How Bloomberg Made NYC a No-Smoking Town
Yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of Bloomberg’s ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, a once-controversial law that’s by now just become an accepted way of life in the city. I mean, I was in a bar a few months ago that let people start lighting cigarettes in the wee hours of the morning, and though I only stuck around for like 15 more minutes, I woke up the next day stinking of smoke, a Proustian Marlboro reminding me of those wild-smoking old days. The original smoking ban was the opening salvo in a mayoralty-long war on cigarettes, which has included many more rules and regulations; all-totaled, the mayor “said at least 10,000 smoking-related deaths have been prevented in New York because of the smoking ban,” Yahoo reports. “And he directly linked the smoke-free legislation to stats showing the life expectancy of New Yorkers is longer than ever—80.9 years, three years longer than the national average.” (I mean, we also walk and shit.) Here’s how it all came to be. [photo]
