| Sue Jeffers' testimony to the Senate Health Committee The "Freedom to Breathe Act" is a bad law based on bad science and second hand smoke will never be as dangerous as second hand freedom. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty that has drawn people to our country for over 200 years reads "yearning to breathe free". This is not a reference to "America, land of smoke free bars and restaurants." It is a reference to the rights of individuals to pursue their dreams without arbitrary interference from the government. The people of Minnesota still care deeply about those rights. There are no winners in this battle. We all lose when government changes established conditions albeit with good intentions, ignorance or lies. Prohibition did not work the first time and it will not work this time. Bans do not make people quit, bans do not make people healthier. Bans cost cities, counties, and states revenues, jobs and businesses. Property rights and personal freedoms as stated and protected in the constitution are the most important of all rights. The anti smoking advocates continue to try to change the definition of a public place: Private property does not belong to the public; the litmus test for private property is ownership. Customers and employees can choose to go elsewhere if they wish to avoid second hand smoke. Much as I with they were, no one if forced to patronize or work in my bar. With 80% of the workplaces in the state being smoke free the options are endless and the rights of the anti smoking advocates stops at my front door. The anti smoking advocates also try to tell you this is about public health. If carried to the extreme everything could be considered a public health issue. Public health is defined as government intervention when people are exposed to risks to which they have not consented and which pose dangers to the community at large from which individuals cannot realistically protect themselves. Individuals can be "protected" from this broad definition of a public health with a sign on the door. To call this a public health issue based on lies, half-truths junk science and computer generated surveys and statistics in an attempt to define acceptable behavior is a gross violation of what these rights stand for. To try to claim this is about the public health of the employees while not including hotel workers in the proposed ban is ludicrous. When did publicly funded activist groups become the fourth arm of our government? The American Lung Association, MPAAT, ANSR, and others have received millions of dollars in funding each year from our state. They have wasted millions of dollars practicing to buy smoking bans in cities like Duluth across our state. We saw their stunning defeat last November when the voters in Duluth and Moorhead spoke at the ballot box. They said enough is enough, Minnesotans still care deeply about property rights. The ALA spent almost $100,000 indaunting Capitol Hill this past January with their propaganda. In their attempt to eliminate tobacco, the anti smoking advocates no longer believe they need to be constrained by obstacles such as science, integrity, ethics or respect for individual choice in their quest to prohibit tobacco in public and private. They betray our trust, play on our fears, count on our ignorance and all the while no one holds them accountable for the waste of millions of dollars every year trying to buy smoking bans across our state. Not one study on second hand smoke proves a statistical scientific significance and the epidemiological standard test of the minimum relative risk. The fraud, deceit, faulty science, exaggerated claims and even outright lies in the materials distributed by the anti smoking advocates is funded lavishly with billions of our tax dollars, which is then spouted by the media. These tax dollars could have been used for real health issues. Because we have the Constitution guaranteeing personal and property rights, and cigarettes are a legal product, there should be no smoking ban at any level of government. The only study usually mentioned at these hearings is one from Helena, MT. This study has been ridiculed since it was first released yet is heralded as fact and called science by the smoke haters. St. Peter's Hospital averages 34-50 patients with heart attacks between the months of June and November. During the six months of the smoking ban, they had only 24. Obviously the drop in heart attacks must be due to the smoking ban. Major flaws in the Helena study admitted by the authors, challenges by peer review that were ignored, changes in the hospitals diagnostics practices and a study too small to ever be replicated are continually cited as the reasoning behind local and state smoking bans. Unmentioned too is the fact the same drop occurred 4 years earlier when no smoking ban was in place. There is a strange disconnect between the anti smoking rhetoric and the silence of the federal government agency that have as their sole responsibility the protection of American workers. OSHA has no policy on second hand smoke. OSHA has established PEL's (Permissible Exposure Levels) for all measurable chemicals. OSHA states: "Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS). It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded." Thanks in part to the internet, facts are easy to get. MN might think they are on the cutting edge of this "public health issue" but CT and MA already have legislation on the table to roll back their bans. Virgina just voted against a state wide smoking ban, and for good reason. NY, lost $77 million in revenues, $50 million in wages, 3000 jobs, California's ban closed 1000 businesses and cost lost jobs to the employees of those businesses, showing an 8% increase in revenues the rest of the country was double or triple that. Winipeg, in the first year announced the city's casinos had lost $21 million in revenues the first year and had laid off 269 employees. After 80 days, British Colombia, 730 employees were laid off, 9 businesses closed and more than $16 million was lost. Toledo, OH 17 bars and numerous diners closed down, revenue losses for the already struggling city was $7 million and cost 600 jobs. Want to hear something closer to home, here is a letter from Duluth: 21st Delight was victim of smoking ban: How many more small businesses do we have to destroy before we realize we are eliminating our freedoms and free enterprise? I was the owner of 21st Delight. I had 32 years of food service experience. The restaurant flourished and my bills were paid on time. Then some group came around that thought they knew better than I how my business should be operated and how my customers should be treated. How wrong they were. After losing an extreme amount of income for two months due to a smoking ban, I was granted a ``permanent'' exemption. My business immediately returned to normal. But two weeks later several amendments were added to the smoking ban, and again my business dropped considerably. Because I refused to give up, and because I had savings, my life insurance policy, annuities and CDs to cash in, I kept my doors open. I also quit cashing my own paychecks, and worked longer shifts as waitress, cook and dishwasher. But weeks after my ``permanent'' exemption expired, I was forced to close the doors for good. The smoking ban has cost me more than $200,000 and I was left with nothing. Let's not force other owners to suffer the same fate with this proposed new smoking amendment. Unless you're the one mopping floors, serving customers and paying bills, please don't assume you know what's best for businesses and their customers. Please vote no. I sure wish that after Pat McKone of the American Lung Association took my income away, that she would pay some of my bills and buy my groceries. JUDY THOMAS Eighty percent of the workplaces in Minnesota are smoke free. It is not enough to ban smoking in my business, these advocates will not stop until they ban cigarettes everywhere, including cars and homes. And what will be next? Grilled meats were just listed on the latest update of carcinogens, are my cheeseburgers next? |