The editorial board is at a stalemate no more. After Pat and I posted our pro-con on the proposed smoking ban for Tacoma parks earlier today, the board found a compromise. This editorial will appear in Friday's edition.

Metro Parks and the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department think they have an offer Tacoma’s leaders can’t refuse.

Want to give smokers a new incentive to quit? Tell them they can’t light up in a Tacoma park.

Want to prevent children from getting addicted? Make sure a trip to the neighborhood sprayground doesn’t include the sight of someone taking a drag.

Want parks to look nicer? Stop cigarette butts before they start.

The proposed smoke ban for Tacoma’s parks could accomplish all these things – in theory. Reality is another story.

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This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Google’s Chrome could offer welcome competition

Speed, simplicity, security.

To owners of personal computers, those qualities can be agonizingly out of reach. Calling up a Web site can seem to take forever, but everything can inexplicably come crashing down in a matter of seconds. Viruses and identity theft are almost constant concerns.

Enter Chrome OS, due out in 2010. Google Inc.’s planned free operating system, based on its Chrome Web browser, will be a full frontal assault on Microsoft’s Windows system – especially in the surging market for the small, relatively inexpensive netbooks, which will be its first target.

For consumers, anything that offers competition to the hugely dominant Windows would be a plus, giving them more options and the promise of lower prices.

It’s already having an effect. A full year before Chrome is scheduled to come on the market, Microsoft is reacting by offering a low price on its older Windows XP system for netbooks. And it is assuring users that its next operating system due out this fall, Windows 7, will work well on netbooks as well as on larger computers.

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From our Word on the Street blog: Tacoma ranks in bottom fourth of safe-driving cities

Could this have anything to do with the fact that drivers around here consider it strictly optional to signal before they turn or switch lanes?

The six of us on the editorial board usually figure out something to say about any controversy we tackle. Not so with the proposal to ban smoking in Tacoma’s parks.

Three of us – David Zeeck, Cheryl Tucker and myself – would welcome smoke-free public parks. The other three – Karen Peterson, Kim Bradford and Dale Phelps – think that would be too much government.

Kim’s going to lay out their side of the argument. Here’s ours:

• It’s a protect-the-public-interest issue. Smokers don’t invade our air space, but smoke does. Parks are public accommodations. But if you can’t sit on a park bench or your kid can’t swing on a swing without getting a whiff of obnoxious tobacco smoke, you’ve been intruded upon – and not by government.

• You ban smoking in parks for the same reason you ban smoking at ballparks: Nobody should be forced to breathe someone else’s toxic exhaust.

• It’s a quality of life issue. Parks with clean air are more attractive and greater community assets.

• It’s a litter issue. Many smokers routinely drop their butts on the ground. Either the public pays to have the butts cleaned up, or park users have to play in an ashtray.

• Yes, it would be hard to enforce a smoke ban in parks. But it’s harder to enforce litter laws; unlike littering, smoking is easily spotted. In any case, laws often serve to spell out social expectations even when they aren’t enforced. Law-abiding smokers – the majority, I assume – won’t need the threat of a ticket to comply.

Pat makes good arguments for why Tacoma should ban smoking in public parks. I just don't find them convincing.

As the mother of a 2-year-old, I spend plenty of time in Tacoma parks. I don't challenge parks officials' assertion that discarded cigarette butts are a problem, but what mostly catches my eye is the bigger stuff – the bottles, cans, hamburger wrappers, empty bread bags at the duck pond, used condoms in the woods, discarded diapers at the sprayground.

But this isn't really about litter. It's about sending a message. Metro Parks' top 10 reasons to pass a smoke ban mention litter but primarily focus on the public health costs of smoking, what we say to kids when we allow people to light up in parks, and the tired justification that other cities are doing it and so should we.

Smoking is legal. I know the toll on a smoker's health and the public health care system is atrocious. If we as a country want to have a conversation about outlawing tobacco use altogether, I'm there.

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