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Posted on 09/04/2003 11:38:00 AM PDT by Just another Joe

The bolding of certain comments is mine. JaJ

Moments before the Maine House of Representatives voted on a bill that outlawed smoking in bars and pool halls, state Rep. John Eder told lawmakers about Charles Greer.

Eder, a Green Party member who represents a piece of Portland, said Greer was an Old Orchard Beach teacher so beloved that classes were canceled the day of his funeral. He said Greer “was very dear to the students whose lives he had touched.”

And he said Greer moonlighted for 20 years in a Portland tavern.

“The cautionary tale here,” Eder told fellow lawmakers last June 3, “is that (Greer), who did not smoke, but worked in this bar for 20 years, was exposed to secondhand smoke and died of lung cancer ... I thought it was a story that should be told.”

But according to his friends and family, Greer was nearly a lifelong smoker.

“He smoked for years and had quit five or six years before he died,” Thomas Greer, Charles’ brother, said. “His comment to me was that he quit smoking, but not soon enough.”

“We all smoked,” said Kathleen Donnellon, a Hollis resident who taught alongside Greer, “and we smoked like chimneys.”

Some representatives credit the mention of Greer, which was brought to the Legislature as a “special sentiment” used by lawmakers to honor noteworthy Mainers, with smoothing the passage of “An Act to Protect Workers From Secondhand Smoke and Promote Workplace Safety,” the bill that extends the restaurant smoking ban.

The measure, LD 1346, passed in the House with no argument and made Maine the fifth state to ban smoking in bars, after California, Delaware, New York, and Connecticut. It goes into effect Jan. 1.

David Lamoine, a Democrat from Old Orchard Beach, said Eder’s comments drove home the need for the smoking ban in a personal way that statistics couldn’t, quieting the opposition.

Eder, in a recent interview, said supporters of the bill congratulated him after the vote, and an opponent told him he planned to speak against the bill — but didn’t because of his comments.

Eder said “it made my jaw drop” that nobody spoke in opposition to the bill. He said he received all his knowledge about Greer from a trusted constituent who asked him to honor the teacher’s impact. He learned later that his remarks were inaccurate.

“That was news to me at that point,” he said.

Other lawmakers, noting that the measure passed overwhelmingly, doubted the effect of Eder’s words. Some said they didn’t remember hearing the special sentiment, while others said they came to the Statehouse that day with their minds already firm on the anti-smoking bill.

“I needed no persuasion,” said state Rep. Thomas Murphy, a Republican from Kennebunk who supported the ban.

But some opponents of the smoking measure say the Legislature was misled by Eder’s comments — and they question the timing of the special sentiment.

The Legislature, Donnellon said, “was sold a bill of goods.”

John Michael, a maverick former lawmaker from Auburn now gathering signatures to overturn the smoking ban, claims the timing of Eder’s special sentiment shows how political parties work the legislative process to get the results they desire.

“They’re just a bunch of manipulative little dogs,” Michael, an independent, said. “The leadership has control of the calendar. They have control of what comes up when.”

Robert Daigle, a Republican lawmaker from Arundel, agreed the Democrats who control the House leadership govern the agenda — and said the scheduling is often politically motivated. That’s the way it works, he said, no matter which party is in power.

“It’s all scripted,” Daigle said. “It’s all intentional.”

But Douglas Rooks, spokesman for Speaker of the House Patrick Colwell, D-Gardiner, said it was “entirely coincidental” that Eder’s special sentiment came before the vote on the smoking ban.

And Rooks said the speaker regrets that inaccurate information was presented to lawmakers.

“We’re concerned whenever there is a misrepresentation,” he said. “We expect members to represent the facts accurately, but we have no way of enforcing that.”

Eder said he requested that his measure honoring Greer come on the same day as the smoking ban vote, but was pleasantly surprised that it came up immediately beforehand.

“I wanted it to be as fresh in the mind of folks as it could be,” Eder said, (but) that was sort of a quirk of fate.”

The Portland representative doesn’t believe lawmakers were misled by his comments — nor does he think that he significantly altered the outcome of the smoking ban vote.

“To be honest, I don’t think my little effort to put the two together had much effect,” he said. “I’d like to think that the floor leader of the Green Party would have that kind of influence, but I don’t.”

Eder says that while the specifics about the revered high school teacher may have been inaccurate, his comments speak to a larger truth about the dangers of secondhand smoke.

“It doesn’t change my view that environmental smoke in the workplace, after 15 years of exposure, can cause someone to come down with lung cancer,” he said. “There are other people out there who have come down with cancer from working in bars.”

In January, our pure do no wrong legislation, Guv Baldacci and the PARTNERSHIP FOR A TOBACCO FREE MAINE have further put their filty claws into the "private" bar and tavern business's in Maine. They just won't quit!

What with the economy in Maine and business's struggling, all our lawmakers can think about is keeping the adult smoker out-of-site.

The wait person knows beforehand that if they take a job in a bar/tavern, there is going to be smoking. This goes without saying. I just received the following letter (in response to my letter to Gov. Baldacci), from Health and Human Services on this issue:

“This letter is in response to your correspondence to Gov Baldacci regarding the legislation banning smoking in bars. Because the earlier legislation banning smoking in restaurants didn’t include bars, we did have an UNEVEN PLAYING FIELD. With this legislation bars have the same restriction.

This law is about PROTECTING WORKERS and the PUBLIC FROM THE HEALTH HAZARDS OF SECONDHAND SMOKE. The law only bans smoking in public places as defined by law. While YOU MAY FIND THIS NEW LAW UNACCEPTABLE, (JUST ME??? I DON'T "THINK" SO), the VAST MAJORITY of citizens in Maine, including MANY SMOKERS, are in FAVOR of such legislation.

Smokers have not lost their right to smoke. (HEH) Adults who smoke have a RIGHT to smoke where their SMOKE doesn’t harm the non-smokers.

Sincerely,
Mary Bourque, Public Health Educator
PARTNERSHIP FOR A TOBACCO-FREE MAINE”

Level playing field my arse! Is Health and Human Services going to reimburse the Par and Grill for the separate glassed in non-smoking section? Will Health and Human Services reimburse the Par and Grill for the huge smoke eaters that they invested in? Oh no! They could care less.

Can you see ANY of us going outside in January, February or March to grab a cigarette in the harsh bitter cold winters that WE GET?

Nothing is good enough for these people. They take the taxes from the adults who choose to smoke and use that money to stick it to us.

I still can’t believe they think they can go into a private business and tell them how to run it. They just won’t leave well enough alone. A lot of us smoke in Aroostook, and until the Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine put ideas into the non-smokers heads, everyone was happy.

Like I said: if smoking is so bad for us why doesn’t our Maine government just ban it! Pull it off the shelves. Oh! But wait! Then they wouldn’t be lining their pockets with OUR MONEY!

Anyone can voice their displeasure at the following email address's:

Consumer Health - Maine

Partnership For A Tobacco Free Maine

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