Should Mecklenburg County ever re-visit the restaurant smoking ban issue, John Stossel has something to keep in mind:
I once interviewed the mayor of the tiny community of Friendship Heights, Md. He got his town to pass the most stringent anti-smoking law in America. It banned cigarette smoke outdoors.
“We’re elected to promote the general welfare, and this is part of the general welfare,” he told me. After I interviewed him, he was arrested for touching a 14-year-old boy’s genitals in a bathroom at Washington National Cathedral. The village council finally repealed his law. Finally, we know what it takes to get an anti-smoking law repealed.
And nobody wants to go through that.
