Diehard smoking activists defiantly lit up their cigarettes in City Hall on Monday as a send-off to their anti-tobacco nemesis, outgoing Mayor Bloomberg.
But City Hall cops immediately removed the protesters from the Blue Room for violating the city’s indoor smoking ban, just as Hizzoner signed a new law expanding the prohibition to cover nicotine-infused e-cigarettes.
“You’ve shown nothing but disrespect and contempt and not just the choice to smoke, but on decision-making itself. This is my legal private life, not public health. You don’t own me like state property” fumed Audrey Silk of NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment.
“Good people disobey bad laws.”
Smoker Steve Helfer shouted as he was carted off: “Take care mayor . . . .12 years is enough!”
He later told The Post: “The e-cigarette bill being signed by Mayor Bloomberg has no basis in science. And even according to him, the point is to protect people from secondhand smoke. In this bill there’s no mention of protecting anybody from anything, it’s essential just to de-normalize a certain group of people in the city.”
For his part, Bloomberg shrugged off the protesters.
“OK,” he told the protesters “I think it’s time to leave.”
He then instructed security personnel not to let the smokers back inside the bill-signing ceremony.