Spring ballots hope to decide embattled issue
Cities across the state addressed issues of implementing smoking bans in restaurants and bars Tuesday with a smoke-free referendum on the spring ballots. However, referenda from the municipal level may not be enough to garner support for a statewide ban.
While the debate about a smoke-free state still burns in the legislature, Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, would like to see all workplaces smoke-free by Dec. 31, 2010, said WTPCP supervisor Jim Malone.
I think what you're seeing now across the country is a trend for smoke-free policies that are more comprehensive and go beyond from community to community,\ Malone said. ""Has that happened in Wisconsin, yet? No. Can it happen? Possibly, but we're not there yet.""
The current statewide smoking ban bill, Assembly Bill 414, frozen in the state Senate, would allow for smoking in bars and bar areas of restaurants and bowling alleys.
The bill could be counterproductive to that goal, Malone said, because it ""would limit substantially any efforts to enact smoke-free policies at a local level."" The bill would also negate the smoking ban in Madison.
Jim Bender, spokesperson for the bill's author, state Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, said, ""I think everybody's in agreement that smoking habits in this country are certainly changing. At this point, though, from a government-imposed law, I don't know that [Rep. Fitzgerald is] going [to] be on board with every smoke place being smoke-free in 2010."" He cited concerns over the potential for small businesses to lose money or close down and limit owners' abilities to choose their own smoking policies.
""It's been a pretty classic reaction across the country whenever a community goes smoke-free that it's going to hurt business,"" Malone said.
However, he said in the long run, many communities see the health benefits a smoke-free environment offers.
David Ahrens, researcher at the UW-Madison Comprehensive Cancer Center, said bar employees are especially vulnerable to cigarette carcinogens.
""In the field of occupational health, there is no other business that has asked for the latitude, in terms of potentially harming their employees, as does the bar business,"" Ahrens said. ""There's no other business where that kind of conversation would be socially acceptable.""
However, Bender said it is hard to ban something that is already permissible under the law.
""Smoking is a legal activity. And if they want to allow a legal activity in their bar, they should be able to,"" he said. ""But to impose a restriction on a legal activity that's going [to] hurt a business owner, that's not the role of government.""\
