The Spokane Park Board is considering a smoking ban in the city parks. Since our parks are built and maintained on tax dollars, how can we legally exclude them from using what they have helped pay to have built and maintained? They don’t ask if you’re a smoker or not when they collect taxes.

In fact, they put a very heavy tax on smokers. Since both the smokers and nonsmokers alike paid the taxes to build and maintain the parks, why should only a certain group of people be allowed to use them? We have effectively sequestered the smokers into only outdoor use of tobacco; now they want to further restrict taxpaying smokers from smoking outside where it isn’t going to hurt anyone but the smokers themselves. The nonsmokers have been accommodated very well as no one can smoke inside public and private buildings where people can gather.

While I fully endorse no smoking in restaurants, theaters, libraries, child care centers, schools, etc., I feel that banning smoking while someone is outdoors, using the facilities that they helped pay for, is ridiculous – almost as nonsensical as no smoking in bars.

Katie Fiessinger

Spokane