Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 5/14/2019 - P30
Board of Aldermen 05-14-2019 Page 30
Alderwoman Kelly
You keep calling on me as I’ve had a comment to the previous one so | apologize. I’m having a hard
time with the continual changes on this is what! was going to say. | appreciate that the Aldermen
around the horseshoe want to try to make this work but | think there are unintended consequences to
making quick changes. Like for example what you recommended with the under or over 21 does it
make it that convenience stores can no longer have an 18 year old be their cashier at that point
because they won’t be able to sell the tobacco products? And that’s just thinking about it in a flash of a
moment but | also agree that we are continuing to water this down and water this down. | was in
support of the original if we continue to water it down it is just for headlines.
Alderman Jette
| don’t know how many people responded to your civic sounding board survey Alderman Clemons but
the Nashua Telegraph did an online survey and there were close to 800 people who responded and
there was 63% in favor of raising the age to 21 and 37% against so | don’t know if you are looking to
assess the feeling of your constituents, | don’t know if that is information that helps you or not but | just
thought | would point that out to you.
Alderman Lopez
| propose the latest amendment and | think Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja did as well because we were
following the suggestion that we compromise and address issues as they were. We just had our
sincerity questioned which | object to because all of the State Reps here promise they are going to
handle this, have not done that and are unilaterally opposed under any condition. We just entertained
an entire month delay when we could have just voted on this the previous meeting because an
amendment was agreed to be proposed that was not proposed at that meeting despite my explicit
comment that it should be. So we went through the whole committee process and we still
compromised so | don’t think our sincerity needs to be questioned, | think it stands for itself. We are
trying to reduce the number of cigarettes that are in the hands of children. We have an actionable step
that we can take right now. People’s vote and people’s actions speak much more loudly than their
words do.
So we can generate whatever statistics we want or we can choose whatever studies we want, the
position for supporting this, those are coming from National Studies those are coming from peer
reviewed academic studies. The sounding board does not meet that muster, if you think it does, again
that speaks for itself. But! think our intentions are clear on this and watering it down is unfortunate, |
think in trying to be civil and trying to recognize what people are saying they are feeling, we have
wandered away from the path and | think at this point we do just have to call it like it is and let people
stand up for what they really believe in with their actions.
Alderman Tencza
Thank you I’m not sure we have necessarily heard anything new tonight that we haven’t heard in the
past, | don’t necessarily think that there’s been chaos thrown into this debate because these are all
points that have been brought up by people. And | don’t agree that this has been watered down. |
think Alderman Jette has listened to what people’s concerns were with his original proposal, he’s been
thoughtful about the amendments, he’s worked with other people in bringing them forward to the
Committee. To say that it’s watered down and it’s not going to have any effect on helping curb youth
smoking, | just don’t think that is correct. | think we are trying to make it more difficult for tobacco,
tobacco products to get in the hands of 18 to 21 year olds and | think that with a minor amendment we
could still accomplish that.
As far as what is going to happen in Concord, it may happen, it may not happen who knows what the
legislature is going to do. And Alderman O’Brien is right, it’s not just the House, it’s the Senate, it’s
