DISQUS

It's really very difficult to understand how any jurisdiction would not pass a public smoking ban based on all of the evidence available. There have been many other studies done in other areas of the US and around the world that have come to the same conclusion as this one. Public smoking bans are justified and necessary to protect the health of all non-smokers.

And certain businesses and smokers claimed that business would be severly affected. That's pretty much the same argument that was made when smoking was banned on airliners. This just goes to show that there simply are no financial arguments against smoking bans anywhere.

Yes, money that the states got to combat tobacco use, especially for teens, has been squandered. I read that one state even went so far as to use some of the money to subsidize buildings used for tobacco farming. If the money had been used the way it was supposed to be used, the teen smoking rate would likely be lower than it is. The states that have used the money responsibly have reduced their smoking rates much more than the ones who have not used the money properly. The taxpayers should be demanding some accountability from their state governments as to why the tobacco settlement money was used inappropriately.

Kudos for the smoking ban, but the state still needs to do more to discourage people from continuing smoking. Higher taxes, as well as more anti-tobacco advertising and education is required or smoking rates will not drop, and may in fact increase. Apparently the big tobacco companies are spending increasingly large amounts of money on their advertising and marketing campaigns.

You certainly can't believe the scientists who work for oil or power companies and who say that global warming is not a problem. Guess what, some of them are the same scientists who used to work for the tobacco companies and kept saying that smoking didn't cause cancer.

We need more hard hitting anti-smoking commercials that'll get the attention of teens. Hopefully a few adults will notice them as well, and get more incentive to quit.