While legislatures in North Dakota and Minnesota dilly-dally over statewide smoking bans, a majority of states have put the issue behind them. Bans are in place and working. Life - smoke-free, clean-air life - goes on.
The movement to ban smoking and secondhand smoke in workplaces and other public places has been on a roll for a decade. All but a few states (mostly tobacco-producing states) have adopted full or partial workplace smoking and secondhand smoke bans. In many states, the compromise required to secure a ban was a bar exemption. But in other states and several major cities, smoke bans include all workplaces, restaurants and bars.
Some cities and states have taken the other steps: outdoor bans in public parks and within 50 feet of building entrances; no smoking on any public school property, indoors or outdoors, or in college dormitories; establishing smoke-free registries of private residential buildings.
Closer to home, cities in North Dakota and Minnesota have partial bans in place, either because of voter approval or imposition by elected officials. Wherever the question has been on the ballot, a ban has won. To our knowledge, no elected official has been booted by the voters because of support for a smoking ban or secondhand smoke regulation.
What the trend confirms, of course, is that a huge majority of Americans (Minnesotans and North Dakotans included) support smoke-free workplaces, restaurants and bars. They have rejected the economic argument - that smoke bans hurt business - in favor of the overwhelming scientific evidence that exposure to tobacco smoke, even in small concentrations, is a health hazard.
ADVERTISEMENT
The latest surveys in North Dakota confirm public support of total smoke bans. A 2006 poll conducted by Winkelman Consulting of Fargo found that 65.6 percent of those polled support extending smoke bans to all workplaces, including bars. That same survey reported 79.9 percent of those asked said they would go to a bar or lounge just as often or more often if all bars and lounges in their community were smoke-free.
That said, metro area cities have accepted exemptions for free-standing bars and at least one veterans club in an effort to level the playing field among the cities. A comprehensive statewide ban in one state and not the other would tip the field for border cities. It is likely Minnesota will pass such a ban; North Dakota is less of a certainty. It would make sense, therefore, for metro cities - Fargo, West Fargo, Moorhead and Dilworth - to get ahead of the curve and approve a coordinated multi-city ban that would treat all bars and workplaces the same. That effort seems stalled.
This much is certain: Eventually - and sooner rather than later in Minnesota - a statewide smoke ban that includes bars will become law. Cities can help bar owners adjust by preparing for the inevitable. A pre-emptive local ban that includes all metro cities might be the best way to go, both for the health of workers and the bottom line for bar owners.
Forum editorials represent the opinion of Forum management and the newspaper's Editorial Board.
