Through the haze

Fuzzy thinking about freedom, willful discounting of solid health and economic data, catering to special interests: it’s hard to pick the worst part of the Health and Human Services Committee’s failure to back a ban on smoking in restaurants.

Committee members against the ban say they’re taking a stand for freedom, local control and individual choice. They’re standing on some shaky ground. State law already prohibits smoking in enclosed public places. The exceptions are few: private offices and other nonpublic areas within those buildings; religious ceremonies; tobacco shops; motel and hotel rooms; actors on stage if smoking is in character. And, of course, restaurants, bars and taverns.

You can’t smoke in a movie theater, a bank lobby or a hardware store. Legislators can’t smoke at their State House desks. That freedom is reserved only to those ordering from a menu. Or playing a Bogart role. If a statewide ban is micromanagement of restaurateurs, why is it acceptable to meddle with other merchants? If the Legislature has no business trampling freedom, why does a local town council?

The committee majority apparently believes that individual choice applies only to those who choose to smoke in this specific and special category of enclosed public places. Non-smokers should choose to eat elsewhere. Waitresses, busboys and cooks should choose to work elsewhere. Or maybe they should choose not to breathe for their eight-hour shift.

In case these lawmakers weren’t paying attention to the testimony presented on this bill — perhaps they stepped outside to light up — secondhand smoke is bad. It kills roughly 70,000 Americans each year, including more than 2,000 infants from SIDS. It is a leading cause of illness in children, such as asthma, ear infections, pneumonia. Waitresses and waiters who don’t smoke but who work in smoky environments have a rate of lung cancer 50 percent higher than those who work smoke-free. Workplace safety rules protect employees against everything from bumps on the head to fallen arches. Why not from heart disease, lung cancer and emphysema?

Restaurant owners have lobbied hard against this bill. They worry that the ban would cost them patrons. They ignore the fact that 75 percent of their potential customer base — the Maine population — doesn’t smoke. Or that more than 200 cities with such bans have seen no decrease in restaurant use; increases are the rule. Or that the longer they resist providing such basic protection for their workers, the greater the chance they’ll find themselves being put out of business by a ruinous lawsuit.

It is telling that opponents of the ban employ the slippery-slope argument, the last line of defense for an indefensible position. First restaurants, then bars and taverns, then the privacy of the home, then out behind the garage. Soon it will be against the law to even think about smoking. Where will it end?

For now, probably at restaurants. Unlike bars and taverns, minors frequent restaurants. Bars and taverns require different licenses, so it’s not hard for legislators to draw a distinction. But the evidence against secondhand smoke makes extending to waitresses the protection now afforded to bank tellers inevitable. The economic results from other locales with the ban make it harmless, if not beneficial, to business. Most smokers are reasonable people who understand, and willingly accept, that their freedom to smoke is limited by the freedom of nonsmokers to breathe.

Fairness, equal protection for all workers, demographics, economic statistics — the Health and Human Services Committee lost sight of a lot in its confusion. Now it’s up to the full Legislature to cut through the haze.