While surfing through my Twitter Feed, I noticed a headline that I just had to click on. @72suited posted a link to Honolulu seeking to ban ‘BO’ on buses put out by the Associated Press.

According to the article, “the Honolulu City Council is considering a bill that would impose up to a $500 fine and/or up to six months in jail for public transit passengers convicted of being too smelly.”

Come on people. Now I know that I am certainly no authority on smell, given my born disability, but I think this is going a little bit too far. This bill is clearly NOT about foul odors disturbing other riders. No, something else stinks far worse here.

As pointed out in an article at Honoluluadvertiser.com, Councilman Rod Tam, a co-sponsor of the bill, stated:

As we become more inundated with people from all over the world, their way of taking care of their health is different. Some people, quite frankly, do not take a bath every day and therefore they may be offensive in terms of their odor.

In the previous year, Tam had unsuccessfully pushed for a bill to ban sleeping on bus stop benches, which was criticized for being anti-homeless.

The BO bill has since been voted down when members of the public pointed out that people’s foul order might just be caused by disease or be carried from a person’s workplace . Really? Is that the argument that halted the bill? Okay. Let’s pay no attention to the elephant in the closet!

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