Yet there are three important lessons in this that have nothing to do with the smoking ban itself. They are, simply put, these. First of all, the common citizen can make a difference.
If enough people care about an issue, confront their legislators and keep up the pressure, it will eventually have an effect. The second lesson is the corny old proverb:
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And finally, at some point, you’ve got to be willing to compromise, as long as we aren’t talking about dealing with Nazis or child molesters. You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
If you insist on a solution that is perfect, you’ll never get one that is either perfect or good. But you also have to realize that you can’t compromise too early. Here’s how all those things played out in the smoking ban wars. The hero of the story is a state senator from blue-collar, downriver Detroit named Ray Basham.
He’s someone you might think would be more likely to be a smoker than the champion of the smoking ban. He was born on the hills of Virginia, served in the U.S. Air Force and then came up here to work for Ford for thirty years. He got involved in the union, and was elected to the legislature a dozen years ago.
But he’d seen what tobacco did to the lungs of people he knew, some of whom were the victims of second-hand smoke. He introduced a bill calling for a smoking ban his very first term.
The restaurant industry, as he now cheerfully admits, outmaneuvered him easily, and used his early willingness to compromise against him. He learned from this. From then on, it was take no prisoners. He pushed for a total smoking ban, period.
Year after year. Meanwhile, smoking became more and more unpopular, and more people became aware of the perils of second-hand smoke. Other states, notably neighboring Ohio, passed smoking bans. Lobbyists for restaurants and bars had predicted financial doom if smoking bans were passed. But that didn’t happen. In some cases, business actually increased. This didn’t lessen the opposition of the Michigan Restaurant Association, but it made their claims less credible. Lawmakers began hearing from constituents who insisted on a ban, and who wouldn’t go away.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop was still opposed, but for once, wasn’t going to be able to prevent a vote. Ironically, it was Basham’s own Democrats who were the final obstacle, because they feared the loss of casino jobs. That held things up for a year.
But then Ron Jelinek, a Republican state senator, proposed a compromise exempting casino gambling floors, tobacco shops and cigar bars. For Basham, it was a Kenny Rogers moment, meaning, “you've got to know when to hold them and when to fold them.”
And so the deal got done.
Thanks to term limits, Basham leaves the senate forever in a year. He’ll be 65, and his political career is likely over. But he got something big accomplished. By the way, one colleague proposed naming the smoking ban bill after him. He declined. He wanted it to be named for a doctor who died last year.
Sometimes, the system works.
Great job. Very well written. However, the fight is not over.
Posted by: Communications Guru | December 11, 2009 at 03:46 PM
I find it interesting that Jack Lessenberry finds this to be such an "imperfect" compromise.
The "perfect" solution, one presumes, would have been a complete, total, omnipresent social smoking ban. I cannot help but think that real perfection for Jack Lessenberry and other anti-smoking activists would be an outlawing of all tobacco products. (Politics, of course, makes strange bedfellows, and as someone who does not smoke cigarettes and who almost never smokes inside, I might join in a global tobacco ban if it meant an end to the river of tobacco money flowing through the lawyers who sue tobacco companies, and through state tobacco-lawsuit settlements, into the Democratic party.)
But let's look at the "imperfect" status quo ante. All bars and restaurants will be smoke-free. Only tobacconists (presumably, an outlaw target for future, "perfect" legislation) and cigar bars will be allowed to permit smoking. And, casinos. Let's set aside casinos for a moment. Casinos have enough political friends, in both parties, for obvious rea$on$.
That leaves "cigar bars;" a curiosity that in the past has drawn the particular ire of Mr. Lessenberry. Under the newly enacted statute, cigar bars are places that comprise a separate room or separate building, with ventilation, and which are more or less in the business of selling cigars as a defined part of their business. Clearly, nobody needs to go into a cigar bar if they don't want to. I'd defy anybody to point to a struggling waitress in Monroe, or Marine City, or Muskegon, or Marquette, who personally abhors smoking but who must keep her cigar-bar job for the sake of her hungry kids. That, of course was the main justification for the "workplace" ban on smoking in privately-owned bars in restaurants where consenting adults gathered to smoke and socialize; poor struggling workers who could find no other work except in local bars should not have to be exposed to second-hand smoke. I don't know what to say about the poor downriver worker who is dependent upon his local factory job but who does not want to be a part of the local union and who doesn't want to pay union dues.
Back to smoking: if anybody like Mr. Lessenberry thinks that this bill was "imperfect," it is because the bill allows some continued voluntary smoking, in a paltry few places where no one who didn't want to be there would be affected.
"Perfect" legislation for those like Mr. Lessenberry would absolutely deny to others in Michigan the right to make a purely private choice. They would ban all smoking -- presumably because they regard themselves as smarter, and better informed, with better judgment, and are more disciplined, more highly socialized people.
The "perfect" legislation for those like Mr. Lessenberry is a frighteningly patronizing view of social superiority.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 12, 2009 at 03:37 PM
Although some advocates and lawmakers might be anxious to remove the casino exemption and close the state's cigar bars, I doubt the legislature will have any interest in revisiting or reopening the issue anytime soon.
Too bad, too, since the ban apparently will encompass open-air smoking areas -- something almost no state bans, and advocates like Sen. Basham insisted he was not trying to close.
Posted by: No name | December 14, 2009 at 09:05 PM