Editorial: A smoking ban -- without loopholes
Lawmakers shouldn't falter in final phase.
Print this story
E-mail this story
Save to del.icio.us
Share on newsvine
Share on DiggANTIBUSINESS?
Some legislators fear that a statewide smoking ban could hurt bars and restaurants. But a recent study by ClearWay Minnesota, a local nonprofit, found that county and city smoking bans passed in 2004 did not hurt sales or employment at eating and drinking establishments.
Related Content
You have to marvel at the tenacity, brio and sheer creativity with
which pro-tobacco forces have fought the statewide indoor smoking ban
that Minnesotans desperately want. Last Thursday, as the House debated
clean-indoor-air legislation, pro-smoking lawmakers staged an
eight-hour marathon that involved more than two dozen amendments and
culminated in a rhetorical tour de force when Rep. Tom Rukavina,
DFL-Virginia, insisted that today's indoor ventilation systems are so
powerful that "they could suck a little guy like me right up the second
I entered the room."
But you don't have to fall for their specious arguments. What Minnesota needs from the Legislature this year -- and what 18 other states already have adopted -- is a simple, comprehensive indoor smoking ban. That's what the Senate passed earlier this year, and that's what House-Senate conferees should embrace when they begin meeting this week.
The watered-down ban that passed the House late Thursday presumes to cut some slack for owners of bars and taverns. It would allow establishments that derive more than 50 percent of their revenue from liquor to install discrete, ventilated smoking rooms on permission from local permitting authorities.
But that would create exactly the sort of ineffective legal patchwork that the tobacco lobbyists railed against last year, when they were fighting municipal smoking bans one by one. It would pit one business against another, create a competition for smokers, and because good ventilation systems are complicated and expensive, it would disadvantage exactly the sort of small mom and pop business owners that the pro-smoking forces presume to support.
In addition, inexplicably, the House smoking ban wouldn't take effect until January 2009. If Minnesota wants to start saving lives -- and millions of dollars in health care costs -- why would it wait nearly two years to do it? The Senate smoking ban would take effect this summer, the perfect season for smokers to get used to going outside to light up.
The long struggle over Minnesota's smoking ban has produced endless chest-thumping about personal liberty, Big Brother government and freedom of choice. That's a smokescreen. Someone will be inconvenienced by the Legislature's decision -- either smokers who have less liberty to smoke, or nonsmokers who have less protection from other people's lethal habit.
Why is that a hard decision?
But you don't have to fall for their specious arguments. What Minnesota needs from the Legislature this year -- and what 18 other states already have adopted -- is a simple, comprehensive indoor smoking ban. That's what the Senate passed earlier this year, and that's what House-Senate conferees should embrace when they begin meeting this week.
The watered-down ban that passed the House late Thursday presumes to cut some slack for owners of bars and taverns. It would allow establishments that derive more than 50 percent of their revenue from liquor to install discrete, ventilated smoking rooms on permission from local permitting authorities.
But that would create exactly the sort of ineffective legal patchwork that the tobacco lobbyists railed against last year, when they were fighting municipal smoking bans one by one. It would pit one business against another, create a competition for smokers, and because good ventilation systems are complicated and expensive, it would disadvantage exactly the sort of small mom and pop business owners that the pro-smoking forces presume to support.
In addition, inexplicably, the House smoking ban wouldn't take effect until January 2009. If Minnesota wants to start saving lives -- and millions of dollars in health care costs -- why would it wait nearly two years to do it? The Senate smoking ban would take effect this summer, the perfect season for smokers to get used to going outside to light up.
The long struggle over Minnesota's smoking ban has produced endless chest-thumping about personal liberty, Big Brother government and freedom of choice. That's a smokescreen. Someone will be inconvenienced by the Legislature's decision -- either smokers who have less liberty to smoke, or nonsmokers who have less protection from other people's lethal habit.
Why is that a hard decision?
