I just closed my bar in lower Manhattan about two weeks ago. I felt bad laying off seven workers. Most of them had been with me during the five years Swan’s was open. None of them had ever complained about secondhand smoke. Taverns are dropping like flies, but not from smoking or cancer.”

Source: Caledonian Record. Link Expired.

State Assemblyman Howard Mills of Hamptonburgh yesterday urged county officials in the Hudson Valley to grant waivers to businesses that are being negatively impacted by the new state indoor smoking ban.

Many restaurants and bars are reporting a severe decline in business since the law went into effect.

If Mills had his way, he would do away with the law all together. “It’s not that I’m pro-smoking, I’m not a smoker myself, and it’s not that I’m not concerned about the public health,” he said. “It is a matter of personal choice. I think we need to be very careful in this day and age that government does not go too far and I think the smoking ban is one of the most over reaching and big brother bits of legislation that I have seen I went to Albany four years ago.”

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