Three National Health Organizations to Oppose Proposed St. Louis Clean-Air Act
Next week three national organizations; American Heart Association, American Lung Association, and American Cancer Society, will announce their opposition a proposed smoke-free ordinance for the City of St. Louis. Yes, you read correctly. These organizations will be opposing local efforts to clear the public air of cigarette smoke. Why you ask? The bill is not pure.
Alderman Lyda Krewson’s bill (#46) includes a triggering mechanism — it would not go into effect until a similar measure does in St. Louis County:
SECTION FIFTEEN. Effective Date
This Ordinance shall be effective on such date that the Saint Louis County Council enacts Smoke Free Air legislation which prohibits smoking in the enclosed public places as defined in Section Four of this Ordinance.
These organizations don’t like such measures being dependant upon other jurisdictions. So they plan to oppose the measure. They and the pro-smoking lobby will be on the same side. Just seems wrong.
The St. Louis region is second only to Baltimore for the number of units of government on a per capita basis. St. Louis County has 91 municipalities plus area that is unincorporated. Ideally we’ve have a Missouri smoke-free law like the one covering the Illinois side of the region. But that may be a while.
Krewson had several choices:
- Do nothing and continue to wait for a state law.
- Wait for St. Louis County to pass a law and then react.
- Introduce a bill with no trigger and watch it never get out of committee.
The fact is that the chances of getting a smoke-free bill for the city only is slim to none. Remember we have 28 wards. Securing enough votes on a controversial measure takes considerable work.  Going it along, which I wouldn’t object to, would never pass.
Before Krewson introduced the bill I was among the persons advocating the trigger mechanism. It would let the city take a leadership role iuin the region and give some assurances to the St. Louis County Council that when they passed a law that it would trigger the city law. Maybe these national groups don’t realize that St. Louis is not in St. Louis County?
Getting this law on the books in the city would be an important first step to getting St. Louis County on board. Passing this bill with the county trigger shifts the debate to the county. They may pass a measure triggered by a similar measure in St. Charles County. I agree, it is not ideal. Politics is never pretty and when practiced in a highly fragmented environment it is downright ugly. So I have a problem with these organizations standing in the way of the only way we are going to get smoke-free air on the Missouri side of the region.
Krewson returned my request for comment ysterday morning. She was aware these groups are planning to oppose her bill.
She has been at the Board of Aldermen for nearly 12 years now. Her day job is as a CFO. She can count. She knows how to get legislation passed. These organizations don’t get it — the St. Louis region is not typical. We need to change out city charter. We need to consolidate the 91 separate municipalities in St. Louis County. But I don’t want to wait for those events to get smoke-free air.
The one size fits all strategy these national organizations seek just doesn’t cut it. It irks me they may ruin our chances. Hopefully we can overcome their objections. Hearings on the bill begin Tuesday at noon in room 208 at city hall.
– Steve Patterson
Interestingly enough no one really has treated the issue any differently with or without the trigger. I’ve talked to a lot of bar and restaurant owners since this began and for the most part, they don’t care what the county does. Within the hospitality industry, the trigger language has had no real effect on their willingness to fight this ban. Now the trigger language may buy a couple of aldermanic votes, but nothing more. Likewise I don’t think what the ACS and like minded groups believe will affect the outcome.
The trigger language would cause city business owners to lobby and contribute to Charlie Dooley and the County Council against a ban. Let’s keep City business owners in the City. The ALA, the AHA and ACS are right for once, the trigger language is bad government.
One, for the national organizations, it sounds like “penny wise and pound foolish”, “win the battle, lose the war”. And two, maybe we should do it the other way, like dogs on restaurant patios, make it a ward-by-ward opt-in or opt-out issue . . .
The State of North Carolina, a.k.a. “Tobacco Road,” is going smoke-free January 2nd. “Progressive Portland” (Oregon) only went smoke-free this January.
“the trigger language may buy a couple of aldermanic votes, but nothing more.”
Missing one in sentence above: “a couple of [additional] aldermanic votes.
I agree with Steve: a victory is progress. No action is a defeat.
Bonnie Linhardt and her friends at the “Big Three” have been working hard to make their organizations a non-player. They damaged Kirkwood’s initial attempt too, and set the St. Louis County attempts back as well.
They have never helped, only hindered. I think most of us who work in the trenches wish they would just shut up and go away – they clearly are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
As Bonnie and her buddies look around in St. Louis, can they count any victories they have helped in? The answer is YES only if they consider helping to kill several bills a success. If they call helping to kill Kirkwood’s, St. Louis County’s, and now St. Louis City’s efforts a success, they are doing great. It seems Ballwin, Arnold, and now Clayton have succeeded by ignoring them entirely.
The fact that Mr. Hannegan, an implacable and formidable opponent of smoke-free air laws, is on the same page as the three voluntary health agencies – American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and the American Lung Association – says volumes about just how misguided the big three are.
When Missouri GASP first started we worked closely with the ALA of Eastern Missouri, which was very supportive, but I personally lost faith in the voluntary health agencies in 1987 when serving with them as president of Missouri GASP on the statewide Coalition on Smoking or Health. That year the three agencies colluded with the tobacco lobby in an effort to pass a weak state law which would then become the strongest permitted in Missouri, and the effort very nearly succeeded. Missouri GASP was a leading player in its defeat.
I have never trusted them since and that distrust has been shown to be well-founded, as noted by Charley Gatton’s examples, the latest being their current opposition to the St. Louis City initiative because it’s not a perfect bill.
I’ve concluded that the voluntary health agencies should just butt out!
That Missour-ah in general, and St. Louis in particular, has no fresh air laws just goes to show that it is a cultural backwater. It has always been so and it seems it will always be so.