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Yesterday, two colleagues were discussing the Tribune’s recent change of heart over charging smokers more for their health insurance.
That policy was instituted as of the first of the year, but under the leadership of new Tribune owner Sam Zell it’s been retracted.
Bad idea, argued my male colleague, who sits just a few cubicles over. Smoking is the single biggest preventable cause of illness and death. Anything you can do to stop it is good, including giving people financial incentives to quit.
Let the company penalize workers for their personal habits and you’ve started down a slippery slope, argued my female colleague . . .
This informal late-afternoon discussion reflects an important debate going on across the country. Are we all in the same boat together when it comes to health insurance – do we share risk and responsibility for each other when we become ill – or should we stand on our own? In turn, this mirrors a larger social debate about what it means to be part of a community and how that meshes with individual freedom.
Which of my colleagues' positions makes sense to you and where do you stand?
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Illinois has a pretty stringent smoking ban that prohibits lighting up in just about any building the public has access to, no exceptions.
Recently, I talked to two bar and restaurant owners and both are learning to live with the ban. . . .
Enforcement is another issue with the ban.
Right now the state is trying to decide whether penalties for violators should be civil or criminal.� While they sort that out, it's up to local health and police departments to enforce the ban as they see fit.
"How would you like it if you went to a wine tasting and you couldn't taste the wine?" asked the 53-year-old Denver resident. "It's a freedom issue."
On Thursday, pipe aficionados learned that their attempts to allow smoking inside the Pheasant Run convention center, where some 4,000 were expected to linger over tables laid out with aromatic tobacco and intricately carved briar pipes Saturday and Sunday, had gone up in smoke.
The group had sought, with the help of its attorney members, to get around the state smoking ban that went into effect in January by arguing that the event was essentially a private club meeting. . . .
The hall is strictly staffed with volunteers, convention-goers were to pay $15 to join the club, and attendees were to sign a waiver stating they "freely and willingly accept all the risks of smoking, second-hand smoke, third-hand smoke, and all other risks, both real and imagined, regarding smoking tobacco."
But St. Charles police, DuPage County health officials and anti-smoking advocates didn't buy it. . . .
"I've been thrown out of nine restaurants and three bars in Saginaw because of a pipe," Michigan resident Brad Benard, 58, said after lighting his corncob pipe. "But this is a new low."
Anti-smoking forces "just keep grinding us down," said Reg Stevens, 65, who flew in from Birmingham, England, for the convention and planned to compete in Sunday's pipe-smoking contest.
There will be no indoor smoking at a large convention for pipe smokers in Illinois.
A new Illinois law bans smoking in public places. That's taken some of the steam out of this weekend's Chicagoland International Pipe & Tobacciana Show in St. Charles.
The event draws 4,000 pipe collectors from more than 60 countries. Organizers tried to get around the new law by arguing their gathering was a private club meeting. Police and health officials said no.
Instead, a large smoking tent has been set up 15 feet away from the Pheasant Run convention center.
A new Illinois law bans smoking in public places. That's extinguished some of the fun at this weekend's Chicagoland International Pipe & Tobacciana Show.
The event draws 4,000 pipe collectors from more than 60 countries. Organizers tried to get around the new law by arguing their gathering was a private club meeting.
But police and health officials said no.
Pipe enthusiasts from across the region can enjoy the aroma and flavor of fine tobacco at a convention in St. Charles this weekend -- but they'll have to do it outside just like everybody else.
That's because their meeting place, Pheasant Run Resort, has pulled the plug on an arrangement to allow indoor smoking that came under scrutiny by tobacco opponents and public health officials just days before the convention.
"What we originally had planned, in our opinion and in the opinion of (the city of) St. Charles, met the law," resort general manager Mike Larson said Friday, referring to the statewide smoking ban that took effect Jan. 1.
We don't force the liquor industry to pay damages to alcoholics or the government for selling alcohol, which is a legal product. Drunks take to the road and kill people. We know that. What we don't have hard evidence of is whether second-hand smoke is a serious health smoke, or anti-smoking propaganda.
It will be interesting to see how the state legislature and governor deal with the request smoking be allowed in casinos, but denied in other public places.
Allow it and rake in tens of millions of dollars in revenue, which can be used to help solve the budget problem state government created.
Thank God, the state's got Big Tobacco to feed on. Too few dollars of which will be used to encourage smokers to quit.
The Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club hosts its 13th International Pipe & Tobacciana Show at Pheasant Run Resort in west suburban St. Charles starting Saturday. The event is expected to draw 4,000 pipe enthusiasts from as far as Russia and China.
And there will be smoking.
With the help of attorneys within its local membership of 150 pipe collectors, the club has found enough loopholes in the Illinois smoking ban to allow puffing. The convention center will be leased for the weekend, and members will serve food and provide janitorial services so no hotel employee is exposed to second-hand smoke. Each visitor will pay a membership fee ($15) to join the club before entering.
Five months after the statewide smoking ban forced all Illinois inmates to quit cold turkey, naysayers' predictions of doom have yet to come true, said prison officials.
Detractors of the policy when it was first debated -- such as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees -- warned of the possibility of a cigarette black market arising within prison facilities or arguments over smokes becoming worse due to their scarcity.
AFSCME last year filed an unfair business practices suit against the state, claiming the ban was not fair to employees as it would ratchet up tension in an already tense environment.
PEKIN - A proposed smoking ban on all Tazewell County-owned property has a local union ready to renegotiate a labor contract, saying the ban alters working conditions.
"We want to make sure our members don't lose a right that they've had," said Julie Young, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3404, which represents 84 employees in Tazewell County.
Young said the union has sent the county a demand of bargain letter, which claims the ban would be a change in established working conditions and requires renegotiation.
Nothing says spring in Chicago like sidewalk cafes and beer gardens, but now that patio season’s arrived (once the weather cooperates, anyway) we wondered how the new statewide smoking ban would affect the city’s alfresco hangs. Turns out bar owners and managers have been busy with tape measures, trying to figure out how to accommodate everyone—including Illinois lawmakers. Some spots are banning smoking entirely; others have taken more creative approaches. Here’s a look at what six local spots are doing.
The Illinois Senate late Wednesday rejected a proposal that would have allowed patrons at the Par-A-Dice Casino in East Peoria or any of the state's other casinos to smoke and gamble at the same time.
But the Senate subsequently approved other changes that attempt to clear up some of the questions about exactly how to implement and enforce the statewide ban on smoking in most indoor spaces.
The most recent version of Senate Bill 2707, which passed on a 35-16 vote, creates an exemption to permit universities to conduct tobacco research that involves people who smoke indoors.
It also details how individuals may appeal violations of the smoking ban.
Lawmakers on Wednesday again rejected a plan to allow smoking in Illinois casinos.
The fight to exempt casinos -- and other places such as veteran's clubs -- from the smoking ban has been fought since the ban itself was approved by lawmakers last year. So far, no exemptions have been granted.
While a Senate committee approved a plan to exempt casinos from the ban for up to five years, saying the riverboats are seeing less income because of it, the full Senate later rejected it by a 15-35 vote.