Nanny State

Medpundit found herself on the wrong side of the law recently. Seems she banned smoking in her office long before her home state adopted an indoor smoking ban, but now that her state’s adopted her policy, its quibbling about the design of her “no smoking” signs.

It seems that banning smoking and posting “no smoking” signs isn’t enough — one also has to post tremendously ugly signs in one’s office telling customers what state office to call if they are patronizing a business and see one of the other customers smoking.

Is it really likely that state employees who receive the calls are going to rush right over to force the offending customer to put out his cigarette?

Addendum: I looked into this a little more and the situation is even dumber than I originally thought. It seems Ohio adopted the rule before it got around to adopting any penalties, so there are no penalties for violating this particular law as yet. Still, if you own a place of business and already have “no smoking” signs posted, you must replace them with signs containing a phone number for turning in violators, so the state can do — nothing.



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