Indiana

Let?s Make A Deal

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

Now that the Indianapolis City-County Council has sent the proposed tougher  smoking ban back to committee, there’s an opportunity for Councilors to work out a reasonable compromise that can address secondhand smoke without implementing a draconian ban.

Don’t think it’s possible, of course it is.  Here’s how you do it.

• Exempt private clubs, tobacco shops and cigar bars.
• Ban smoking in bowling alleys that allow children.
• Create an on-line job board of non-smoking bars so that servers and waiters who don’t want to work in a smoking environment don’t have to.
• Work with state and local health departments to create a tobacco cessation hotline where smokers who want to quit can get help and work with bar owners to publish that number in their establishments.
• Eliminate the “no-smoking within 25 feet”  of a non-smoking building because at that point you’ve turned an ordinary citizen walking down the street smoking a cigarette into a criminal.
• Issue tobacco licenses to every bar and tavern that allows smoking.  As long the owner has the license, he or she can have smoking.  If they sell the business or transfer ownership the license goes back to the city which it can hold or sell.  This way, no one has to change their business model and anyone going into the bar business know exactly what they’re getting into.

I think these suggestions are pretty reasonable and can reduce the amount of tobacco consumption (a goal of the anti-smoking crowd) and still adhere to the free market and allow business people to make their own decisions as to how they want to run their establishments.  The trick will be to keep the zealots away from the table.   And seeing how they’ve been pushing this issue since March and have had no success, hopefully that won’t be too hard.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on December 01, 2009 (boomark / email).