Brooklyn Heights Bagel Store is Sorry for Anti-Smoking Poster

But is it stipulated WHERE the poster must be placed?

I’m sure I’m not alone in having noted the wide range of placement given the “choking emergency” sign, for example.

In some restaurants, one would choke several times over before someone located the sign….

No apologies needed, Mr Aceto. I saw it, I liked it.
Tobacco kills – it took several of my own family well
before their time. And the knock on effects have sucked
up our miniscule tax base for medicaid and medicare.

Only stupid people smoke now.

I’ve had numerous family members die of smoking related cancers. During the afternoon, lots of teenagers from the local schools congregate here, esp. because it has tables. If even one is turned off smoking by these posters—which are designed on purpose to be stomach turning and offensive—then they’ll be doing their job.

Speaking of offensive, you may have seen me wearing my “F*ck Cancer” button (with the asterisk, not a letter) around here. They looove it when I go in for check-ups at Sloan Kettering. Had it made myself. And no, I don’t smoke, and didn’t have that kind of cancer.

To what degree are signs like this actually a deterrent–especially for the young?

The pressures that encourage them to smoke far outweigh the effects of signs like the one shown, which, I believe, are looked over, or given the shortest shrift.

With adults, it can be a different matter–maybe. But I think the campaigns have to be clever–sophisticated. The scare posters, e.g., those that depict clogged lungs, can be look-away nasty. People reject them and thus their messages.

Disagree regarding people ignoring scare poster tactics…will always remember seeing real smokers’ lungs on display at the Boston Museum of Science when I was younger…black and falling apart…I never smoked

Otherside, you’re exactly right. It’s one thing if smokers want to harm themselves in the privacy of their own homes. It’s another when you’re walking behind them or have to duck their smoke when entering a building. I applaud efforts by property owners to ban smoking in front of their buildings, just as I think the bagel shop should be required to keep the sign up in full view.

digby, that is about the most beautiful suggestion I’ve heard in, I dunno, a decade. Civil disobedience via flatulence, aimed at the dwindling population of smokers. Genius!

I find this poster outrageous. Why should a business be required, as a condition of doing business, to proselytize about individual choices? Should McDonald’s have to post advertisements about exercising because of their high fat food? Should cell phone stores have to post warnings about the dangers of driving and talking on the phone?

I want my kids to see those posters so I can tell them why smoking is harmful and they will get that message before their friends start telling them smoking is cool. What a foul, deadly, repugnant habit. Only stupid people smoke.

@tb It’s not Montague Bagels’ job to parent for you: if you think the poster is effective, hang one in your home. To REQUIRE it in order to do business is outrageous. And yes, the labels are already on packages, as the calorie counts are on the menus. Info provided, by the purveyors themselves. Don’t make independent merchants provide free public service announcements.

I don’t object to the poster, but to the idea that a business incurs a fine if it doesn’t display it.

north heights res, I fully respect your libertarian views on this subject. However, if you accept the fact that tobacco is proven to be harmful to the health of a smoker, to fetuses, and to second hand inhalers (most of whom I believe would opt to pass on inhaling if they had a choice) AND you recognize that smoking rates and associated illness among recipients of medicaid and medicare outpace those of the general population, then you may want to support efforts to maximize every ounce of taxes that the big bad government rips from your paycheck/income to support these entitlement programs by helping people to avoid the habits in the first place. That is, unless you don’t care about how your taxes are spent.

Are you reading north heights posts? He’s not defending smokers or smoking, just expressing a concern about the Big Brother aspect of the city forcing a business to do something it may not otherwise do on its own. As a smoker, I personally have no objections to the posters themselves and think they serve an invaluable service in educating our youth to the hazards of smoking, but, hey, what do I know? I’m stupid.

There is nothing good about smoking. Nothing. at. all. They will kill you faster than a donut.

I suspect the city is trying to discourage shop owners from selling cigarettes.