Quote:
Originally Posted by GP_Matt
I will apologize for not fact checking, I just pulled it from one of the many lists of SF nanny state laws online.
And I do agree with you that most of those laws seem reasonable by themselves. Personally I do not really have a problem with the anti smoking laws I just don't like the way things seem to be headed with all the bans.
Bans are very easy and cheap for the government to put into place but they don't usually solve the problem.
Like a ban in Toronto that makes all shooting ranges non-conforming. (Nothing new and improvements to the building are not allowed) It was done to address gun crime but resulted in the shuttering of a training facility for Olympic athletes.
Or banning handheld cellphones while at the same time promoting hands free cell phones. I was emailing back and forth with the lawmakers in Alberta on this one and they admitted that it is the conversation and not hand position that was dangerous but that a hands free ban would be hard to enforce. All that law accomplished was to force everyone to purchase a hands free system it does not make the roads safer.
Many places have a ban on pesticides/herbicides on city property which has resulted in sports fields being replaced with artificial turf to avoid the weed control problems that pesticides took care of. Now they are using chemicals to clean the fields because they don't soak up everything like grass did and there is an increase in things like staph infections from the unclean turf.
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Those are legitimate points, but where do they fit in with this smoking ban or any of the bans in San Francisco? I also take issue with laws that don't actually target the problem, the hands free laws being a great example, but that doesn't mean that all laws that prohibit certain conduct suffer from that problem.