'The debate is over'.

Byline: The Register-Guard

A bill to ban smoking in bars, taverns, bingo halls and bowling alleys won final legislative approval Monday. It was a quiet victory for workplace safety and public health; the four-alarm predictions of business closures and jackbooted anti-tobacco enforcers were far more muted than when Eugene enacted a similar ban six years ago. The space for smoking in public is inexorably shrinking under pressure from science and a public increasingly accustomed to breathing clean air.

A year ago, Surgeon General Richard Carmona declared "The debate is over" about secondhand tobacco smoke, which he called "a serious health hazard." Further, the surgeon general said that setting aside nonsmoking sections in workplaces doesn't help - the evidence is "indisputable" that such segregation cannot shield people from what he called "involuntary smoking." A ban is the only way to protect workers and the public.

The Legislature passed an indoor smoking ban in 2001, but exempted bars, taverns, bingo halls and bowling alleys. The exceptions left 35,000 Oregon workers exposed to secondhand smoke, which kills an estimated 800 people in the state each year. The Eugene City Council implemented a broader municipal ban six months before the statewide law took effect. Eugene was following the example of Corvallis and other Oregon cities in declaring that a bartender has as much right to a healthful workplace as an office worker.

By the time the Legislature acted Monday to strike the exceptions from the 2001 law, 15 Oregon cities and three counties had already enacted ordinances mandating smoke-free taverns, bars, bowling alleys and bingo halls. For people and businesses in those communities, the statewide legislation will make no difference - except to snuff out smokers' option of going outside the city limits to find bars where they can light up. Such boundary-crossing smokers were largely mythical in any event; the effect of smoking bans on most businesses has been neutral or positive. Compliance has been widespread; enforcement actions have been few.

Lobbyists for the tobacco industry and bar owners made a perfunctory effort to defeat the ban. They realized the battle was lost - about 20 states, including Washington and California, already ban all indoor smoking. Opponents argued that the ban would reduce state revenue from tobacco sales. Banning smoking on airplanes, in college classrooms and in hospital waiting rooms has undoubtedly reduced tax revenue as well, but no one is calling for a return to the days when smoking in such places was permitted.

Opponents also claimed that the ban would benefit Indian casinos, where smoking may still be allowed. More likely, customers who grow accustomed to breathing clean air will pressure Indian casinos to ban smoking as well.

Oregon's tightened indoor clean air act will take effect in 2009. Not long after, Oregonians will get used to coming home from a night out without the smell of stale cigarette smoke clinging to their clothes and their hair - and without the toxic gases and particulates of secondhand smoke in their lungs. They'll marvel that smoking in public places was ever permitted. And hundreds, particularly those working in once-smoky environments, will live longer.