Public Indoor Smoking to be Extinguished

The three parties contesting the general election have pledged to ban smoking in enclosed public spaces. The commitment was made during a debate on the environment on GBC on Thursday. The PDP made a statement also in their press conference yesterday and a GSLP/Lib spokesman made a statement on the issue. “As Gibraltar takes its place amongst the community of modern European nations, we need to make changes and reforms, not just to our political system, we must also make changes to our daily lives. Smoking is regarded as dangerous even by most smokers and we accept that the overwhelming medical evidence points to smoking as a source of cancer and other ill-health. Passive smoking has also been shown to be damaging to health and can affect children as well as adults,” he said. “Most European nations now have in place bans on smoking in enclosed public places that even many smokers welcome. Government offices are already subject to a smoking ban, as are most private sector offices.

An Appeal to Smoking Ban

The attorney representing American Legion Post 23 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1298 in the organizations’ battle against the city’s Bond smoking ban has appealed the citation issued last week at a charitable gaming session hosted by the Legion.

Alan Simpson of Bowling Green wrote a letter Friday to the Bowling Green Code Enforcement Board requesting a hearing regarding the citation, which names Jim Manley, chief finance officer for the American Legion, as the alleged violator.

Issued Thursday - the first day the ordinance against indoor smoking went into effect - the citation has three provisions of the ordinance marked as having been violated.