The Cabell County Board of Health(due to the fact Boards of Health have authority in West Virginia to enact smoking bans, unlike in most states where it's up to local city/town councils to debate smoking bans within a community, or county boards/fiscal courts/etc. for unincorporated county areas, excluding states that pre-empt local communities and counties from debating bans) begun enforcement of a smoking ban expansion for bars and video lottery parlors as of March of this year. It's sad that it seems like from what I've read about how West Virginia Boards of Health operate, their members are essentially appointed by politicians and not by voters, and there is little way to hold such health boards accountable when they pass extremely stupid laws like this. Their old county ban only banned smoking in workplaces and restaurants(places where kids went to, but respected adult businesses by allowing them to have whatever smoking policies they wanted to have, even if it was totally non-smoking), what was so wrong with leaving that ban alone? And if there are any West Virginia posters, please let me know if my understanding of how West Virginia Boards of Health operate in each county is correct, or incorrect.
Special thanks to Dave Hitt's site documenting the negative impact of smoking bans for giving me the heads-up on the first article. Original articles are posted below, the 2nd one on WSAZ has a heck of a comments section I need to do a read of myself, and found after a Google search:
http://www.marshallparthenon.com/news/residents-protest-smoking-ban-bars-left-empty-1.2186636
http://www.wsaz.com/home/headlines/86733487.html
BTW, my apologies in case anyone has had trouble posting comments, since I read on one message board that someone was having trouble posting comments. You should be able to make a comment, as long as you're logged in to Blogger, and/or your Google account. I just don't want totally anonymous comments, that's all.
ReplyDelete