{"id":7533,"date":"2014-12-19T02:44:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T02:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7533"},"modified":"2014-12-19T02:44:43","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T02:44:43","slug":"time-to-revisit-smoking-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7533","title":{"rendered":"Time to revisit smoking ban?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Recently, I had lunch with a friend at a downtown Amarillo restaurant.<\/p>\n<p>The diner has been around for many years. I walked in, greeted my friend Gary, who then said, &#8220;Sorry about the cigarette smoke in here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the place smelled of smoke. The smoking section was separate from the rest of the place, but the &#8220;aroma&#8221; was distinct and, to be candid, quite disgusting.<\/p>\n<p>It got me thinking. Amarillo has referred indoor smoking bans twice to voters. The referenda failed both times.<\/p>\n<p>Is it time to revisit the issue? I would say &#8220;yes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TobaccoFreeAMA?fref=nf<\/p>\n<p>The Amarillo City Council has a physician among its members. Dr. Brian Eades delivers babies for a living and he&#8217;s well-versed on certain hazards to people&#8217;s health. I would hope Dr. Eades could take the lead in promoting a push to make indoor smoking illegal. Yes, I mean <em>require<\/em> businesses to end it.<\/p>\n<p>I totally understand that most businesses in Amarillo ban smoking already. Almost all new restaurants are non-smoking establishments.<\/p>\n<p>But when you walk into a time-honored place, such as the one my friend and I visited the other day, you still get to whiff the odor of cigs in the back room.<\/p>\n<p>I quit smoking cold turkey just short of 35 years ago. The older I get the more militant I become about smoking.<\/p>\n<p>I understand the hazards of second-hand smoke and reject efforts to dismiss those hazards.<\/p>\n<p>Amarillo&#8217;s governing council has a real-life medical doctor serving the residents of this city. It&#8217;s time to speak out, loudly, against this hazard to public health &#8212; and to vote once again on banning smoking indoors everywhere in the city.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I had lunch with a friend at a downtown Amarillo restaurant. The diner has been around for many years. I walked in, greeted my friend Gary, who then said, &#8220;Sorry about the cigarette smoke in here.&#8221; Yes, the place smelled of smoke. The smoking section was separate from the rest of the place, but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7533\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Time to revisit smoking ban?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[9],"tags":[276,288,742,990,4291,4292],"class_list":["post-7533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-brian-eades","tag-cigarette-smoke","tag-smoking","tag-smoking-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7533","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=7533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}