The Caller Times has much different attitude about Las Brisas than Smoking Ban

Public health concerns seem to have evaporated

Below you will find quotes from a series of editorials from the Caller Times Archives about their overwhelming concern for public health from second hand smoke, not only in restaurants but in bars where children could only enter with a parent as certain hours and to enter alone you have to be 18. Note how different the attitude is in their recent Editorials about Las Brisas, which will expose every child in the community through no fault of their own to potential illness and death as a proven fact.

Archives further back than August 2005 and video on the City’s website of the January Council meeting when the Council voted 9-0 to place it on the ballot are not available on either one of their websites.

Regarding smoking the Caller Times expressed no desire to leave the decision to TCEQ, the Public Health Department or any other agency. They applaud the decision by 70% of the public in the resulting referendum to make Corpus Christi a city with cleaner air. The laud the work of the Clean Air Coalition, represented by some of the same Doctors who they chose to ignore last week.

Here is the record.

Waffling City Council puts off smoking ban for two months
Editorial April 17, 2009 at 12:01 a.m. editorial
Or that the desire for a healthier environment in public places by the demonstrated vote of the majority of voters can be trumped by bar owners who have been dragging their feet to comply with the law.

City's expanded smoking ban should be allowed to take effect
Editorial April 13, 2009 at 1 a.m.
This ordinance has strong support throughout the community. If it is allowed to take effect on Wednesday, as intended, Corpus Christi would join 28 other Texas cities that have adopted comprehensive smoking ordinances, a list which has been growing as the dangers of smoking become recognized. The enactment of Corpus Christi's expanded smoke-free ordinance symbolizes how far the public has come in understanding and acting on this knowledge of the risks of secondhand smoke. Nonsmokers once tolerated the spoiling of a meal or a drink because of secondhand smoke because that's just the way it was. Much of Texas is now a healthier environment because of the change.

City can give citizens an early Christmas gift
An extension of the city's smoking ban could take effect as early as Dec. 22
Editorial December 14, 2008 at 8:16 p.m.
The expanded ordinance would signal that Corpus Christi intends to create the healthiest environment it can for its citizens.
It's hardly a private matter if a worker's health is so impaired by secondhand smoke that he or she becomes unproductive, becomes a responsibility of the indigent health care system and his or her family loses the warmth of their loved one.

Arguments against city smoking ban smolder on
Council members should understand: This is not an individual freedom-of-choice issue
Editorial November 23, 2008 at midnight
Unlike opponents who depend on junk science to argue that secondhand smoke is not dangerous, McCutchon is well aware of the dangers. It's not healthy to breathe secondhand smoke,
But the freedom to afflict bar patrons and bar workers with dangerous, disease-breeding, "disgusting" secondhand smoke? There is a big disconnect in logic here.
We endorse healthy eating, but if a patron in a restaurant or bar is downing highly fried foods on a regular basis, he is affecting only himself. A smoker in a public place, however, is affecting anyone within breathing distance of that awful smoke.
The arguments for the comprehensive smoking ban are persuasive. Secondhand smoke is dangerous; it has been linked to a host of lung, heart and cardiovascular diseases. The evidence is irrefutable, even though opponents, Citizens for Choice and Common Sense, choose to ignore it.
A majority of the City Council should sweep away these bogus opposition arguments and vote to make Corpus Christi a more pleasant and safe city.

Smoking ban should be extended to city's bars
Editorial August 10, 2008 at midnight
Just a little bit farther. That's the distance Corpus Christi has to go to protect all its workers from the dangerous risks associated with secondhand smoke. The City Council can take that last step by extending the present no-smoking ordinance to the rest of city's indoor workplaces. It should do so.
The evidence that the city's smoking ban -- which now excludes bars, bingo halls, billiard halls and bowling alleys -- should now be made comprehensive is overwhelming. There is first and foremost the issue of health. The dangers of secondhand smoke, known for some time, have become that much more documented since the late Mayor Mary Rhodes first proposed a smoking ban in 1993. In 2006, the Surgeon General issued a new report saying that there is no safe level for exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke. There is no such thing as inhaling just a little bit of secondhand smoke without risk. Persons who do not smoke are at risk for the entire range of diseases -- cancer, heart disease, emphysema, circulatory diseases -- by exposure to secondhand smoke.

Case for a ban on smoking in bars deserves a hearing
Editorial August 24, 2006 at midnight
If second-hand smoke is a cause of lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases and a host of other ailments - and it is - then the public health danger is as strong, no matter the public place of business. That's a point that the City Council needs to bring back to the council table.

Portland should move swiftly to ban smoking in public venues
Editorial August 20, 2006 at midnight
Critics' arguments that personal freedoms and/or property rights are endangered by such a prohibition - arguments Corpus Christi residents and officials heard at great and wearisome length - are simply bogus. This was, is, and will remain a public health issue.

Big victory for smoking ban says public wants clean air
Yesterday's wide margin of victory for smoke-free restaurants should encourage the City Council to clear the air elsewhere as well
Editorial September 11, 2005 at midnight
Yesterday's city election vote was a major step for improving the quality of life in Corpus Christi. By upholding an ordinance that bans smoking in city restaurants, voters joined the growing list of communities that have decided they won't put their residents' health at risk to secondhand smoke.
The voters have spoken loudly. Their message is that they want a smoke-free city. It's a message that the City Council should listen to.

Voters must seal deal on restaurant smoking ban
There's every reason to believe most city residents support the measure, but foes of the ban, though misguided, are tenacious.
Editorial September 4, 2005 at midnight
The case for the restaurant smoking ban is all but unassailable. But that in itself won't put the ban over the top. In the interest of public health, and to the end of putting ourselves in the company of enlightened communities all over America, we need to finish the job. Vote to keep the smoking light out in our community's restaurants.

Voters should back ban on restaurant smoking
Despite familiar, and bogus, arguments from smokers and their backers, rights of non-smokers must take first priority.
Editorial August 21, 2005 at midnight
Passing the smoking ban at the polls would support those restaurant owners who have taken their establishments smoke-free. And it would put Corpus Christi among those progressive municipalities who put their citizens' health first. The first step toward that goal begins on Wednesday.