Smoking Lobby Wins...For Now

Well, there will be no smoking ban at all in Springfield for the time being. The Springfield City Council refused to consider anything but a worthless proposal that would do almost nothing toward banning smoking in public places in the city. Instead, both sides agreed to do nothing. In other words, the smoking proponents flat out won.

I didn’t see all of the debate, just the last part. But the SJ-R did a great job of real time blogging of the meeting at its web site. Reading through the blog, my favorite quote is from Frank McNeil:

"Until tobacco is made illegal, I don't understand how we can ban smoking without some form of compromise."

Frank, are you really that stupid? You aren’t banning smoking altogether, just in public places. It’s already illegal to smoke in some places and any so-called compromise would involve restrictions as well. That statement was complete nonsense.

We’ll have to see where this goes from here. Personally, I’d like to see it go to the state legislature.

Update: Ald. Bruce Strom says he will look into holding a citywide referendum on the issue.