A bill banning most indoor smoking in the state is well intended but reaches too far.
Sure, in an ideal world, no one would smoke. And, we understand the health concerns for workers in places where smoking is allowed. But, people do smoke and it remains legal in the United States.
But we fear that the wide sweeping ban, as approved by the Minnesota Senate Tuesday, would detrimentally impact another of northern Minnesota’s needs — jobs.
The Senate approved a bill that would prohibit smoking in places ranging from the corner bar to the private club. Attempts to delete private clubs, including VFWs, American Legions and other places failed, and a push to leave all bars out of the ban fell four votes short.
What happens if these privately owned businesses fail and people end up losing the valuable jobs they need to raise their families and pay their bills? In Borderland, jobs don’t come easy and losing just one job in northern Minnesota is one too many.
A better way of protecting people and jobs in these places would have been to leave bars and private clubs out of the ban and allow owners of private businesses to decide the issue based on their customer’s desires. The ban could also have spared these places by requiring smoking areas to be closed off from non-smoking areas with each area having separate ventilation systems. In addition, the state could have provided incentives for these places to go smoke free.
Locally, we’ve already seen a number of places volunteer to make certain areas smoke-free. And customers seem to be OK with that.
We’d like to see the Legislature give more attention to growing jobs in places like Borderland, before taking action that could potentially impact what jobs we do have.