CITY HALL SMOKESCREEN
April 4, 2003 -- New Yorkers listening to Mayor Bloomberg lament the city's fiscal woes can be forgiven a bit of confusion, given the weird ways Hizzoner sometimes spends the tax dollars he does have.
The latest example:
Wednesday, city Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden announced a scheme meant to save smokers from themselves - at city expense, of course.
Under the plan, some 35,000 smokers can get six-month supplies of nicotine patches for free to help them quit.
"Make no mistake," Frieden says. "Tobacco is Public Enemy No. 1."
We would have put impending municipal bankruptcy at the top of the list. But silly us, right?
Tobacco, after all, is a perfectly legal product, irrespective of the mayor's anti-smoking jihad.
That campaign, involving a draconian smoking ban and outrageous taxes on tobacco, is so extensive that cops now use the term "street value" to quantify unregulated cigarettes - just like cocaine.
As for the patches, Frieden says "quitting is . . . the most important thing any smoker can do to improve his . . . health."
His logic: "Healthy" New Yorkers will save taxpayers money in the long run.
Maybe some smokers will quit smoking, as Frieden says.
Maybe the program will save lives, as he also insists.
Maybe the program will stave off more costly health-care expenses to treat emphysema, heart disease or lung cancer, as Frieden and Mayor Mike suggest.
Maybe. In 30 or 40 years.
But Bloomberg must close a $4 billion municipal budget gap. In 11 days!
Sure, the program's $2.5 million cost is chump change in a city budget of $44 billion.
Then again, one of the principal reasons the budget got that big is because it's chock full of chump-change programs. Like this one.
Meanwhile, Hizzoner is looking to pare down the police force to save dough.
And $2.5 million will pay the salaries of 50 cops for a year.
Priorities, anyone?
Apparently most people will agree with me on this. Or at least the NY Post and its respondents do. Here's a sample:
April 5, 2003 -- THE ISSUE :
The citywide smoking ban that took effect last Sunday.
How dare Mayor Bloomberg spend $2 million on patches for smokers when that money could be used to keep our firehouses open, feed the homeless and pay our uniformed workers ("City patches a plan," April 3).
Tell our dear mayor that I recently walked over four homeless people sleeping in the subway station at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue. Maybe they're smokers. Mayor Mike can give them a few patches.
Debra Aquilino
Manhattan
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A smoker who can't get up off his bar stool long enough to walk outside to smoke is all of a sudden going to go to New Jersey to smoke a cigarette?
Smokers will still go to bars in the city, and they will just deal with having to go outside.
Thankfully, I'll now be leaving bars and clubs not smelling like an ashtray.
Chris Grunke
Brooklyn
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I work as a bartender in midtown Manhattan. Last Sunday night, a crowd of oversized patrons entered my bar and after ordering a round of drinks lit up some cigarettes.
They were informed that smoking was now illegal in NYC bars, but they didn't feel that they had to comply. In fact, they threatened to extinguish their cigarettes on my body if I didn't leave them alone.
What am I supposed to do - call the cops every time someone lights up? I hate to think that I am forcing the cops to respond to such a trivial offense when I know they have much more important work to do.
Felix Combs
Manhattan
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Let me get this straight: We trustingly vote Bloomberg into office in a virtual post-war zone of a city.
New Yorkers look to him to rebuild in every sense of the word, and his biggest concern is smoking?
Theresa Bove-Elsayed
Staten Island
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Good work, Mayor Mike. Following in that great American tradition of prohibition and McCarthyism, you‘ve now banned smoking in bars and restaurants, effectively outlawing a large percentage of law-abiding folks.
Clive Britcher
Caracas, Venezuela
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Damn the smoking ban for causing me to agree with something written by Andrea Peyser ("Cancer sticking it to whining nico-fiends," March 31).
Amy Oztan
Brooklyn
Sometimes even I can't understand Bloomberg and his policies. :huh:
He should go back to New Bedford b/c NYC doesn't need his kind.
