Smoking in Cincinnati

Two stories of interest locally involve smoking and the Cincinnati City Council!

As a part of the national trend, the city is moving towards some marijuana legalization. Nothing final on that yet. Generally, I'm anti-drugs, so not sure about how they are planning to make this work.

Interestingly, they are working on raising the age to buy smoking products to 21 years from the current 18. Sounds simple, right?

Nope.

You see, there's a grant involved. You know what happens when money gets dangled in front of Democrats, right? A grant for 2-3 people to enforce the 21 year age limit. That's great, right, we get the new law rolling for a few years via the grant, then it's on it's way...

Nope.

The city, which has no current enforcement of the 18 year limit, wants to continue to fund these new enforcers past the grant. Hmmmmm. Well, they've never had a permit for the sales of tobacco/smoking products (like Vaping, etc), so why not create that?

Yep. $500.

How many businesses sell this stuff? Hundreds? New income for the city!!!! Plus, there's NO WAY 2-3 staff can enforce this!!!!! ID'ing is already mandatory and standard operating procedure for any store that sells the stuff, now, why do we need any staffing of this at all when THEY ALREADY CARD EVERY BUYER?

This, my friends is why I'll never be a democrat or liberal. These thoughts would have never occurred to me. New law based on grant and new fees to cover ongoing expenses enforcing an update to an existing law that has no enforcement or budget for it.

This is a fantastic illustrative example of government creep and the difference between seeing issues from a liberal/progressive/democrat world view and a conservative/liberty/republican one.

Kudos, though, to David Mann (D) for seeing the absurdity and pointing much of this out in council, according to my non-related morning AM talk show host, Brian Thomas on 55KRC, who also hit all these points that I was making to the car radio as I listened. LOL

My only other point would be: what's the age limit for legalized pot? Hmmm? Higher? Lower? I have no idea, but you may soon be more able to smoke pot than tobacco in Cincinnati.