The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to ban drugstores from selling tobacco products. Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed the amendment to San Francisco’s Health code. Any pharmacy found selling tobacco products could be fined $1,000.
A spokesman for the mayor’s office Nathan Baird said “A pharmacy should be a place you go to get better, not a place you go to get cancer”.
cross posted @ Doing My Part For The Left
So when will San Francisco ban the sale of alcohol, over the counter remedies such as cough syrup, sleeping aids, and fad diet pills which have been known to harm consumers, and also stop selling candy and junk food which lead to health problems? Is this just another form of Prohibition which did not work when the Religious Right of old wanted to ban the sale of alcohol across America.
As a smoker, I appreciate that everyone is so damn concerned with my health. I appreciate the fact that I can not smoke in restaurants, night clubs, or bars in most major cities so that other people can enjoy their night out. I understand not allowing me to smoke at work and even making me stand in the broiling heat, freezing cold or rain to take my break while people still do the fake couch as they walk by the smoking area to let me know they disapprove of my smoking. I accept all that grudgingly, but when you start limiting the places where tobacco can be sold you have gone too far. It is bad enough that some stores card me when I buy cigarettes. I know you have to be of age to buy them but when I am old enough to be most of the store clerk’s father, it is a damn insult to ask for my ID or my date of birth. I am old enough to know what I am doing and even that it can be dangerous for me but that is my choice and not the government’s.
I quit smoking twenty years ago and have no urge to go back. But I don’t like to see smokers treated as outcasts and when non-smokers start crying for cigarettes to be banned it pisses me off.
As you point out, it’s only a matter of time before they try to ban chocolate ice cream because it occludes your arteries.
What people put in their bodies is their business and nobody else’s.
Thanks. It just seems to get more ridiculous every year with what people want to regulate as the world spins out of control.
And what about all the prescriptive drugs these places sell, like statin drugs, that are clearly bad for your health with long term use?
No, Lipitor, a multi-billion dollar drug by itself, probably is as profitable as all tobacco in the US combined (he he, my statistic!). No, that doesn’t matter.
People in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s go and hang themselves on these prescriptive drugs, and not only contribute to their own demise of poor health, but feed a profit system that’s destructive to the nation as a whole, as wealth concentrates way up in the 1%, those Big Pharma stockholders.
Cigarettes in New York City are now about $9.00 a pack, depending on the brand and where in town you buy. Does that stop people? To some degree yes, but at least there’s access to this legal herb. Pointing the finger at drug stores is just political posturing for the mayor of SF, just another way to make himself look like a little darling. But political expediency trampling civil rights is de rigour in modern America. Don’t forget folks, it’s no longer a free country.
I consider it posturing also and actually like Gavin Newsom but think he has gone to far on this one.
the nanny state getting silly. You’d think the city doesn’t have any actual problems the supes should be talking about.
I have the luxury of viewing san francisco politics as entertainment, sorry you’re on the sharp end of the stupidity this time.
I don’t live in SF just frustrated by the insanity of it all.
As a non-smoker I understand and appreciate non-smoking restaurants and workplaces, but anything other than that is too much, IMO. As a pot smoker I need cigarette smokers puffing away to camouflage me when I light up in bars, so I don’t appreciate any steps to limit smoking in bars or where tobacco products can be purchased. Also, marijuana paraphernalia is often labeled as a tobacco smoking accessory to comply with the law, so any restrictions on tobacco sales inevitably hurt paraphernalia sales.
Well, that is one outlook I never thought of but hey an ally is an ally. I will let you know that cig smoke has never hidden pot smoke and never will. LOL
Do you suppose brownies and beer might go together? At least that would solve the camouflage issue;-)