Not Blowing Smoke is the ONLY organization in CA that consistently registers our opposition to bad policies, in writing, including a package of scientific and other hard data and actively engages directly on these issues before they get out of hand and assists businesses in getting amendments that allow them to continue to stay in business.
This, it seems, has upset a “random resident” in Half Moon Bay last night. As you can see from the video, Amber decided to mention our opposition and call us “a page out of the Philip Morris playbook”. Which does not surprise us considering that ideological anti-tobacco crusaders will always try and smear any opposition as being the work of “evil big tobacco companies”. But you have to wonder how Amber, being just a concerned resident, would know about us consistently opposing these bad policies. We certainly wonder what group she is working for or volunteering for.
A short recap: Last night the city of Half Moon Bay held the first reading of the “kitchen sink” ordinance we reported on a little while ago. The first part of the ordinance was adopted, after much struggle, and staff will be given direction to draft amendments to it to make it more strict (i.e. no smoking on sidewalks).
It was a typical small town hearing, mostly very boring. The city council was rather divided on the range of policy issues presented in the ordinances, including not being very supportive of the ban on flavored vapor products. There was a lot of opposition to banning smoking/vaping in multi-family residencies from the council based on “people who can’t afford to live elsewhere should not be penalized”. The council struggled with balancing individual rights vs. potentially causing harm to others.
There were four speakers in support of the combined “kitchen sink” ordinance(s) including the San Mateo County Health Systems, the tobacco control division. They were there offering their help from the county to the city. One great highlight of their otherwise boring, monotonous and not very insightful testimony was that “there is no scientific evidence that e-cigarettes help smokers quit or reduce consumption of cigarettes” as well as on the flavored vapor aspect, “it is well known these products are not regulated and have inaccurate amounts of nicotine”.
Help Not Blowing Smoke continue to engage on these issues and alert affected businesses and consumers long before they’d hear about it in the papers after it’s too late to act. The donation link is in the sidebar on this page.
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