As baseball season kicked off, Mayor de Blasio signed into law Wednesday a ban on chewing tobacco at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field.
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The New York Times in January reported that the city council was considering a set of bills that “would reduce … the style of policing known as broken windows that has for two decades guided the Police Department to see minor disorder as a precursor to major crime”.
A similar proposal was shot down past year by the state Legislature, even though it had the backing of the Real Estate Board of NY and would have raised $200 million for affordable housing in the city.
When de Blasio was asked why Foust was removed, the mayor claimed he didn’t know anything about it.
Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images Nearly one in three Major League Baseball players use chewing tobacco, which has already been banned in Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The City Council supports raising taxes on the wealthy to help pay for new spending that would aid immigrants, youth, Staten Island addicts and others.
San Francisco was the first city in the nation to crack down on smokeless tobacco at all sports venues, in May 2015.
An estimated 30 percent of MLB Players use smokeless tobacco, and the MLB Players Association has resisted a league-wide ban, a subject likely to be contentious in current negotiations with owners over a new collective bargaining agreement. A statewide ban in California is expected to take effect in 2017.
Matthew Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, says it sends the message to “young fans that chewing tobacco is unsafe and should not be an accepted part of sports culture”. Among male high school athletes, smokeless tobacco use is particularly alarming at 17.4 percent in 2013.
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Nobody has clear answers on the specifics of enforcement of the new laws, but league and union sources have told Outside the Lines they don’t anticipate law officers entering clubhouses in search of violators. Gwynn had said he was convinced chewing tobacco caused his cancer.
