Why not get ahead of the curve in using the power of government to dictate personal behavior and ban smoking on a city sidewalk? That’s what Charlotte is considering.
Central Piedmont Community College campuses are going tobacco-free next year, and the school asked the city of Charlotte to ban smoking on Elizabeth Avenue from Kings Drive to Charlottetown Avenue, where it bisects its central campus.
If the City Council approves the ban, Charlotte would be among the first cities in the country to ban smoking on a city sidewalk or street
Charlotte isn’t the only municipality looking at using government power to control the use of a legal product. In the Orange County town of Hillsborough, commissioners recently considered banning chew tobacco from city-owned parks. They backed off when it came time to vote, but don’t kid yourself. More government bans are coming. From my Carolina Journal story about Hillsborough:
On Jan. 2, North Carolina’s newest tobacco law will ban smoking in restaurants and bars. Constandy said the law also expands local governments’ authority, giving them power to regulate tobacco use on all municipal exterior grounds, whether they own and operate the property, or own it and lease or rent it to someone else.
As of mid-August, no municipalities had contacted Constandy with questions specifically about smokeless tobacco, but she regularly receives inquiries from local governments about the scope of their overall authority.
Both stories lead to the same question: If smoking is so terrible that it is being banned, why is the product legal? Oh yeah, there’s the problem of all that tax revenue that elected officials will never be willing to give up.
