He is an actual, practical lawmaker who understands the art of compromise. Meaning that we shouldn’t refuse a good solution because we can’t get a perfect one. That might seem like common sense, but these days that seems to be a pretty uncommon thing.
We’ve got a lot of ideologues in Lansing these days, men and women who seem willing to destroy our state in various ways rather than save it. Some would let the schools go bankrupt rather than put their employees on a reasonable health care plan.
Others would allow our great universities to be ruined, rather than raise taxes on the rich by a few dollars a week. And until now, Michigan hasn’t been able to join most of the civilized world in banning smoking in workplaces and restaurants.
That’s because, again, the hardheads have proven unwilling to compromise. Democrats mostly favor a smoking ban, but want an exemption for Detroit’s casinos. They fear that if the casinos were made smoke-free, gamblers would desert by the carload.
They think those who are determined to poison their lungs while ruining themselves financially would, if smoking were banned in Detroit, hightail it out of town to a
Since Indian casinos are governed by tribal law, the state has no power to set smoking regulations there.
Republicans mostly don’t want any smoking ban at all, believing that the free market should be allowed to regulate where smoking is and is not permitted. When asked about children and non-smokers who are exposed to collateral damage, they mostly shrug.
Sorry, can’t be helped. A few even deny that it has been proven that second-hand smoke is harmful, though there are fewer and fewer of those. But to be fair, not all Republicans feel this way.
State Senator Tom George of Kalamazoo is a conservative Republican. But he’s also a doctor, and wants a complete smoking ban, and he‘s not alone. So Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop has said that he will allow a vote, but only on a complete ban.
Democrats have been unwilling to include the casinos, however, and so for a year, no progress has been made.
But now Senator Jelinek has taken up the cause, and thinks he has the votes to pass a workplace smoking ban with exceptions for cigar bars, tobacco shops and the Detroit casinos.
And he thinks he has the votes to get it done. He also has a probable and powerful ally in Speaker of the House Andy Dillon.
The legislature‘s top Democrat says that getting a smoking ban passed this month is one of his top priorities.
That makes sense. As of now, a person might conclude that their esteemed and highly-paid lawmakers haven’t gotten much of significance done this session. That’s probably because they haven’t gotten much of significance done this session.
So it would be nice if they could pass some form of workplace smoking ban. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died this year from smoking‘s effects. Thousands were non-smokers, killed by second hand smoke. Nobody should have to be poisoned on the job.
If Senator Jelinek can get his colleagues to agree on a compromise, he will have saved lives. It’s hard to imagine a more worthwhile accomplishment than that.
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