Please Oneida - do something about Cancer Corner! The kids cannot get safely to school without passing through a crowd of delinquents, and are forced to walk in the street. Why are these punks in charge instead of the police and school?

Would also like something done about this, but if not there they will find another spot, this has gone on since I went to O.H.S in 1972.........

Although I do think that these kids shouldnt smoke I do not believe that it is fair to lump them all together into a drug dealing, delinquint and or punk group. Just because you smoke does not mean that you are any of the above listed things and not all the kids up there are either.

I am sorry If I offended some people about my comment . I have seen way too many issues with this on Seneca Street. Something seriously has to be done.

I don't think Kathy lumped all teens into drug-dealing delinquents. She said "also" there are a lot of drug deals. The fact is that elementary and high school kids feel intimidated to walk through these areas for a variety of reasons. It needs to be addressed.

True, it wasn't Kathy who called the kids on cancer corner smoking" punks" and delinquents", it was another poster. Kathy merely suggested the police infiltrate the crowd with "undercover" and I guess what would follow ,start jailing teenagers.Nice thought, a round up of kids right in front of the school..There is a problem there, but the perception that smoking teens are drug dealing/using teens is false and dishonest,My kid does NOT smoke but has friends that do,she occasionally will go to the corner before school just to talk to some of the kids who do smoke. She's an honor student and no delinquent, or punk, and those who accuse the kids there of being so might want to watch the slurs they bandy around. I went to West Genesee in 72, they had a smoking corner too, and guess what? 40 years later, for all the hand wringing, its still there.You want to slow down smoking?, make it illegal, and stop hypocritally taking the taxes that smokers shell out.

It is not hypocritical to tax smokers - they cost the rest of us billions of tax dollars! The tax on cigarettes does not come close to covering the health consequences of their choice. If the taxes covered the cost of their choice, they couldn't afford their cigarettes - problem solved.

Great point! Smokers are always complaining about their rights, while trampling on the rights of the vast majority to breath clean air! Teens are tricked into taking up smoking and then pay with years of addiction. Ending Cancer Corner will help reduce the number of teens in Oneida who will start by seeing this group of kids blatantly violating the law in public, looking like cool little rebels to their friends. They may move elsewhere, but less viability means less kids influenced, as well as less kids bullied and hassled as they try to get to school. Come on, Oneida - take action!

Okay, Stan, then to be fair, let's tax fatty and sugary foods and drinks at the same rate that cigarettes are taxed at, say about 600% should be about right. Because Obesity is an increasing health problem, that like smoking,costs all of us in increased health care costs but so far it's okay to be a lard butt, politically incorrect to be a smoker.This wasn't supposed to be all about taxes, Stan,it was my objection to the stereotype that kids on a corner smoking are punks and drug addicts and that we should have narcs infiltrate the crowd. I added it as an aside because people who whine about smoking would freak out if by some miracle all smokers could quit and suddenly they had to pay the tax burden that smokers pay. A vice is a vice, so let's tax all unhealthy behaviour, not just the ones you evidently don't indulge in.FYI, Stan, NY puts the cig taxes in a slush fund and uses the money for everything but what it was supposedly intended for, in fact they cut the smoking prevention programs to nothing so taxing tobacco to death to offset health care costs is a crock, just like the NY lotto would help schools and we wouldn't pay tolls on the Thruway just as soon as it was paid for.

It seems like a lot of these comments are getting off track. Cancer corner has been around for a long time and is not going away anytime soon. In 1997 I went to high school there and the kids smoking used to flick their lit cigerette butts at the other kids walking by.

Don, I could not agree more that we should tax all unhealthy behavior (what makes you think I feel otherwise?) including any I indulge in. The fact remains that as taxes on cigarettes rise, the usage falls, especially among youth. Cancer Corner is an embarrassment to our city, and creates a negative environment for our youth.

Will we wait for a child to have a fatal asthma attack as they walk through the cloud of smoke to get to school, or a child is killed walking in the street because the sidewalk is obstructed by smokers, before we take action? Then the family will sue the city (rightly so, they had every opportunity and years to act) and we will all have our taxes go up.

Please, Oneida, do right by our kids!

Bit of a stretch there, if you are so asthmatic second hand smoke will drop you in the open air, exhaust fumes, perfume, or simple BO would probably get you first, not to mention, the kids aren't smoking in an impassible alley, they are smoking on an open sidewalk, if you end up hit by a car avoiding them, maybe it's Darwin proving something. While the cops are rounding up the vile smokers and going "undercover" trying to bust the evil drug dealers supposedly hiding in the smoker's midst who will be trying to stem the tide of meth labs that seem to be springing up here? Bet you may have your priorities changed if you are being burgled or mugged while an officer is chasing smoking teenagers down Seneca. There are a lot of people on here who evidently equate cig smoking with heroin use, it's unhealthy, true,but is IS legal in NY for adults.( and some of those "kids" are old enough)Use some of the energy you use to complain here to complain to your legislators and get tobacco outlawed if you feel so strongly, but as long as cigarettes are legal, it will be legal to smoke them on a public sidewalk.Be warned tho, Albany just loves those tobacco taxes, they talk a good talk about taxing smokers unreasonably to make them quit but in reality they love the income and won't quit spending, so how do you think they'll make up the hundreds of millions ? You want that bill on your property taxes, or your income taxes?

If elementary and high school kids are being bullied while walking near "cancer corner" then the high school / city has a obligation to solve this problem. Throwing lit butts at walkers should not be tolerated. Seems like the police could ticket this offense.

The poster who complained of having cigs thrown at them said it happpened in the past;other then the fact the poster really needs to move on and get over things that happened way back in high school ( wahhhhh the mean bullies picked on me!! ) Again. don't the police really have better things to do? Solve real crimes, arrest real criminals but you'd rather chase kids up and down the street? This is a tempest in a teapot.On another note, as small as this community is, not one parent knows any of the kids on the corner, not one parent has control of their own kids? I know everyone thinks the schools should do ALL the parenting while the parents sit on their wide ends watching reality TV, but c'mon, it's your job to teach them not to smoke to begin with. Eons ago I got caught smoking by my Mom ( another Mom recognized me) and believe me, having your tiny Mom beat the living daylights out of you in front of your peers goes a lot farther then a ticket from the city.Now I must go; off to my therapist, for I am having a flashback from 40 years ago of being pantsed by bullies in the locker room in the third grade and I simply won't be able to cope without my ambien.lol.

I'm not a legal expert, but it seems that unless the smokers on cancer corner are breaking the law, there wouldn't be anything that law enforcement can do. Are there ordinances that prohibit loitering that we could enforce? That's about all that comes to my mind.

I'm not sure what undercover cops would be able to do. Again, I'm not an expert, but I don't think their job includes dressing up like teenagers, smoking cigarettes on the corner, and standing around watching everyone until something illegal happens. Aside from the fact that the smokers probably all know each other by now and would be incredibly suspicious, I'd like to think that our highly trained narcotics officers have bigger fish to fry anyway.

I think a better thing to do might be to go to the school board. I don't think it would be too difficult to get them to pass an ordinance that prohibits smoking by enrolled students within half a mile of the school, or something to that effect. If that were to happen, then law enforcement could step in and, even if they didn't issue tickets, disperse the smokers and make life a little easier for the other students who want only to walk to school unmolested.

Other communities have enacted no smoking on sidewalks ordinances. Existing nuisance laws are also enforced in these cases in other communities.

I think the first thing to make clear is that possession of cigarettes and smoking them is NOT illegal! It is a law that tobacco products can only be sold to persons of 18 years or older. So, even if a ten year old kid was out there smoking, no tickets can be issued.

The other problem with cancer corner is that unless the kids are on school grounds the old train tracks in which they are normally located is private property, not the schools or the city's.

The best solution to this problem is what "not an expert wrote." A city ordinance to ban smoking within a distance from school grounds or even on city sidewalks is the best solution. Having worked a little with this problem with Reality Check, a teen led group against tobacco companies targeting teenagers, these are the facts that I am aware of.

Lastly, by no means, being a student, there is no reason for stereotyping these teenagers, as bad, delinquent, drug-dealing kids. In fact, the biggest problem is the lack of guidance in life that they have.

I think that if people feel their health is at risk walking by teenagers having a cigarette on their lunch break maybe you should choose not to walk by the school at that time, or just simply walk on the other side of the road. Oh wait, that's right there is no sidewalk so you might get run over. This is pointless and stupid to complain about. There is a "cancer corner" at pretty much every high school, and I don't think it is going to go away. Even if they ticked the underage so called "punks" that smoke, there are still 18 year old kids that go to school and have the right to smoke if they want, and they will still be out there smoking. I think people around here have nothing better to do than complain about kids that do this wrong and kids that wrong; they are kids, and all kids break some rule at one point or another. Get over it. Not to mention it would just be a never ending problem even if the cops did do something about it. Kids will still smoke,and people will always complain. When the cops arrest a crack dealer does that stop everyone in Oneida from smoking crack? No, a new dealer just comes around, so it is pointless to waste the cops time on something so petty.

Actually posession of a tobacco product by a person under the age of 18 is illegal. The police have better things to do and ticketting juveniles can be a headache, but the person who said a 10 year old can smoke cigs, just not puchase them is incorrect.

Jason, I am not one who is going to sit here and argue but looking through reliable resources no where can I find that possession of tobacco is illegal in New York State by any age. If you can prove me wrong then post a link, please!

I couldn't find anything about it being illegal for teens to smoke, either. Found laws about them buying tobacco and laws about selling tobacco to them, but nothing on having it or using it. I'm darkly amused , though.You're worried about teens smoking outside the school while most of the job choices for a teen ( and most adults) in this town seem to be A: Fast Food and B:Auto Repair/Tire Store . So, no worries for those so outraged about smoking outside the school, after they graduate many of the smoking kids ( and non smokers, too)will move to where the opportunities are and you can move on to moaning about some other inconsequential crap while our town wilts around you.

Here is a link to what Oneida plans to do about this.

http://www.oneidadispatch.com/articles/2010/11/15/news/doc4ce1f516b9c4f642679907.txt

let the kids smoke and get quit fingering their lung pudding and choices...most kids are punks and need to look cool, so let 'em think they are. Allow and the urge just may subside, deny and it will grow and grow...if a teen need to smoke at that age, it's a parental fault. Heck as long as these kids actually go to class we should be content, lest they start skipping and actually hanging around on your lawns like hippies or slinging whatever off corners just looking suspicious.

Smoking is still bad, mmmkay? But personal freedoms are still the best.

Commonsense-Hippies? Hippies? Wow, live in a time warp, do you? I'm pretty sure Hippies, like the Dodo and the Compassionate Conservative are extinct.lol. I DO agree ,however, that it's up to the parents to teach the kids not to smoke, not the school, and certainly not the Oneida PD who have far better things to do. BTW, most kids are NOT punks, quite sad that that is your perception of them.

sad indeed, sad that the hippies are gone. compassionate conservatives are an oxymoron to some and a life to others. point is that these teens stay in school and out of the impressionable hands of adolescent boredom.

plenty of people live in time warps but hippies are just an old cliche...allow me to modernize...and then they just hang around places on heavy doses of pharmaceuticals and legalized fake marijuana sipping on four-locos before they go do some other ill advised things...

I agree that it is not up to the Oneida PD to teach kids not to smoke, but it is up to them to enforce laws like loitering and public nuisance when our kids can't get to school without going through an unsafe situation created on a public sidewalk.

Sue- Kids, smoking or not, standing in front of their own school on a public sidewalk in broad daylight are not "loitering", and my kid walks that route to school every morning and strangely enough she seems to have no problem avoiding that so-called "unsafe situation".I can absolutely guarantee you that anyone walking past the school are inhaling more carcinogens emitted by all the traffic on 5 then they ever could from second hand smoke. Lobby Albany, make smoking illegal for everyone, then you might have a way to stop kids from smoking, at least where you can see them do so. Again, parents job to stop kids from smoking, NOT the police.

Wrong - blocking a public sidewalk with no business to conduct there - that's the definition of loitering. I don't believe you about your kids having no problem - or maybe they are the bullies. I personally know many parents who drive their kids to school so that they don't have to walk through that unsafe situation, and many kids who say they are bullied, forced to walk in the street, and do breath in the crap that you wrongly state in no more harmful than the car fumes. Wrong about the job of the police - it is their job to enforce the local loitering ordinance, which IS being violated. I stand up for all the children! This crowd is causing more youth to take up a deadly addiction, littering up our community, and thumbing their noses at authority - why defend that - you must be a smoker.

cannot be illegal unless you would like to revoke a person's right to choose freely. something to do with denying freedom of choice is what i mean, dgp.

The youth leave the corner to take in the sights of Seneca street: the hospital where we all eventually end up, the bank with it's late but useful fantastic new clock, some glasses, perhaps an MRI or a big mac, and the elementary school.
The enforcement of loitering will create a larger area of smoking like cockroaches for those of you who trump another human because they smoke.

We came so close - the community was behind it, but the issue is still a big problem!

Gee, Sue, haven't been here in awhile, loved your snide reply to my post.I defend the right to smoke on a PUBLIC sidewalk because last I checked I was still in a free country and A: It isn't llegal to do so, and B:Cigarettes are legal, not because I am a smoker.Seems only fair if you want to waste the Oneida PD's time harassing kids in front of their own school you could send them downtown outside a restaurant or two and harrass a few adults who are also breaking your imagined laws. So many problems in Oneida, no jobs that are worth anything, a shrinking population and tax base, for sale and abandoned houses on just about every block,empty storefronts, and a community that many won't even support a better library and you are freaking out about trivia. Don't worry about those smoking kids, with the lack of opportunites here they sadly, will, like my own(non smoking) kid leave here soon after graduation never to return.

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Protecting youth from starting smoking will save the taxpayers of Madison County millions of dollars. This DOES have a very positive effect on economics, and they will not be wasting their money due to addiction to a harmful drug, instead they can spend it on food, libraries and rent, keeping the money here.

Saving children from an addiction that would kill half of them is NOT a trivial matter.

It looks like perhaps the City and the School District finally can do something about this. I was just on a webinar with the NY State Department of Environmental Health and Governor Cuomo passed a law that would prohibit tobacco use within 100 feet of a school boundary. Could the Dispatch do a story about this and get input from the school, the county? Thanks
Here is the link to the news release - http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/09052012-harmful-effects-of-cigarettes