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February 21, 2007
Where There's Smoke, There's A Lawmaker
Weighing public health concerns against individual rights
Multiple initiatives involving tobacco are coming before our Legislature this session. A keyword search on the General Assembly’s website yielded 100 results. Judging solely by their abstracts, not one of the proposals deals with educating ourselves better on the proven health hazards inherent in tobacco use, with a partial exception. The one percent award goes to Sen. Bill Ketron (Murfreesboro) and Rep. Glen Casada (Franklin) for their proposed Tennessee Student Health Act. The other 99 filings have little educational import. One bill (cloned many times) seeks a short-lived revenue swap, another could impose absurd restrictions on certain businesses, and a third tugs at the heartstrings but has little chance of being effective.
As I hail from the Virginia-Carolina Piedmont area and am a former smoker, I harbor sympathies toward tobacco farmers and tobacco consumers alike. Then again, as we examine these three threads, major public health concerns must be weighed against individual rights, which we all know end where they start infringing upon the rights of others.
Let’s start with the cigarette tax increase. This would, in the short term, raise revenue for the state budget — so what to do with the extra cash? Some bills have it swapped for a reduction in the sales tax on food in a variety of ways. The sales tax on groceries is counterproductive and should be eliminated one way or another, even though this measure would provide only the slightest offset. Others would earmark the funds for specialized healthcare, as they presumably figure that those buying the cigarettes are going to need that assistance when the emphysema and/or lung cancer hits. This seems to be a reasoned approach.
Another major theme, the ban on smoking in certain buildings, can easily get out of hand if not carefully balanced. Government buildings are the easy catch. Ban away. Restaurants get trickier, and I’m on the fence there; but bars and nightclubs are downright dicey. Adults choose to use tobacco or not, and adults choose where they want to work. Is it that simple? Can we just let the adults work it out amongst themselves? We’ll have to examine this in more detail as the session progresses.
The last one we’ll look at is narrower in scope, but is also locally produced, so it merits mention on this page. Freshman Representative Richard Floyd (Chattanooga) has filed a bill, HB0441, that would outlaw smoking in automobiles that have child passengers. While none of these three pending legislative issues on tobacco is cut-and-dried (you had to know that was coming), Floyd’s proposal comes closest to “meddlin’” and should be considered carefully.
It’s not like the intent isn’t good. The problem with any prohibition is thinking through to its enforcement. It’s already a law that children under a certain size must be in the back seat in approved protective gear, yet a little look around in local traffic yields the ugly truth that kids sit up front, stand up, and bounce around — while the driver smokes a cigarette and uses a mobile phone. Without question this is stupid parental behavior, but if we legislated away all stupidity, well...let’s just say there’d be a very long court docket.
On the other hand, the symbolic gesture is a no-brainer. I’d likely vote for keeping parents from locking their kids in a moving carcinogen-filled chamber, even if I knew the measure had severe limitations in being carried out. There is a certain amount of guilt associated with a “No” vote on anything that would protect children. So congratulations, Rep. Floyd, for putting your colleagues on the spot like that.
The last point on all of the tobacco-related legislation comes back around to agriculture, which has seen better days in the Volunteer State. Tennessee’s tobacco farmers should cast an eye to the northwest and track the progress of a North Dakota measure that has re-introduced (for a handful of lucky farmers) a valuable crop from our nation’s agricultural cradle: industrial hemp. The silly “look-alike rule” that prevents a harmless, viable product from helping our economy to grow has long outlived its usefulness. North Dakota seems to be a no-nonsense sort of place, so if they feel that they can handle hemp, then our similarly stalwart farmers should be given the opportunity to cash in, as tobacco sales will almost certainly continue to decline.
What about the Feds, you ask? Well, as the DEA is a huge, ineffective boondoggle, and is thus severely self-marginalized when it comes to having valid, practical input, I don’t know if anyone should even bother to inquire with them. And, well, hemp isn’t a drug, so it’s outside their purview.
Other General Goings-On
It would be a waste of newsprint/bandwidth to devote any more energy to that now-infamous death certificate bill, so we’ll skip right on by that. See me after class if you just have no idea what that’s about. Other bills of interest include Sen. Bill Ketron’s initiative to do away with the four-month-old Ethics Commission and hand its authority (back?) over to the Registry of Election Finance; and thanks to the watchful fingers blogging at the Tennessean, we learn of Sen. Raymond Finney’s anti-bestiality bill (see earlier comment re legislating against stupidity), as well as Rep. John DeBerry’s proposed regulation on just who is allowed to manufacture a “cosmetic metal apparatus” for the mouth — i.e., “grills.” Count on the Civic Forum to stay abreast of all the important — and not-so-important — laws being worked on this session.
[Cross-posted from the Pulse]
Government , Pulsations | By joe lance | 01:04 PM