{"id":26706,"date":"2017-12-06T00:13:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T00:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26706"},"modified":"2017-12-06T00:13:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T00:13:12","slug":"amarillo-goes-smoke-free-without-a-city-ordinance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26706","title":{"rendered":"Amarillo goes smoke-free … without a city ordinance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I feel like revisiting an issue that some years ago got a lot of Amarillo, Texas, residents all fired up.<\/p>\n

I am referring to smoking indoors.<\/p>\n

Over the years I have discovered something curious — and quite welcome — about the city where my wife and I live. It’s damn near impossible to find an eating establishment that still allows indoor smoking.<\/p>\n

I haven’t been to every single such establishment in the city, so this isn’t a declaration of fact. It is a perception that has dawned on me.<\/p>\n

City residents twice in recent years rejected municipal referendums calling for a citywide ban on indoor smoking. The calls for a city ordinance came from the medical community that sought to mandate that business owners order customers to keep their smokes unlit while they ate and drank indoors.<\/p>\n

I worked during at least one of those elections for the Amarillo Globe-News. Our newspaper’s editorial policy opposed the mandate. We stated our preference for business owners to do the right thing without<\/em> being forced to do so by the government.<\/p>\n

I gritted my teeth while writing editorials taking that position. My personal preference — and it remains so to this day — was that the city should put residents’ health first. Second-hand smoke is dangerous to those who inhale it. What’s more, a former city councilman — a physician — once admitted to me that his personal preference was to enact a smoke-free ordinance, but that he didn’t want to be the sole vote on the five-member governing panel.<\/p>\n

But now, years later, my wife and I are still eating out on occasion. We have discovered that none of the establishments we frequent allow indoor smoking. Indeed, some of these businesses — which formerly allowed it — have gone smoke-free on their own. Imagine that! It turns out that the newspaper’s opposition to was on the mark.<\/p>\n

A couple of well-known places along Historic Route 66 have gone smoke-free. I interviewed one business owner while working part-time for KFDA NewsChannel 10 and learned that although she opposed the ordinance she was adamantly opposed to smoking inside her restaurant.<\/p>\n

This is all my way of paying tribute to those business owners who have stayed true to their conscience while improving the health climate for their customers.<\/p>\n

I am pretty certain some readers of this blog are going to remind me that there remain some joints around the city that still allow smoke to billow from stogies and cigarettes.<\/p>\n

Fine. I just can’t find them. I prefer it that way.<\/p>\n\n

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I feel like revisiting an issue that some years ago got a lot of Amarillo, Texas, residents all fired up. I am referring to smoking indoors. Over the years I have discovered something curious — and quite welcome — about the city where my wife and I live. It’s damn near impossible to find an … Continue reading Amarillo goes smoke-free … without a city ordinance<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[179,288,4292],"class_list":["post-26706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-news","category-local-news","tag-agn-media","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-smoking-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26709,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26706\/revisions\/26709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}