Cigars are safe to smoke, especially if you are a snobby Republican business owner who thinks he answers to no one.Â
PIERRE – A legislative committee says smoking should be banned in South Dakota bars, video lottery casinos and restaurants that serve liquor.
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The committee amended the bill to exclude motel rooms, businesses that sell mainly tobacco products and Deadwood gambling halls from the ban.
Though the Senate’s version failed, it was the best version. My take is if it is not a total ban it is not worth doing. Hopefully the Senate votes it down again so we can put a bill with teeth on the ballot. I’m okay with the motel room exclusion (impossible to police) but the gaming halls and cigar lounges should have been included. One cigar lounge owner thinks there is a difference in cigars and cigarettes, though they are both rolled tobbacco and smoked;
“I’ve always contended the cigar lounges should be an exemption,” Kant said while driving back from Pierre on Wednesday night. “With the exemption we have to give up the cigarette smoking, too. … The way that the amendment is written, it’s very strict” about what cigar lounges can do as well.
“I have contended that because I am a cigar lounge owner. Just drive by my business in the summer and look at all the young people sitting on my patio drinking miller lite taps and smoking cigarettes, uh, I mean, cigars.”
If the exemption and ban do go into affect, I will personally go into his bar everynight and call the police if someone is smoking a cigarette and not a cigar. Kant has a track record of ignoring laws. If he isn’t illegally blocking parking spots and the sidewalk, playing music past curfew or selling drinks in plastic cups he is finding some other way to skirt the law.
Another Jackass comment from a Jackass legislator (Argus Leader)
“The state is losing revenue now on the tobacco tax (and possibly on video lottery if ban goes into affect)” – Abdallah
Pure speculation and not proven, in fact, tax receipts for food and beverages would probably INCREASE especially in restaurants offsetting the possible downturn in gambling revenue.
Hopefully they will be able to revive it today, but don’t hold your breath, like I said from the beginning our legislators continually fail to do the work of the majority (over 65% of South Dakotans support a ban) and once again it will be up to voter to decide.
Just admit it Gene, being the ONLY Sioux Falls legislator to vote against the ban it’s pretty obvious why;
Give me an exception or I won’t stop crying
Poor Tim. Life just doesn’t go his way. When a neighborhood church needed to move a house to add on to there church, Timmy said no way, because they would have to cut a few branches off of his tree. When Timmy wanted to open a bar dowtown, he wanted the kids kicked out of DT. When someone wanted to open a bar across the street from his, he said they could not because they would have hip-hip dancing. When he realized he couldn’t make much money from a 200 square foot bar, he begged for a permit to have people drink on the sidewalk. Now Timmy wants his way again.
In a letter to the editor today in the Argus Leader (not up on website yet) Tim thinks cigar bars should have an exemption (surprise, surprise) and South Dakotans are misinformed about the smoking ban (that made me laugh). Not sure what freaking planet you have been living on the past 20 years, Timmy, but secondhand smoke kills people, secondly, cigars contain tobbaco that is smoked, just like a cigarette. What part of ‘smoking ban’ don’t you understand?
As usual, Tim is acting like a little brat to get his way. It’s time to stop sparing the rod with Mr. Kant. He doesn’t want this exemption for OTHER cigar lounges, he wants them for HIS cigar shop. It’s always about Tim, not the rest of us.
Enough! If the legislature can’t pass a total ban with NO exemptions, don’t pass one at all, let the voters decide, because a majority of us don’t give a rat’s ass about Tim’s cigar bar.