Published: May 26, 2009 03:36 pm      

Not far enough — 05/27/09

Anti-smoking advocates say North Carolina law too weak

One would think that anti-smoking forces would be elated if the Kentucky General Assembly were to enact a restriction on public smoking similar to what was recently approved by legislators in North Carolina. Not so.

A news release from Kentucky ACTION — a coalition of anti-smoking forces that includes the American Lung Association and the American Heart Association — begins by saying, “Anti-smoking forces in Kentucky hope their state avoids the path followed by North Carolina: Passing a watered-down smoking ban.”

Beginning in 2010, smoking will be prohibited in bars and restaurants throughout North Carolina. Such a ban in the nation’s largest tobacco-producing state was considered politically impossible to achieve just a few years ago. Yet because North Carolina’s new law does not ban smoking in the workplace and in other pubic buildings and arenas such as ballparks and stadiums, those who advocate a ban on all public smoking are not satisfied.

At this point, we can’t see the Kentucky General Assembly approving a bill that goes as far as North Carolina’s law, much less one that is more restrictive. No bill proposing any statewide restriction on smoking has ever been considered by the Kentucky General Assembly.

Although a number of communities throughout the state — including Ashland — have enacted local ordinances restricting smoking, even that movement has slowed to a virtual halt. While the state’s two largest cities — Lexington and Louisville — restrict smoking in public, several large urban areas — Bowling Green and the northern Kentucky counties of Boone, Campbell and Kenton across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, for example — still have no restrictions on smoking in public. Instead, restaurants, bars and workplaces in those and other communities in the state set their own smoking rules.

No doubt there were anti-smoking forces in North Carolina that supported more restrictions on public smoking than the state’s new law imposes, but recognizing they could not get what they wanted, they accepted what they could get. Kentucky Action and other anti-smoking forces in Kentucky would be wise to do that same. Otherwise, they are likely to get nothing.