Another Pro-Smoking Ploy

Californians have unambiguously demonstrated how they feel about smokers and their cigarettes, but our elected representatives seem unwilling to listen.

In 1988, voters passed Proposition 99, raising the tax on each pack by 25 cents and dedicating that additional revenue to programs for smoking prevention and education on the dangers of tobacco. In 1994, after passage of the landmark workplace anti-smoking law (AB13) and its signing by Gov. Pete Wilson, the tobacco lobby put Proposition 188 on the ballot. That cynical and intentionally confusing measure was designed to preempt the near-total ban on workplace smoking before it took effect and to substitute much weaker, industry-friendly standards. But voters decisively rejected Proposition 188, despite the millions of dollars that cigarette makers spent on the initiative, and AB 13 took effect in January 1995.

Today, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee may take up a bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Sal Cannella (D-Ceres), that would delay implementation of AB 13 provisions relating to smoking in bars, restaurant bars and gaming clubs. Under AB 13, these places can permit smoking until next January. But by Jan. 1 they must ban inside smoking altogether--as do other California workplaces, including restaurants--or must protect nonsmokers from cigarette smoke through ventilation systems more sophisticated than those now in use.

Cannella’s bill has already passed the Assembly. He argues that because state and federal workplace-safety agencies have not developed air quality standards for this next generation of ventilation systems, bars and gaming clubs should be allowed to permit smoking beyond Jan. 1. We disagree. That the safety agencies have not taken such an action to protect nonsmokers is hardly reason to permit continued exposure to the health dangers of secondhand smoke.

An equally compelling argument for imposing the AB 13 requirements is a recent Gallup survey on the views of California’s smokers and nonsmokers on AB 13. Not surprisingly, the majority overwhelmingly supports the new restrictions in restaurants and other workplaces and wants the law’s protections extended to bars and taverns as well. The Legislature is supposed to listen to the people. They are not blowing smoke.