Despite claims from diverse stakeholders that consensus was within reach, last week’s City Council briefing on proposed changes to the new smoking ordinance revealed that not much has changed since the controversial measure was adopted in June. Months of work by the indoor-air-quality task force created by the council produced two diametrically opposed proposals — one, by the Tobacco-Free Coalition of Austin, which recommends only minor tweaks to the adopted near-total ban on indoor smoking, the other proposing that the measure be almost entirely thrown out.
It was the latter report — drafted by a self-styled “Stakeholders Coalition” led by bar and club owners — that appears to have been christened the “official” report of the task force, and which promises to be the script for the City Council’s next date with the smoking ordinance. Will Wynn, Jackie Goodman, Raul Alvarez, and Brewster McCracken are all on record opposing the ordinance — the first three having voted against it before McCracken took office, and the rookie having laid out the most assertive philosophical, as well as pragmatic, objections to the smoking ban of any council member.
The Stakeholders report makes clear that no meeting of minds took place between the Tobacco-Free Coalition and the bar and club owners, who consistently argue that a total smoking ban would destroy their livelihoods. “One group believes that one molecule of secondhand smoke causes illness and should be eliminated in all forms,” reads the report. “Our group believes … that secondhand smoke may affect health depending on the intensity and length of exposure. We also believe that the adult citizens of Austin have the intelligence, ability and overwhelming desire to make an informed choice about their own health, their own levels of risk, and ultimately their own levels of exposure to secondhand smoke.” In its counterproposal the Tobacco-Free Coalition claims, “The only effective way of eliminating secondhand smoke in the workplace is to not have smoking take place indoors,” the stakeholders assert that “since Austin’s employers are overwhelmingly smoke-free [now], people are assumed to have chosen to work in smoking-friendly rooms.”
The only concession made by Tobacco-Free forces is to give “free-standing bars” nine extra months — until September 2004 — to prepare for compliance. Under the stakeholders’ plan, any establishment that sells alcohol and that prohibits entry to unaccompanied minors (either to its entire premises or to a separately ventilated smoking section) would be exempt from the ordinance, as would those special cases (billiard parlors, bingo halls, etc.) already exempted by the council. (Bars would have to post signs indicating they were smoking-friendly.) This would represent only a modest enhancement on the current smoking ordinance, adopted in 1994, and would basically undo the damage (in the stakeholders’ view, at least) promised by the rules now in limbo. “Our recommendations aim to protect children, to protect the Austin economy, to protect the rights of adults to enjoy informed consent, to improve upon the existing ordinances, and to simplify enforcement.”
While the Stakeholders Coalition’s report often deviates from mainstream dialogue both in its querulous tone and its challenges to the science of secondhand smoke, it responds precisely to concerns raised by Wynn, Goodman, Alvarez, and McCracken in the months of debate about the ordinance. The council is set to address the ban — once and for all, Wynn says — on Oct. 30.
This article appears in October 17 • 2003.