Board of Aldermen 04-09-2019 Page 3
PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RELATIVE TO ITEMS EXPECTED TO BE ACTED UPON THIS
EVENING
Vice President O’Brien
Folks may | give you a caution. We'’ve had something like 23 people sign up. The period that is allotted to
this is supposed to be 15 minutes. We have a very active agenda this evening. But | want to hear and we
all do want to hear what you have to say. So when | call you up, please give your name and your address
and express your opinions before the Board. However, if somebody else also came up and expressed the
same opinion, it would be appreciated if you recognize that somebody else has already spoken and that
would be fine as well too and we will try to get through the list. So that being done, | will now call Andrew
Olding to come forward.
Andrew Olding It’s Andrew Olding.
Vice President O’Brien
Olding, thank you. May | ask sir, to you and to others, if | murder the name, your forgiveness please, thank
you.
Andrew Olding You are forgiven. So | am Andrew Olding, | live at 8 Royal Crest Drive in the south part of
Nashua and | wanted to speak against the smoking bill that is in front of you today. There’s a bunch of
points that I’m sure other people are going to be making here tonight. But the big one that | wanted to
focus one is one that | brought up when this was first brought on this floor the night of the Mayor’s State of
the City address. In that address, the Mayor spent a lot of time talking about wanting more young people to
move to the City. If you want young people to move to the City, treating 18, 19, and 20 year olds different
than you treat 21, 22, 23 and so on year-olds when it comes to the purchase of tobacco. When the rest of
the State doesn’t operate this way outside of a couple cities, is not the way to do, this is not the way to grow
Nashua. Thanks.
Jeffrey Creem Hi I’m Jeff Creem from 7 Celeste Street in the north end of Nashua and | am here to speak
in opposition to the proposed smoking ordinance. | think for a few people in the room probably know on
Thursday the House is going to vote on HB 2 and in there is the definition of what tobacco products mean
which actually differs from the definition we’ve got in the ordinance here. Specifically in the House Bill that
excludes products that are basically certified by the FDA to be used for smoking cessation and that’s not
really in our definition. So we will end up denying young adults ages 18 to 21 with the ability to purchase
products that they might want to actually have access to in order to basically stop smoking
| guess I'd further go to say that there’s a portion of this Bill that has re-education camp for cases when
people are repeatedly going back and violating the ordinance. And in general most of the people who will
be going through this will have already gone through 12 or now maybe 13 years of Government education
and that still hasn’t sunk in, so | don’t really think that additional Government re-education is necessary.
Thank you
Melissa Creem Hil am Melissa Creem, 7 Celeste Street. | am also opposed to this bill, | agree with AJ
and my husband that you are not encouraging young people to move to the City. There are 18, 19, 20
years old, they are old enough to go to war for this country; they are old enough to have a cigarette, they
are old enough to have a drink as far as I’m concerned. Leave them alone, stop meddling in their lives,
they are 18, they are adults.
Stacie Laughton | am Stacie Laughton, Ward 1 resident off of Broad Street in Nashua, 507 Broad Street,
Nashua, New Hampshire. I’m not going to read all of these that | have put out, | had written up something
but in the observance of time | am just going to basically say because | have seen the previous public
hearings and | am sure everyone has the same things that | was going to say, have already been said.
