Teed off: Smoking bans have golfers riled

[The Straight Story]

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - For the cigar-smoking golfer, 18 holes and a stogie rank with peanut butter and jelly or gin and tonic among life's ideal combinations.

That's why recent efforts across the country to ban smoking on public golf courses are being greeted by those players like a triple bogey. In the balance between individual rights and public health, weekend duffers feel authorities have become unreasonable.

The city of Spokane just tried to ban smoking on its four public golf courses, only to be stymied by an outcry from players and smoking rights advocates.

"Golf and cigars go together like a hand in a glove," said Dale Taylor of Tacoma, president of the Cigar Association of Washington, a smokers' rights groups. "That may be the only time some people smoke."

Washington state is among the least hospitable places for smokers, with no smoking allowed in any public indoor space, or outside within 25 feet of a door or window. But the proposed smoking ban on public links has struck a nerve, in part because of the vastness of golf courses. Playing a typical 18-hole course, such as Downriver in Spokane, means traveling easily more than three miles.

"If I was just walking and somebody was 300 feet away, I'm bothering them?" avid smoker and golfer Greg Presley told the Spokane parks board during a public hearing. "We've got to have some common sense."

http://www.kval.com/sports/local/44609282.html

[Turbineguy]

1. Shit, what's the point

of going out into the fresh air if I can't smoke?

[stopbush]

2. Fuck golfers and fuck their other elitist pleasures like cigars.

I'm with George Carlin on golf and golf courses.

[Berserker]

3. Fuck non-Golfers

and fuck smokers and as for George Carlin I loved ya man but Fuck You Too.

[stopbush]

8. Oh, I forgot: fuck Tiger Woods.

[The Straight Story]

10. If this keeps up, we will say Fuck Everyone

Oh, and Fuck Golf balls. Making them harms the environment. The gas used to truck them to stores is adding co2 to the atmosphere and the general pollution from said trucks hurts people with asthma.

Ban golf balls, before they kill us all!

[stopbush]

11. You want to talk seriously about golf's impact on the environment, then let's talk.

Let's talk about managing water resources. Can you justify the existence of golf courses when the world is staring down the barrel of the gun know as limited natural resources necessary for human survival? You know, resources like potable water?

Next up, we can discuss how the fertilizer/chemical run-off from golf courses impacts and pollutes local ecosystems.

So, fuck golf courses and their elitist waste of a precious natural resource so the privileged few can enjoy their elitist diversion while they pollute the landscape for the rest of us.

And fuck your diversionary golf ball ploy. I ain't buying it.

[The Straight Story]

12. Well, for one, I can't stand golf :)

And secondly, was making a joke about all the fuck this stuff flying about.

And when it comes to impact, we can make the same argument about a great many things, where does one start on defining what is needed, what we get rid of, etc?

One place I would start are with huge companies that build massive buildings when most the people in them could do their job from home (via the net, video conferencing, etc). Would take a lot of cars off the road as well, reduce electric use, water usage from the lawn care needed, etc and so on.

[stopbush]

13. Sorry that I missed your sarcasm.

Yes, we can make a like argument about a great many things, though there only a few things around like golf courses where sustaining the pleasures of a few negatively impact so many, and with no discerned value to the general well being of the public.

Now that I think of it, golf balls can also be an environmental hazard. At least that's what I learned on Seinfeld.

[alfredo]

17. The best fuck you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Za2k5wA3sk

[NeedleCast]

16. It's this sort of ridiculous shit that makes it hard to be a Democrat sometimes

[Fuzz]

20. Agreed.

[elocs]

4. I guess I never realized that smoking was a "right".

As a young man I worked for my city's park department and had to clean up shelter houses and around baseball diamonds. It always amazed me how smokers somehow believed that their cigarette butts did not qualify as litter so they tossed them wherever they liked.

[The Straight Story]

5. I think what people consider a right is not smoking, it is choice

which is why so many get upset about banning smoking in bars. Private owned company, people choose to work there, choose to go there. Someone wants to open a bar with no smoking, fine, same the other way.

I just tend to be pro-choice. Having the government force moral choices on people is no worse than what the church would do if in power.

[Mopar151]

6. Nicotine causes blindness

It must 'cuz smokers think butts are invisible.

[elocs]

7. Man, it used to be a pain in the ass to get those butts out of the seams in the concrete floors. n/t

[stopbush]

9. When I lived at the Jersey Shore, I was disgusted how smokers treated

the sand as an enormous ash tray.

And there were lots of assholes smoking cigars as well. Nothing like going to the beach with your kids for some fresh air and having the carcinogens from smokers polluting the place.

After a while it was easier to go to a bar for smoke-free air: the smokers were all at the beach sucking on their fucking death-for-me-AND-you sticks.

[anigbrowl]

15. This is true

I smoke, and it makes me feel really bad when I see butts lying around like that. I've been guilty in the past but now I use an empty cig box or something and take my butts home with me. I don't think open-air smoking should be banned, although I'm happy to support strong penalties for littering.

The golf course thing is a distraction. I'm not into golf or the environmental impact of golf courses either, but it's separate issue. We could just as easily be talking about the park or the beach.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Oh good grief

These outside bans really make no sense whatsoever.

[NeedleCast]

19. They do if the goal of an organization is really a complete ban

The anti-smoking brigade have played this brilliantly. Instead of going for an all out ban, they've been chipping away, brick by brick, for two decades and it's worked.

Within ten years, smoking tobacco will be completely banned (or a pack of cigarettes will cost 20 dollars).

[alfredo]

18. If they are that addicted, maybe they need professional help.

[Buns_of_Fire]

21. 'Tis a pity, after they spent so much time...

putting those little butt-receptacles in the ground right in the middle of every green.

I kid, I kid... :)