Wisconsin's Smoke-free Debate

Recent developments in our neighboring states is about to make the highly-charged issue to ban smoking in all public buildings across Wisconsin fire up again, with a vote by lawmakers coming this week.

Gov. Jim Doyle is pushing hard to go smoke free here, fearing the state will "become the ash tray of the midwest."

South side bar owner Sharon Ward is an officer with the Tavern League of Wisconsin, and while she doesn't smoke herself, she said about 70 percent of her customers do. She worries that a government-mandated ban would hurt her business.

"I don't think the governor, the legislature or anybody else should come in here and say, 'We know what's good for you.' I think having a bear or a cocktail, and having a cigarette, goes hand-in-hand for a lot of people. I know it will definitely hurt me if the smoking ban goes through," Ward said.

Others said the predicted economic disaster for taverns has not happened in other states because a large portion of non-smokers are just waiting to go out to places where they won't come home smelling like smoke.

"You might get a short period of time, in the beginning, where the really committed smokers will be angry about it, and to make a statement they'll stay away. But the vast majority of them end up coming back. Plus then you get the new customers as well. That's historically what happens," Dona Wininsky with the American Lung Association of Wisconsin said.

When Milwaukee tried to pass a city ordinance against smoking in bars and restaurants in 2006, it drew the biggest crowd in years.

"I guarantee you, if this smoking ban goes into effect, my business is closed," Tavern owner Howard Tietz said at the time.

One supporter of the 2006 proposal offered an analogy: "I drink beer. I don't swirl the beer around in my mouth and then spit it in the guy next to me, his mouth. That's what they're doing with smoke in the bars," Robert Weiland Jr. said.

The ordinance never passed.

Hundreds of people turned out in Madison last year when state lawmakers considered a smoke-free law. It got bogged down during the long budget impasse, but it's set to come up for a committee vote on Tuesday.

"We're asking people to walk ten feet to the door, step outside for a couple of moments, have their cigarette, and come back in. When you look at what the health consequences are of being exposed to second-hand smoke, that just doesn't seem like a really big 'ask,'" Wininsky said.

The Tavern League said it will keep lobbying to make bars exempt from any smoke-free state law.

"I don't know that I want to send my female customers out on the corner at midnight and say, 'You've got to go outside and smoke now.' I just don't think that's realistic. And I don't think I should be the smoke police," Ward said. "Wisconsin has been a state that has never been afraid to stand alone and say, 'We're going to stick up for what's right.' And I hope wisconsin will do that for the small business owner, like I've been for 30 years."

Doyle said he's confident that Wisconsin will fall in line with it's midwestern neighbors.

"We know it's going to happen. You know which direction the country is going on. So the question is, are we going to be dragged kicking and screaming five years from now, or are we going to do it now and just do the right thing and make sure that Wisconsin, in public places, is smoke free?" Doyle said.

Most observers predict the smoke-free bill will pass the public health committee on Tuesday, but it could stall in the next stop along the line, the Senate organization committee.