The push to ghettoize cigarette smokers has been taken to the next level in Great Neck (just two miles from the New York City border!) where the town elders have voted to ban smoking on sidewalks. It's only a matter of time before this latest attack on smokers—which will soon drive them out of NYC parks and beaches—happens here, inevitably culminating with a law requiring smokers to wear electronic collars that zap them if they light up outside designated subterranean nicotine bunkers. The smoking world needs a savior. Enter Audrey Silk, head of the NYC-based smoker's rights group Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, has anything to say about it.
Silk insists this isn't just about the right to share cancer with all our brothers and sisters, it's about basic freedoms that all Americans need to fight for. "If you love freedom, if you love what this country stands for, non-smokers should be out there smoking with the smokers in protest," Silk tells Newsday. But liberty has already been snuffed out in Great Neck Village, where, starting yesterday, the town prohibited "smoking tobacco and other substances on sidewalks along or within 125 feet of Middle Neck Road in front of commercial establishments, the Village Green Park and the Village Housing Authority."
Violators could face up to $15 days in jail or a $1,000 fine. The ban was reportedly inspired by two local merchants whose customers complained about cigarette smoke wafting inside when the doors opened. Sung Ho Cho, who owns Great Neck Cleaners, tells Newsday, "My customers complain. They hate the smoke smell. Now, I'm happy." He's healthy, too, because secondhand smoke is estimated to account for at least 46,000 deaths from heart disease and 3,400 deaths from lung cancer in nonsmokers nationwide each year. But hey—this is about freedom, and non-smokers are free to go inhale oxygen elsewhere, right?
