Stop Smoking

Here’s a few of the interesting facts Committed Quitters provided me based on how much I smoked.

596: Dollars saved per year based on your previous daily cigarette consumption multiplied by the price per pack and by 365 days.

12: Days spent per year based on your previous daily cigarette consumption times 6 minutes per cigarette smoked.

Interesting stuff.

The state-wide smoking ban that Ohio voters approved on November 7th of this year has now gone into effect.
Fines, however, will not be handed out for those who break the new law until the Ohio Department of Health
decides how to enforce the ban. My workplace sent an email detailing how our office is complying
with the new rules, but everything still seems up in the air. The lack of enforcement rules proves everything is still up in the air.

Several bars around Columbus were still allowing smoking, despite the city of Columbus’s previously in-place ban. Of the two bars I frequent that were still allowing smoking, one of them has complied with the ban. I could see the complying bar
allowing smoking again some day, once the newness of the ban wears off. This weekend, a few people tried to light up in the bar but were quickly chastised by the bartenders, who offered demanded that they pour water on the cigarette and throw it away.

The ban will hopefully have a positive impact for smokers and non-smokers alike. I have heard of statistics that show Columbus’s smoking ban was having a positive impact on lung cancer rates just a short time after the ban went into effect. I don’t know how it could have such a fast effect, but if it’s true, I’d say it’s great news. The ban will certainly add fuel to my Stop Smoking fire. I’m getting close. The weather is helping, too. There’s myriad reasons for me to quit. Now I just have to follow through.

Tuesday, 7 November 2006 was voting day in states all across the country. It was a midterm election which turned the U.S. Congress on its collective ear by turning over the control of the House and Senate to the Democrats. Also on the ballot in Ohio were two big issues in the minds of the voters: Issues 4 and 5.

Issue four is to make an amendment to the Ohio Constitution which would allow (among other entities) businesses that generate less than sixty percent of their profit from the sale of food to decide whether they will permit smoking in their establishment, according to this NBC4i.com article. Issue five is a state-wide smoking ban to be added to the Ohio Revised Code. As a smoker, many expected me to be partial to issue four and against issue five. Quite the opposite.

Columbus has had a smoking ban for a couple years and I love it. I don’t mind going outside to smoke for the greater good of society. Plus, the small town I am from in Northwest Ohio would never have a smoking ban of their own. It’s too Red and too small. I voted no on issue four because I don’t want to have to smell like smoke after a night at the bar. Lots of bar owners in Columbus said that the smoking ban hurt their business, but I don’t see it. I am more willing to go there and drink now that I don’t have to wash my jeans after one night out. What is really being hurt by the ban is the Gap. The less I have to wash my jeans, the less they wear out. The less they wear out, the fewer pair I have to buy. See? It’s simple economics.

I voted yes on issue five for all of my friends and loved ones back in Defiance, Akron, and every other small town throughout the state. I really think that this smoking ban will encourage a lot of people to stop smoking, me included. I remember reading an article about year after Columbus’s smoking ban went into effect which said that the medical world was already seeing the benefits of the ban. Fewer cases of lung cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illness were showing up in the hospitals around Columbus. After just one year! Imagine what good will come of this next year, in ten years, and throughout the rest of our lives! My roommate calls it socialism. I call it progress.