Opinion
Time is right for state smoking ban
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Also by Andy Granias:
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- McCain relies on old fiscal failures (April 17, 2008)
- High court election could be worse (April 3, 2008)
- Oh, look how they've grown! (March 27, 2008)
- Why do political wives stand by? (March 13, 2008)
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Imagine it’s a Thursday night and all of your friends are out on the town while you’re stuck at home, finishing up your last bit of schoolwork before the weekend begins. They call you and beckon you to come out and have a few beers. The collective agreement is that Monday’s is the place to be and you’re to meet them there at 11:00.
So you head out, but when you get to the bar you witness a strange and disturbing phenomenon: Everyone inside Monday’s is sloshing around in two inches of some strange fluid on the floor that not only looks, but also smells, exactly like urine.
You turn to the bouncer at the entrance and say, “What the hell is on the floor in there?” He responds agitatedly, “It’s urine.”
“Urine?” you say in disbelief. “What? That’s disgusting.”
The bouncer turns and looks you directly in the eye and says, “Listen you wiseass hippie, the owner decided he’s losing too much money running and maintaining restrooms for his patrons. All that time he spent paying his employees to clean up bathrooms was significantly hurting his profit margin, so he got rid of ‘em. And by the way, our owner has the right to run his business any way he wants. You want a bar with a bathroom, go somewhere else!”
In utter disbelief, you leave the bar. But you say to yourself that you’d still like to have a beer and watch the end of the game, so you decide to stop into Brats.
Wouldn’t you know it, though, Brats has urine and feces floating all over its floors too, and nearly all of its patrons have the same half-disgusted look on their faces that you saw from the people inside Monday’s. It’s the same story in Brothers, the Plaza, the Irish Pub and every other bar you go to, until finally… you wake up.
It was all a dream.
Fortunately, you wake up to a much more rational and reasonable world. You wake up in Wisconsin, where state statute 254.61 mandates all restaurants and bars provide public restrooms in order to protect the health of its citizens. You wake up in the real world, where there is a fundamental obligation on the part of the government to regulate private business in order to maintain a certain public health standard.
Earlier this week, Senate President Fred Risser, D-Madison, attempted to fulfill this governing obligation by introducing a bill that would ban smoking from all workplaces statewide, including restaurants and bars. And just as a statewide mandate for restaurants and bars to provide public restrooms protects Wisconsinites from the health hazards of sloshing around in human excrement, a statewide ban on smoking in the workplace would protect the citizenry from the very serious public health concern of secondhand smoke.
According to a 2006 U.S. Surgeon General’s report, secondhand nonsmokers have a 25 percent increased risk of heart disease and at least a 30 percent increased risk of getting lung cancer when regularly exposed to tobacco smoke. In the report, then-Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona said, “Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance. It is a health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults.”
Further, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, secondhand smoke kills more than 800 people per year in Wisconsin, a figure slightly higher than that of traffic accidents. Likewise, secondhand smoke is the third-leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and kills an estimated 53,000 Americans every year, according to Smoke Free Wisconsin.
It is also worth noting that many outside the Wisconsin Legislature are increasingly recognizing the public health risks induced by secondhand smoke, and are taking action with statewide smoking bans. If Wisconsin adopts Mr. Risser’s proposed legislation, it will become the 23rd state in the country to enact a statewide smoking ban that includes bars and restaurants.
However, the idea has met some opposition, primarily from the Tavern League and those concerned with a workplace ban that includes bars because of the “potential for economic losses.” In fact, the market reality is that a statewide ban would actually level the economic playing field for bars that currently fall within one of the 33 Wisconsin municipalities that have smoke-free ordinances in all workplaces, including bars.
As the logic follows, municipalities that have enacted these ordinances run the risk of losing business to neighboring municipalities that do not have smoke-free ordinances. However, with a ban that encompasses all of Wisconsin, and with Minnesota and Illinois recently passing statewide bans, there is virtually no risk of Wisconsin bars suffering economic losses from potential patrons crossing the border — whether it is a state or municipal border — in order to be able to smoke inside a bar.
Moreover, it should be noted that, according to a 2007 University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health study, less than 20 percent of Wisconsinites are smokers — meaning there is a potential for economic gain for taverns who could gain business from a potential population of over 80 percent who are disenfranchised nonsmokers, as opposed to the potential of losing business from less than 20 percent of the population who would not be able to smoke indoors in the aftermath of a statewide ban.
What’s more is that both the state and private insurers stand to gain from decreased medical costs as a result of less exposure to secondhand smoke.
Unfortunately, however, despite the need for a public standard of health and the potential for economic gain statewide, there prevails among some a tired, black-and-white, extreme-libertarian viewpoint that rejects any regulation on business. This school of thought says that any potential customer can clearly see when a bar is smoke-filled and therefore can simply go to another bar if he or she is concerned about the health risks of secondhand smoke.
Likewise, the same logic is to be applied to bar employees who are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke at their place of work. No one is forced to work in a bar, and therefore, no one is forced to be exposed to secondhand smoke. Furthermore, if bars stood to gain economically from a ban on smoking, market principles would dictate that more bars across the state would become smoke-free at their own discretion to appease consumer desires and the majority of the bar-going population. This phenomenon has not occurred.
Yet, various public opinion polls seem to be at odds with said market principles and the aforementioned public philosophy — often showing wide support for statewide smoking ban. For example, a statewide poll conducted earlier this year by the Mellman Group and Public Opinion Strategies found that 64 percent of state occupants support a law making workplaces, including restaurants and bars, completely smoke-free. What could account for this disparity?
Quite simply, it is a logical failure that assumes that if a cost-benefit analysis results in a certain action, then the costs considered therein are therefore rendered moot or insignificant.
If a woman is considering a job in a work environment that is highly sexually abusive, yet possesses all of the other traits and benefits she is looking for in a job, she may very well choose to work in said environment. Yet because she has chosen to accept the job doesn’t mean she should have to put up with sexual abuse just because it is the current norm.
Similarly, because you are willing to go to a bar with all of your friends, despite the extreme health hazards of secondhand smoke, that does not mean you should therefore have to be exposed to that smoke.
To be sure, the state must be cautious whenever it regulates private business. But when the regulation will maintain a necessary public health standard, has the potential to stimulate economic growth and meets the desires of the majority of consumers, the state has an obligation to act.
Andy Granias (agranias@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in political science and legal studies.
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The Congressional Research Service, OSHA and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, among many others, have declared secondhand smoke to be harmless, An EPA study that said otherwise was declared fraudulent, Carmona's
study was based on the EPA report and he was fired for telling a tale a mother wouldn't believe.
To draw a parallel between human waste and smoking is as ridiculous as it gets. Your argument is based on a despicable fraud--that smelling smoke is deadly,
Show some evidence or shut the hell up.
You have to do your homework on how the legislature agreed to fund the reward for high school students in Wisconsin who do their homework. The state budget funds the Wisconsin Covenant through -- taxes on smoking. Ban it and you are cutting out funding for students to go to college.
The state budget also expends $30 million in just this biennium to stop smoking -- at the same time that the same budget relies on it.
Any attempt to argue "logic" in all this is just laughable. The stop-smoking forces have got to get their act together, because they are looking so foolish in all this that they're making smokers look sensible.
Very good article. How could anyone argue with this? Is this stance going to be defended and presented to those that are currently rejecting this ban?
Hey, 9:20 -
That may be the most criminally ignorant argument I've ever heard. The Statewide smoking ban doesn't ban smoking in the state of Wisconsin. It bans it in bars or restaurants. It's making sure that those people who smoke don't pass along the health consequences to non-smokers. People can and will still buy cigarettes and fund the Wisconsin Covenant. What did you think that Cigarette tax increase was for? Shits and giggles?
I'm a non-smoker and I think this idea is ridiculous. If you don't like smoke in bars, don't go to smokey bars. Vote with your patronage.
Theoretically, all bars should then be out of business considering the majority's disgust of the habit, BUT YOU DON'T SEE GRANDMA AND LITTLE SUZIE AT BARS, do you?
Andy, once you find a nice bar with clean air you can then turn your concern to the ill-effects of alcohol consumption.
Why not ban smoking? We banned gay marriage. Clearly no one in this worthless state cares about our constitutional rights anyway. At least they can't take my gun away from me.
"a statewide poll conducted earlier this year by the Mellman Group and Public Opinion Strategies found that 64 percent of state occupants support a law making workplaces, including restaurants and bars, completely smoke-free. What could account for this disparity?"
What could account for this disparity is that the public in general supports making *restaurants* completely smoke--free, not bars. Well--crafted polls that separate bars and restaurants in their questions have shown this to be very clear.
Yet anti--smokers refuse to put forth a poll that allows people to express that they see a difference between restaurants and bars, much as anti--smokers continue to insist that a compromise that only bans smoking in bars is unacceptable.
"there is a potential for economic gain for taverns who could gain business from a potential population of over 80 percent who are disenfranchised nonsmokers"
Really? Has that proven to be the case in Madison? Maybe you'd like to have a chat with the bars that haven't seen *any* gain in attendance from "disenfranchised" (God, that's rich) nonsmokers.
What a pathetic argument the writer uses. Check your facts Andy and dont just be so gullible as to believe everything the Surgeon General(sorry former as Carmona was fired for not being taolented enough) said.
So Andy I guess you want to ban alcohol yet so you can enjoy your orange juice in what you consider "clean air". Sorry what you state Andy is opinions NOT facts. The state has no obligation to act- in fact they should let business owners decide.
Personally I dont like the smell of mayonnaise- do I think they should be banned? Nope! I guess you're in favour of banning guns from all households and scrapping the 2nd ammendment- or in fact the Constitution as it is too democratic for your narrow minded views Andy.
PS another nonsmoker.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you aren't as committed to this issue as you'd like your readers to believe. Why did you wait to write this lengthy article until after the bill was already killed? Those of us who actually care about this have been following the status of SB150 since it was introduced.
Smoking should be encouraged. Everyone stupid enough to smoke will die early and this will help solve the SS and Medicare funding crisis. Stupid smoking mothers will have stupid unhealthy children. Eventually this will lead to fewer stupid people.
Just think of it as evolution in action.
I think smoking should be promoted, considering the tax on smokes is to be used to fund child medical care. How insensitive can the state be to even consider banning it!!
All of you pro-smoking people are absolute morons. Smoking is a filthy habit that costs millions and millions of dollars and is completely pointless. People can smoke all they want, as long as its not around me when I'm consuming food in a restaurant or having a beer in a bar. Why should I have to be subjected to all that smoke?
Hmmm Andy, I'm saddened to see you're advocating feel-good legislation that will do NO GOOD overall for our society, and accomplishes nothing more than unnecessarily legislating away the rights of a minority, and kissing up to the agenda of a fanatical minority of non-smokers that COMPLETELY DISREGARD the rights of smokers.
And btw, in case you didn't realize, anti-smokers do NOT make up a majority of non-smokers. It's only a small, fanatical minority of non-smokers that are leading this unnecessary crusade against smokers.
You'd be very wise to wake the heck up, and learn that just because you hate something, doesn't mean that it's necessary for government to pass an outright ban on little annoyances you hold, such as smoking in businesses that choose to allow it. I personally abhor and dislike women who wear excessive perfume in public, but do I campaign night and day for a 100% ban on perfume-wearing in public? Heck no! And that's why I hope you wisen up one day, Andy(I don't hate you btw, and if anything, I'm sure you're probably a decent person). Have a great day, and take care.
anonymous, Nov 1, 4:18
You should get some new material . Your rant is the same one prescribed by the World Health Organization and regurgitated by millions of freelance tobacco nazis every time they see a cigarette.
I can't speak for the next man but your desire not to be smoked around is a joke to me. I smoke anywhere it's legal whether you're around or not. You're typical of tobacco nazis who are so giddy with power you forget that power comes from a corrrupt government.
It's not that we don't like the "smell" of tobacco-- no, some of us physically can't breathe in smoke-filled environments. I have had asthma since I was a kid, and it's more or less under control, but cigarette smoke is a trigger for me. I can start coughing for several minutes just from breathing in second-hand smoke. I don't particularly like mayonnaise like an above poster, but it doesn't give me asthma attacks. I can just choose not to consume it. But I don't have that choice when it comes to smoke. I could really care less about the "rights" of others to smoke. They can poison themselves in their own home, but they shouldn't have the "right" to violate my own right to health and poison me against my will.
On top of that, cigarette smokers are a huge drain on the health care system, and eat up state tax dollars that could go towards treating unelected health conditions. For example, asthma.
Anonymous (November 1, 2007 @ 5:32pm)
"On top of that, cigarette smokers are a huge drain on the health care system, and eat up state tax dollars"
Try again, smarty. Smokers pay more into the state coffers in cigarette taxes than they take out in health care costs. And don't forget the huge Big Tobacco settlement that the Powers That Be used for everything *but* health care. It's not our fault the state doesn't use any of our money for anything remotely related to health care costs. Maybe you should look into that a bit more so you can start going to bars again.
Oh wait, you *can* go to bars in Madison now. So how many have you been to that you didn't go to before?
I can hear it now, so many children will go without medical care because people could not smoke in bars. There will be so many laws passed on behalf of the anti smoking lobby that people will quit smoking and the poor children will die. Once everyone quits smoking, what will the libs tax to save the kids this time?
Oh, sorry to be insensitive, but to the guy who said he could not breath around smoke. The day you have to go into a restaurant or a bar and are not given the choice to avoid an establishment that allows smoking, you may have a case, until then, grow up and quit whining.
I hate smoke (as an ex-smoker) as much as anyone, I can't stand to be around it, but I have a choice to avoid it, so do you. You do not have a right to tell a privately owned business what legal activity they can allow. Personally, I think we need to ban cheap, heaped on perfume in class, it makes me sick to smell it.
It's not a ban on smoking you fucking idiots. It's a ban on smoking indoors. Wow.
"Oh wait, you *can* go to bars in Madison now. So how many have you been to that you didn't go to before?"
I went to bars for the first time in May, actually. And while I don't go frequently, I can go when I'm able without worrying about my lungs.
For all those advocating smokers rights, I've got news for you. There is no right to smoke.
The mayonnaise argument is laughable. 2nd hand mayonnaise must be deadly.
When a business opens its doors to serve the public, it opens its doors to regulation. Government does have an obligation to act to protect the public when business fails to do so.
The ideals of John Locke says it best: Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and property - thus everyone has right to go out, party and have a good time. The moment you infringe upon these rights held by those around you, your right to do whatever you choose becomes void.
Smoke Free laws cover half the popluation of the US. They are now the norm, not the exception.