Coalitions quietly cut through smoke

Last fall, Portland witnessed one goofy campaign – “The Quiet Man” campaign. “The Quiet Man,” you ask? Well, it’s an Oscar-winning 1952 John Wayne movie – Yank settles in Ireland, wins a lassie’s heart, and a few bar fights too. What’s this to do with Portland politics? Have faith in the absurd.

“Quiet Man” director John Ford grew up around Portland. Ford, born Sean O’Fearna, bless him, is revered as one of America’s greatest movie directors. “The Grapes of Wrath” alone makes Ford one great Mainer. Ford hopped a California-bound train before finishing puberty, but Portland held no grudge, building a statue honoring Ford.

And The Quiet Man Coalition? It rolled Ford and The Duke into one great ball of Maine pride and red-blooded American independence. The organizers thought of this slogan marketing genius for their campaign to kill Portland’s smoke-free restaurant ordinance. They claimed to represent “The Silent Majority” (Genius Slogan no. 2, courtesy of Nixon’s ’68 campaign).

Portland’s majority (silent or otherwise) upheld the ordinance with 61 percent. Maybe Portlanders are film buffs and knew what The Quiet Man Coalition apparently didn’t: Wayne and Ford, good men, were lifelong smokers who died, oops, of emphysema and lung cancer.

The Quiet Man Coalition argued the law hurt restaurants. Portland’s ordinance had passed the City Council 7-2. Dr. Lani Graham, Citizens for Healthy Portland, pointed to places like Northhampton, Mass. (popu-lation 30,000). Northampton restaurateurs who opposed smoke-free restaurants concede business is fine. One restaurateur said, “My business is up.” Johnny DiMillo of Portland’s DiMillo’s Restaurant opposed the ordinance, but told me his business stayed the same, perhaps increasing, since Portland’s ordinance became effective. Portland restaurants can be completely smoke-free, or offer separately ventilated sections keeping smoke among smokers. Ever had a “nonsmoking” seat where you can reach an adjoining table and rattle the ashtray of the guy blowing smoke at you? Five chemicals in secondhand smoke are proven carcinogens. Secondhand smoke increases nonsmoker heart disease and lung cancer.

Maine children learn in restaurants that smoking is “adult” – acceptable to impose on others. Many Maine young people are already sold – addicted actually. Maine leads America in young adult smokers: 34.7 percent. Nearly half of Maine high-schoolers smoke.

Robert McAfee, retired Portland surgeon and former American Medical Association president, noted secondhand smoke increases asthma, bronchitis and other diseases. Tobacco corporations have money and lobbyists; asthma sufferers have numbers. Asthma is the most common chronic childhood illness, cigarettes the most common asthma-triggering pollutant. Asthma coalitions worked for Portland’s law.

Quiet Man campaigners warned of a slippery slope leading to laws where real men can’t smoke in bars. Maybe. (There will be such a bill introduced this legislative session.) But there’s a legitimate distinction between bars and restaurants. Children patronize restaurants, not bars. Smokers don’t become addicted as adults, but as teens. Most smokers agree that when Dr. King said, “Let freedom ring,” he wasn’t talking about puffing cigarettes next to asthmatics in restaurants.

Freedom, for The Quiet Man or The Hacking Wheezing Man, ends at the tip of the other person’s nose, not deep in their nostrils, bronchial tubes, bloodstream, etc. Freedom doesn’t mean jamming smoke up kids’ noses either. Mercedes Foster, a Portland teacher among the 61 percent, offered another reason: “I have friends who work in food-service; smoke jeopardizes their health.” The town of Gray recently rejected a radical proposal to ban tobacco sales.

Perhaps Portland’s law appealed to the “Silent Majority” because it balanced individual rights and the citizenry’s right, literally, to breathe easy in public places.

Maybe that’s why Bath Iron Works welder Mike Varle is organizing a similar referendum effort in Sabattus. There are rumblings of smoke-free coalitions in South Portland and Bar Harbor (on MDI call 288-5081). Freeport, Westbrook and Portland limit youth tobacco access. Vermont, Utah and California passed smoke-free restaurant laws; legislatures usually pass such laws after several municipalities do so first. Bangor City Councilor Michael Aube discussed this issue with Cancer, Heart, and Lung Associations and thinks the issue deserves – Mike’s pun – “healthy debate,” leading, perhaps, to healthy law.

John Wayne’s finest performance was his last: “The Shootist,” in which he plays a gunslinger, who, like Wayne himself, has terminal cancer. The young Ford and Wayne knew as much of smoking’s danger as John Smith and Pocahontas did when sharing a friendly pipe. Times change. A Portland smoker put it best: “Out of love for our fellow human beings, I believe in the responsibility of smokers to keep their habit away from those who don’t indulge.” Maybe – with a law like Portland’s – a great Maine artist born today will be around to enjoy a statue unveiling. Or, maybe, the next great artist will smoke, chimney-like, as many Mainers do.

That’s freedom. But your kids will be able to go to restaurants without smoke puffing in their face. That’s freedom too.

Sean Faircloth lives in Bangor.