Smoking Ban Gets Cool Reception from Northern Minnesota Lawmakers

by Leigh Pomeroy

There is a common assumption that the Freedom to Breathe Act should receive a much more friendly reception in the DFL-dominated Minnesota legislature than it has in the past when the GOP controlled the State House. Not so fast.

The bill came up Monday in the Senate Business, Jobs and Industry Committee, and the senators who put up the most road blocks were — you guessed it — DFLers.

The principal naysayer was Sen. David Tomassoni, DFL-Chisholm, whose chief concern was protecting the myriad small, locally-owned bars that dot the Iron Range communities he represents. And no wonder. In many shrinking rural Minnesota towns all that remains of a former modestly prosperous community is the town bar — the place where locals gather to drink, talk, eat and, yes, smoke if they wish. One can't blame Sen. Tomassoni for wanting to keep this perhaps last vestige of rural Minnesota intact.

Yet his proposal to save them is a double-edged sword. The Senate Business, Jobs and Industry Committee at his behest added an amendment to the Freedom to Breathe Act that allows bars to add smoking ventilation systems to exempt them from coming under the heavy hand of the smoking ban. A good compromise, one might think, but will it work? Here are three potential problems:

(1) Ventilation systems that clear smoke from the air are very expensive — somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000 and up if they are to have any effect whatsoever. Sure, there are less expensive systems, but are they effective? Bar owners say yes, yet filters often need to be replaced or cleaned monthly, and many bar owners who have them admit this is maintenance they rarely get around to.

(2) There is nothing in the amendment to the legislation to set a clean air standard for bars that use ventilation systems. And who's to monitor them? The MPCA? That's not mentioned either.

(3) No standard has been set, either by Minnesota or the federal government, of a safe level of secondhand smoke. Put simply, no one knows. If a bar installs a $5,000 ventilation system, should it scrub the air completely of all smoke to create a safe environment? No one knows that, either.

One cannot blame Sen. Tomassoni, or for that matter Sen. Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook, for supporting the ventilation option. They are only representing vocal members of their constituencies. Yet they should realize that if a smoking ban without exemptions is enacted, the sky will not fall, hell will not freeze over, and Minnesota will not suffer from consistent 70º winter days (thus excluding ice fishing).

Periodically societies face such dilemmas of personal freedoms vs. societal obligations. This society has faced them before — Remember seat belts? Child car seats? Alcohol limits? — and still thrived with 99.99% of its freedoms intact. Adding a smoking ban as proposed in the Minnesota Freedom to Breathe act may cause temporary discomfort for some, but evidence gathered from other states and countries where similar legislation has been enacted proves that economic hits, if they occur, are inevitably short-lived.

Bar owners and patrons become used to the changes, those who don't like secondhand smoke feel welcome again, and life goes on. Let's be real candid here: If Minnesotans can deal with sub-zero winters and mosquito-infested summers, then living with a smoking ban ought to be no more difficult than sitting in an ice house for eight hours on a Sunday afternoon and catching nothing but a six-pack of beer, a bag of pretzels and the Packers blowing out the Vikings on TV.