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Don't hold breath on statewide smoking
ban
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| SUSAN WEINSTEIN,
Gazette Staff Writer |
July 08,
2002 |
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| RAYNHAM-- Local residents and officials
hoping to stamp out public smoking through a statewide ban had
better not hold their breath. |
While successful in curbing smoking and youth access to
cigarettes, the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program is not
aggressively pushing for a statewide prohibition.
And with
reason.
No-smoking activists are concerned that a weaker
state law could undo the more stringent legislation that has been
passed on a local level in recent years.
"The tobacco
industry knows it can pass some watered down state law that would
pre-empt lower government regulations," said D. J. Wilson, an
attorney for the Massachusetts Municipal Association and liaison for
the tobacco control program.
In the mid-1990s, California
became the first state to ban smoking in restaurants, bars and
casinos as an extension of a workplace smoking ban. The law was not
meant to criminalize smoking, but to give employees a workplace free
of secondhand smoke, state officials there said.
Wilson said
California's ban started on a local and county level and resulted in
the same "patchwork quilt" evident today in Massachusetts, where
no-smoking communities border on those allowing patrons to light
up.
But he said the California model cannot be replicated
here because of a key difference in geography. In the Golden State,
large population centers are far from state borders.
Restaurant owners are worried that business will drift over
the border creating the same "unlevel playing field" that drives the
opposition here.
"The issue is most contentious along the
New Hampshire state line," Wilson said.
He added that he is
closely watching to see how a ban recently enacted in Delaware, a
small state like Massachusetts, works.
The group supported a
bill sponsored two years ago that sought to bar public smoking
across the state.The tobacco industry and representatives of the
Massachusetts Restaurant Association testified at hearings and the
bill never made it out of committee.
During the hearings,
Wilson said restaurant workers were reluctant to testify because
they had been inundated with information from their employers and
never heard the opposing viewpoint.
Proposed smoking bans
have met with mixed results in southeastern Massachusetts
communities. The so-called white hole of still-smoking towns is now
dotted with color as bans have passed in Norton and
Easton.
In May, however, Raynham voters shot down a proposed
ban after opponents voiced concerns about difficulties in
enforcement, loss of business and overloaded health boards.
Raynham Health Agent Alan Perry said a lot of towns regret
their smoking bans, as their health boards become inundated with new
health concerns like bioterrorism threats and
meningitis.
Raynham Selectman Gordon Luciano insists that a
statewide ban "can be done here and can work."
"It may takes
compromise but achieving an acceptable goal is acting in the best
interests of the public health," Luciano said.
Wilson said
statistics do not bear out the fears.
"A lot of the arguments
have not changed since Day 1. I'm amazed that we got this far in
eight years," he said.
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| ©The
Taunton Gazette 2002 |
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