Thank you for not smoking.... ANYWHERE!

For such an all-encompassing bill, there wasn't much uproar this week when the New York City Council passed a resolution,  wherein smoking will now be banned in all 1,700 city parks and 14 miles of city beaches.  The bill will go into effect 90 days after Mayor Bloomberg--the bill's strongest proponent and New York's most vocal anti-smoking advocate--signs it, which he is expected to do within the next few weeks.  Violators of the new ordinance face a $50 summons for their first violation, and upward from there for subsequent offenses.  Apparently, the bill will also apply to pedestrian malls and plazas, too--though how they plan to delineate exactly what constitutes a "pedestrian mall" is where it's all going to get very complicated.  Will it work?  Well, in 2002, when smoking was banned in all bars, restaurants and offices, "they" said it would never be abided by....and yet, by and large, New Yorkers fell into step and nearly all restaurants and bars in the City remain smoke-free (the exceptions being the "fuck you" bars you can find in some of the fringier areas of the city).  Bloomberg has made anti-smoking his #1 crusade as mayor, and it would be surprising indeed if he were to stop here.  The one point I'm certain he will stop at is banning the sales of tobacco in New York City.  Some (me) see it as the height of hypocrisy that while the city (and state) vilifies smokers and now bans public smoking nearly everywhere, they continue to hike the taxes on packs of cigarettes, to a level that now an average pack of cigarettes in Manhattan will run you around 12 bucks, with roughly half of that price being city/state taxes.  The state is also vigorously pursuing the various Indian "reservations" in the state that sell tax-free, cut-rate cigarettes.  Well paleface New York wants their cut of the action, too.  Yes, they pay lip service that the taxes they collect are earmarked for cancer research, smoking cessation programs, health care programs, blah blah blah....can someone show us those figures, please?  I'm not coming to the defense of smoking in public, or smoking, period.  What gets me riled up is the fact that Bloomberg wants to have it both ways:  Demonize the smoker, but happily take their money for smoking.  Hypocrisy should be banned in pedestrian malls and plazas, too.