Smoking-ban delay is unnecessary, unfair
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Argus Leader: As the debate about South Dakota's smoke-free law goes to court, it's important to remember lives are at stake in the outcome. Every day that South Dakota delays going smoke-free is another day our state's workers must endure the serious health hazards of secondhand smoke on the job. Workers such as Joan Berg. Berg is a restaurant employee who has been forced to inhale the more than 4,000 known chemicals in secondhand smoke every day for the past 10 years. While Berg is proud that she has a job, she's angry that her job is putting her at increased risk for lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema. "The nonsmoking public does not have a choice. We either work in these establishments, or we go on the welfare roles," Berg says. It's stories such as these coupled with decades of solid scientific research proving the dangers of secondhand smoke that have prompted 25 states, including Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska, to go smoke-free. These states now are reaping the rewards of improved public health that South Dakotans want and deserve.
According to a statewide poll, fully 65 percent of South Dakota voters support a statewide smoke-free law, a fact reflected in the law's strong bipartisan passage this session and bolstered by comments from lawmakers - some of whom personally disagreed with the law - who said they voted for it because it was far and away what their constituents wanted. But now a small group of special interests are trying to say otherwise. They want the public to believe a statewide referendum is the only way to truly know whether South Dakotans want to go smoke-free when in reality a statewide vote is the only way they truly can delay the law's implementation. Opponents want to reinstate almost 9,000 invalid petition signatures to force a statewide vote. They describe these signatures as having been thrown out based on a "technicality." But what they call a technicality, the secretary of state's office and everyone else calls the law.
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