:: The Ruminant ::

The Ruminant's first visitor, amayamaya, left a nice comment requesting more posts. Just as retailers often display their first dollar, I am going to display this first comment for a while. Rest assured, amayamaya, when I get my thirty minutes of fame, you will have your fifteen. I hope I'm not too selfish to keep some of the fame for myself.

:: Monday, September 15, 2003 ::

Smoke, but you must also drink

The Edmonton smoking ban made it onto Fark today, with this article:

Catch-22 for Edmonton Sober Club: "A 'sober bar' in Edmonton, Canada that has been a refuge for recovering alcoholics and addicts for years has been told by city officials that it must now get a liquor license if it wants to continue to allow patrons to smoke. But when they applied for a liquor license, they were turned down because they did not plan to actually serve alcohol.

The Keep it Simple Club in north-side Edmonton serves juice, soda and food to 300 members, who can also attend 12 step meetings in a back room. The club is like many 'Alano Clubs' that provide an alternative for alcoholics who want to stay away from the temptation of alcohol-serving establishments.

But attendance at the bar has dropped since the city passed a new no-smoking law that allows smoking only in establishments that have a minors-prohibited liquor licence, according to the Edmonton Journal. Most recovering alcoholics smoke -- researchers believe as many as 75-90 percent of recovering alcoholics smoke."

Establishments with liquor licenses are only exempt from the ban until next July, so this "alcohol-free bar" would have gained less than a year's worth of smoking if they'd been granted a license. In the mean time, though, their complaint is interesting: asking a recovering alcoholic to also quit smoking is an undue burden. Evidently some of the patrons of the non-alcoholic bar have been migrating over to real bars where they can hang out and smoke -- and drink.


:: Chris 7:42 AM [+] ::
...