containers contain DDT, dieldrin, heptachlor and more, all of which increases the chance of getting colon, breast and prostate cancers. And maybe we should stop using laundry detergents like Tide and Cheer because they contain the carcinogen trisodium nitrilotriacetate, and stop using Lysol Disinfectant because it contains dioxin. And let's stop putting talcum powder on the bottoms of babies because the main ingredient is a carcinogen that increases the risk of ovarian cancer. And while we're banning all these products, might as well ban science classes in schools because formaldehyde is used when dissecting frogs; or stop using particleboard and plywood, and stop cleaning our toilets and bringing our clothes to dry cleaners, and stop using pesticides in our gardens. Maybe if all the non-smoking fanatics spent more time looking for a cure to stop smoking addiction, instead of imposing their beliefs on smokers, we'd all be happier.
The reason the stories caught my eye was because I had previously used figures from the Surgeon Generals' Reports to calculate the amount of formaldehyde in secondhand smoke that they had assured us was so deadly. The formadehyde you'd generally be exposed to in the secondhand smoke at any decently ventilated bar or restaurant is present in concentrations of about .007ppm. That means that the "perfectly safe trace amounts" of formaldehyde in baby shampoo were over 87,000 times as concentrated as those we had been warned were dangerous in the air of bars. Clearly someone was telling some lies. Wanna guess who? - MJM
Instead, he attacks me for not devoting my life to endless online argument, like him. The mind-reading McFadden assumes everyone has a book to promote, everyone spends infinite hours spamming the internet to sell books, everyone's out waging a full-time assault on msg boards. No, that's McF's job, not mine. Oh, he shoots out some pseudo-scientific flak to make it _seem_ as if he's not advertising, but his interminable, unrelenting postings on websites is an ad campaign with 1 single, overriding msg, repeated time & again on untold thousands of msg boards (advertising depends on reach & repetition): BUY MY BOOK! I don't post "meaningful material??" The wholesale abuse of msg boards IS meaningful; 80,000 links is more, it's a travesty. This is the subject introduced by McF himself when he first dumped his ads on the Patch. I thought he _wanted people talking about him & his book. If I'd complimented him, he wouldn't be whining, "not meaningful!" "engages in discussion??" He doesn't "discuss," he proselytizes; he advocates, he TELLS. He corrects & instructs & beats down the poor ignorant local peons. And when he "wins," (always) he crows about it, as above. He "engages" ONLY to tout his agenda. When one participant is never wrong, will never be wrong, absolutely _can't_ be wrong--and worse, does this in wars he himself instigated all over the internet--it's not a discussion. It's a PR campaign.
Look at one "meaningful argument:" The mind-reading McF claims I think I "won't be noticed." Huh? He falsely assumes I didn't see The Patch's "Email me updates about this story" notice?? (That's how he can respond to my posting within an hour; even if he can't answer my charges, he always has to have the last word, as quickly as possible, so as to distract, to deflect attention from the truth; it's all part of the Campaigner's Creed.) This "meaningful argument" is an example of how McF can take a simple posting, make an unwarranted assumption, & inflate that assumption to form the basis of a scurrilous, completely unfactual personal smear--a 3-step process based on nothing at all but the obsession to villify his perceived enemies in any way possible. If he can so quickly & easily pump out such a vile, knee-jerk, ignoramus response like this on a simple matter, imagine what he can do to science. Meaningful?? Hah! And note how, terrified, he tries to cozy up to the Patch editor with his disingenuous "apology," pretending they're all buddy-buddy, all on the same side here, & it's me who is the invader of The Patch's "home." Ick. He owes the Patch an apology all right--for himself, his incessant spam & his repellant, oily smarm.
Readers & local residents have every right to know what's really going on here. As do editors.
"Readers & local residents have every right to know what's really going on here. As do editors." They do indeed Gene, which is why I recommended they google our history. Some of your attacks have been erased, either by you or by board editors over the years, but most are still there. Gene, you may not have noticed, but, unlike you, I've never tried to hide who I am or what my arguable "competing interest" is in my internet or political activities. Nor have I ever gotten any pay or grant money to support them. And finally, I most certainly have not tried to "pose as a normal poster," hiding my identity on one board as MikeM, and on others as MikeMM, MikeMMM, MikeM5, etc. ad nauseum. Why don't you share a bit about your own situation Gene? Or don't your grants for this stuff allow for that? Now, unless something truly unexpected comes up, I'd like to return to discussing the board topic with Chris Clement et al. - MJM
Once again, not a single denial of any charge. No, in fact, his spam campaign is all my fault(!) because I've exposed him before doing this exact same thing to message boards around the world. There's no reasonable response possible of course, so he attacks the messenger. Unable to dispute my charges, he tries to deflect attention by going after me with an ad hominem flak barrage of confused obfuscation, arcane accusations, yet another off-the-wall misquote, & some sneakily implied--make that asserted--libel. Here's a wild idea: not everyone's out trying to make themselves famous by fax-blasting their names and products all over the internet. All I know is that if I were a webmaster who'd set up a msg board to serve my community and one day saw my local readers being abused and taunted by an outsider on a personal mission, saw my board being jumped on as just another stolen soapbox, just one more hijacked website amongst tens of thousands being despoiled daily by some full-time, remorseless campaigner on a worldwide book tour/ego-boosting crusade-- I'd be furious.
>>I'd like to return to discussing the board topic with Chris Clement et al. You mean the poster who suddenly showed up 5 months after the article ran to support you? 5 months after the article, but a mere 8 HOURS after you discovered you were in trouble? You mean the poster who, out of all the minutes available to contribute over the last 5 months, chose this very moment in time--within just 8 hours(!)--to plop down on the Patch's board and support you with some inane, highly improbable off-topic nonsense, a potpourri of everything _but_ the subject of the article, a mishmash of assertions covering territory all over the map and requiring a range of disciplines to speak authoritatively about, a rancid stew of clap-trap that some would say is 99 44/100 percent pure propaganda suspiciously similar to talking-point data streams easily plucked from pro-smoking websites? And not one word about the platform smoking ban? You mean that poster? Why, what a coincidence! Well, carry on "discussing the board topic," you two, complimenting each other into infinity and beyond, I'm not stopping such honorable men.