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D. Murali

The mere existence of an ashtray in a place where smoking is prohibited can lead to a summons.

YOU get your child a party balloon to hold and take him or her for a walk, but all of a sudden the kid lets go of the balloon. The balloon flies past, hits the sidewalk and pops. "It's okay," you console your child, and promise to get another one later, but that is not the end of the story. The cops call you and give you a ticket.

This from a report in www.nydailynews.com is about one of the "silliest of summonses" from New York police. The father of the child couldn't believe what happened, because one could "make more noise closing the door of a police car". So he asked the cop: "Are you serious?" To that the cop gave him "a hard look" and asked: "Do you think popping a balloon is funny?"

Meanwhile, the kid was afraid that his pop was going to be arrested and taken to jail. The parent concedes: "How do you explain what happened to a kid when you don't understand it yourself?"

If the story sounds strange, how about getting punished for having ashtrays? From May 1, NY city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene began to enforce the anti-smoking law and more than 2,000 summonses have been issued, and "a little more than 200 were for ashtray violations". Accordingly, "the mere existence of an ashtray in a place where smoking is prohibited can lead to a summons."

Don't think of hiding it away, because "it doesn't matter if the ashtray is stored well away from public areas. It doesn't matter if it is used as a decoration, or to hold paper clips."

Those punished by this new smoky law protest. A video-store owner, for instance, who used the ashtray "only to help a customer who walked in with a lighted cigarette in her hand (She had to put it out in something, no?)" is fuming about the penalty. The editor of Vanity Fair who keeps ashtrays around "to remind himself of his youth" has said: "Any city that allows you to keep a loaded gun in your office but not an ashtray is one with its priorities seriously out of whack."

It wouldn't really matter if we had such a law, because the ingenious among the smokers in our midst don't normally need an ashtray. They can make do with disposable coffee cups, windowsills, empty matchboxes and so forth.

OohLaLaw@hotmail.com

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