A Fellow Traveler

Amid all the turmoil in the world the latest major issue in Ithaca is a proposed ban on smoking in public places including the "popular" outdoor shopping center known as the Ithaca Commons.

To set the stage: I don't smoke, and I don't want to ban people from smoking in public. But it seems that local government does.

Enter on Cornell University college student who had a column published in the Ithaca Journal this weekend and did his part for towny-student relations.

Read the whole column. Interesting bits quoted below.

"Quite alarmingly, Ithaca is poised to take a misguided step in smoking regulations that is driven by misrepresentations of scientific conclusions and a legislatively inappropriate moralism that is paradoxically absent in other aspects of local culture...

In 2006, the surgeon general released a strongly worded report that summarized the strong consensus of the scientific evidence that exposure to indoor tobacco smoke posed a public health hazard. But what proponents of outdoor smoking restrictions conveniently omit is that the report included no evidence of the effects of outdoor environmental tobacco smoke...Knowing that they don't have science to back up these policies, many anti-smoker groups have taken a moralistic approach: Smoking is shameful, and the more it is out of the public's eyes, the better. Their logic is eerily similar to that of those who think gay couples shouldn't hold hands in public, but to keep that out of public view."

I found the whole column very effective. But, I'm me and I don't view those people up on the hill (at Cornell University) as part of another tribe.