Smoking Bans in the Parks and Streets of New York (Blog Post #3)

There are a good amount of states within the US that have enforced the smoking bans, but one state in particular that may or may not have pushed these bans farther is the state of New York. I have researched over some of the videos that have to deal with this debate, and the video I chose to write on is called "smoking ban new york" from Youtube's source of videos.

In this video, the people of Great Neck village wanted to make a vote to ban smoking on sidewalks and main streets of the village, they first interview Ralph Kreitzman which is the mayor of Great Neck, he begins to discuss that merchants were complaining to him that smoke was coming into their buildings that also made the costumers complain which caused this ban, he also adds that the ban spreads out to some parks in the village and that the fine would be 1,000 dollars if you chose to smoke in those restricted areas, he states that the bans are made for "the benefit of our residents, avoid the inconvenience, and the detrimental affect of second-hand smoke."

While these smoking bans could be for the better good, some people decided to speak out over these bans. They interviewed a man Dan Ostad and his opinion was "I think that it's a good idea, but I think your going to tick a lot of people off." eventually they interviewed a women named Sophia, and her opinion was "If my smoke bothers people, how about the cars? shut off the engines of the cars. because we breath carbon monoxide." They interviewed another man named Bruced Zipes and the main reason of his "mixed feelings" of these bans is because "There intensions are good, but it's another right and another privilege that the government is taking away from us." If you have read some of my previous posts, this mans statement would connect to many of the non-supporters arguments on the debate of these bans because in one of the articles I previously wrote on is about the non-supporters arguing that the more smoking bans the government makes, the more they limit the liberty and rights of peoples decisions.

In the end, one of the anchors from CNN news that made this video points out that the bans will be enforced by the end of next week, she also questions that "If this ban can really be enforced since the village doesn't have it's own police force, they'll only be relying on parking enforcement officers to be on the lookout for smokers."