That empty ashtray on your desk. Ornamental? Reminder of a bad habit conquered? Or evidence of criminal intent?
In New York it could be all three and you would be well advised to get rid of it before department of health inspectors slap you with a fine of up to US$2,000.
Under the city's strict anti-smoking regulations, ashtray possession is a risky business, even if you are a non-smoker or the receptacle in question has never snuffed a cigarette butt.
Brooklyn video-store owner Marty Arno claims he was actually trying to help enforce the ban when he produced an ashtray so that a customer, who had walked in off the street smoking, could put out his cigarette.
Two health inspectors who visited the store the same day in October saw it differently and ticketed Arno for having "one ashtray with cigarette butt, and ashes" on his counter.
Another ticket recipient was John Martello, the executive director of the 115-year-old Players Club in Manhattan, which was raided by inspectors in November.
Martello was out of the office at the time, as was his assistant.
"When my assistant returned, the inspectors demanded she open my locked office. Of course, she was intimidated, and indeed opened the office," Martello said.
"There behind the desk, on a low shelf, they found three stacked ashtrays. No cigarettes, nothing. No evidence of smoke, just three stacked ashtrays. I wasn't even there."
The regulation in question is part of the Smoke-Free Air Act that the city adopted earlier this year.
While public attention has focused on the act's ban on smoking in all New York restaurants and bars, many missed the fine print that said ashtrays "shall not be used or provided for use" in any place where smoking is prohibited.
Of the roughly 2,300 summonses issued since the act was properly enforced on May 1, just over 200 have been for ashtray violations.
The highest profile felon has been Graydon Carter, editor of the glossy magazine Vanity Fair, whose offices were found to contain a sizeable stash of illicit ashtrays.
"I keep them around to remind me of my youth," Carter told the New York Times, adding that the ashtrays had not been used and did not have cigarette butts in them when the offices were raided.
"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," Carter said.
The rationale behind the ashtray rule, according to Elliott Marcus, a deputy-commissioner at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, was that ashtrays are "an invitation" to smoke.
"The theory was that if you had no ashtrays available for smokers, the law would be self-enforcing," Marcus said. "That's been borne out by the fact that we have a 98 percent compliance rate throughout the city, except for wise guys."
While acknowledging that the law does not require evidence that the ashtray had been used, Marcus said all ashtray summonses issued so far had followed specific complaints of people using them to smoke.
"Put it this way. If someone has an ornamental ashtray with paper clips in it, we wouldn't cite them," he said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
RSS