In the wake of the protest demonstration by bar owners against the anti-smoking ban by the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, more related questions have popped up about the ban thicker than a methane gas seam in an abandoned coal mine.
In the wake of the protest demonstration by bar owners against the anti-smoking ban by the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, more related questions have popped up about the ban thicker than a methane gas seam in an abandoned coal mine.
The worldwide tobacco culture has been under fire at one time or the other from religious groups, politicians and busybodies since time out of mind.
Yet tobacco prevails as sure as cigarette smoke. Despite statistics on deaths attributed to smoking, the use of tobacco can't hold a candle to the obvious problems of crime, mayhem and murder associated with cocaine and a growing list of other illicit drugs.
The drug problem in West Virginia and the rest of the country has prompted a national movement against the war on drugs. An honest view is that the war worsens the problem in the hands of corrupt politicians, law enforcement agents and drug lords.
Charleston was recently revisited by the bad smell of the question when the suspect of a brutal murder had been given leniency under the law in a string of domestic and street crimes before the murder. The question, though officially denied, hangs whether the suspect had received leniency in the past because he was a drug informer.
Anyhow, the problem of smoking pales by comparison with the devastation of drugs on the lives of young folk. It rocks the question of drug searches in Kanawha Valley public schools and schools across the country.
In Unadilla, Ga., where I grew up, we boys used to sing a ditty, "Golden Grain Gonna Kill You Dead." We mocked the prohibition against smoking by parents and elders.
Golden Grain was a small sack tobacco that sold for a nickel in the days of roll your own during the Great Depression.
The health risk of smoking was pointed out to us in the toll taken by the dreadful disease of tuberculosis and the sight of blood coughed up by TB victims.
Legendary Bessie Smith sang on phonograph records, "TB's Killin' Me."
In the wake of the protest demonstration by bar owners against the anti-smoking ban by the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, more related questions have popped up about the ban thicker than a methane gas seam in an abandoned coal mine.
The worldwide tobacco culture has been under fire at one time or the other from religious groups, politicians and busybodies since time out of mind.
Yet tobacco prevails as sure as cigarette smoke. Despite statistics on deaths attributed to smoking, the use of tobacco can't hold a candle to the obvious problems of crime, mayhem and murder associated with cocaine and a growing list of other illicit drugs.
The drug problem in West Virginia and the rest of the country has prompted a national movement against the war on drugs. An honest view is that the war worsens the problem in the hands of corrupt politicians, law enforcement agents and drug lords.
Charleston was recently revisited by the bad smell of the question when the suspect of a brutal murder had been given leniency under the law in a string of domestic and street crimes before the murder. The question, though officially denied, hangs whether the suspect had received leniency in the past because he was a drug informer.
Anyhow, the problem of smoking pales by comparison with the devastation of drugs on the lives of young folk. It rocks the question of drug searches in Kanawha Valley public schools and schools across the country.
In Unadilla, Ga., where I grew up, we boys used to sing a ditty, "Golden Grain Gonna Kill You Dead." We mocked the prohibition against smoking by parents and elders.
Golden Grain was a small sack tobacco that sold for a nickel in the days of roll your own during the Great Depression.
The health risk of smoking was pointed out to us in the toll taken by the dreadful disease of tuberculosis and the sight of blood coughed up by TB victims.
Legendary Bessie Smith sang on phonograph records, "TB's Killin' Me."
Still, we boys smoked. We took it as a sign of manhood. Plainly, it didn't cut short the manhood of Fairow Taylor Sr., father of 15 children by his wife of a lifetime, the former Carrie Mae West. Taylor was buried in June in Unadilla at age 89.
He was an Army sergeant in World War II. He drove a truck for Unadilla Wholesale Co. for more than 40 years. The cover of the obit program pictures him in collar and tie with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Inside the program is a picture of the Taylor family in "a celebration of life over death."
Protesting bar owners say they are going to court against the smoking ban, which strikes them as an overkill by the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department.
The ban is killing business and doing little or nothing to protect the health of children from secondhand smoke, nor the health of nonsmoking adults, they maintain.
In the first place, they say, children aren't allowed in bars by law and nonsmoking adults are free to stay away from bars and places with slot machines under the ban.
"It's ungodly what it's doing to me," owner Leroy Johnson of No. 8 Sports Lounge in Marmet told a reporter.
Time will tell what the courts decide about the smoking ban.
From all indication, business people have as much right to protection under the law as bureaucrats and busybodies in the name of public health protection.
Peeks is a former Gazette business/labor editor.
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