Lindsay Whitehurst
For Richard Bruson, smoking is “like breathing.”
Bruson, a 79-year-old retired Remy International line worker, has been a smoker since he snuck puffs as a 13-year-old.
But he sees both sides to a smoking ban in city businesses.
On one hand, “it’s kind of like the government is taking your rights away,” he said. But on the other, “I could understand why a lot of people can’t stand the smoke.”
“It’s a touchy subject,” he said, finishing a meal of biscuits and gravy at The Toast cafe. “It’s the kind of thing you could talk about all afternoon.”
At last count, 23 Indiana communities had full or partial smoking bans, making it the state with the third-highest number of 100-percent smoke-free ordinances, according to Americans for Nonsmokers Rights.
“We need to face the reality — it’s coming to Madison County,” Anderson City Councilman Rodney Chamberlain, D-at-large and council president, said.
But in Madison County, despite the damning evidence against secondhand smoke, many are ambivalent.
Leaders acknowledge the harmful effects of tobacco, but wonder if a ban is the way to go. While some business people worry about losing smokers’ business, others say going smoke-free by choice, which has been done by about 60 restaurants in Anderson, has been a godsend.
Perhaps because of the high percentage of Hoosier smokers — 25 percent of people in Indiana smoked in 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control — the idea has yet to gather steam in either the county or city governments and grassroots support for it is unfocused.
“I really thought we were ready,” Karesa Knight-Wilkerson, head of Health Smoke-Free Madison County, said.
But things didn’t quite work out that way. In February, she sent out letters to each of Anderson’s city council members and none responded.
At a council meeting, Chamberlain called her up to speak. When she got behind the podium to speak, Knight-Wilkerson got another surprise.
“When I turned around, my support was gone,” she said.
The evidence against smoking is continues to grow. The U.S. Surgeon General put another nail in the coffin, so to speak, with a report released this week calling second hand smoke a “public health threat.”
The report confirmed that secondhand smoke “causes premature death and disease in children and adults who do not smoke.”
It also concluded that the only way to protect people from it is to eliminate smoking from an indoor area all together.
“Separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air and ventilating buildings cannot eliminate exposes of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke,” it said.
Groups like Knight-Wilkerson’s have been spreading that word for years now. But despite the advertising, demonstrations and public awareness classes, public support for a smoking ban has been hard to come by.
“I do find that I lose support,” she said. “I hear from a lot of people, but when I say, make a phone call to your city councilman, people say, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’”
And many leaders say they haven’t heard from their constituents.
Mayor Kevin Smith said he’s gotten a few phone calls and e-mails, but not an overwhelming number.
“I don’t see a necessity for (a smoking ban) at this time,” he said.
He questioned the role of government in people’s lives and how much a habit can be legislated.
Councilman Jay Stapleton, R-3rd District, agreed.
“If there’s an independent businessperson, and they have X amount of money tied up in their business, I wonder how much right we have to tell them what they can and can’t do,” he said.
County Commissioner John Richwine, R-North district, said the commissioners have looked into a smoking ban, but aren’t ready to make a proposal yet.
The possibility of a ban is a concern for Jackie Gentry, who owns The Toast.
“I think we would lose business,” if the city were to ban smoking, she said. She and daughter Cindy Walker, have considered going smoke free, but it’s a difficult decision.
“It puts us all in a Catch-22 situation,” Gentry said. She has to weigh the pros — cleaner surroundings, painting less often, the smell — with the cons, losing the business of people who smoke.
But Al Montano, who owns Mexican restaurant La Charreada, said eliminating smoking was great for his restaurant.
“As a matter of fact, we’ve gotten a lot of compliments — a lot more compliments than complaints,” Montano said. “You get food better, you smell better — it’s just better.”
Bars could also stand to lose.
“I think it would hurt (business), because we don’t have any kids,” Jane Confer, a bartender at On Broadway, said. “I think it should be up to each establishment and not the whole county.”
Reporter Lee Noble contributed to this story.
