The Governor of The People's Republic of Minnesota---a supposed free enterprise Republican---has just lost my vote for reelection in 2006.
Changes in the makeup of the Minnesota Legislature after last week's election may create more of a taste for statewide legislation banning smoking, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Wednesday that he would sign any smoking ban that came to his desk. Pawlenty had said earlier that he did not think such legislation would pass, but he acknowledged that the DFL's gain of 13 seats in the Minnesota House might alter the equation. "We'll have to wait and see how the Legislature addresses that, but if a bill does reach my desk I will sign it," he said. The Republican governor's comments came after a meeting in Willmar with DFL Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson over issues looming in the legislative session. Johnson said the smoking ban is likely to be on the legislative agenda but could not tell how much support there might be for a ban -- either statewide or regionally -- in the Senate. He added, though, that he believed if such a ban were enacted, businesses and the hospitality industry would support a ban statewide as a "level playing field."This has been a hot-potato issue lately here in the Cities. This summer, a city council member in St. Paul---a smoker---in a fit of magnimanity decided that he shouldn't be oppressing non-smokers in bars with his smoke. Supposedly, this was the slice through the Gordian Knot everyone had been waiting for, because the anti-smoking Nazis had been of the opinion that until one big city went for a ban, it wasn't worth their time to seriously push their agenda. Bloomington, where the Mall of Gomorrah resides, was the next to fall, then Minneapolis itself, where the city council decided to---ahem---pass their ban in a closed session, without allowing any business owners to speak against the ban. As you might imagine, the hospitality industry was up in arms about these bans, mainly because the respective city councils were sneaky and passed the bans quickly, with little to no dissent allowed. Minneapolis and St. Paul bar owners are up in arms because it's up to them to enforce the ban. You try getting a drunk not to fire up when they're in their cups, and you'll figure out that it's not an easy thing to do. But more importantly they're worried that they'll lose the money of smokers because they'll go to smoke-friendly suburbs to drink and eat. Yet, Pawlenty thinks that if the entire state goes smoke free, the hospitality industry will embrace such legislation because it will level the playing field. Now, if you hadn't already guessed I'm a smoker. It's a disgusting habit, I know. I'm not in denial about how unhealthy these things are for me. I also know they smell bad, which is why I don't fire up in other people's houses unless they give me leave to do so, which never happens. If I'm in a situation where I don't know if someone objects to the smoke, even in my own home, I will ask if they do mind and if they do, well, I won't smoke. I understand people's concerns about secondhand smoke, even if I don't necessarily agree with the research done on the issue to date. Yet I strive to be a considerate smoker. So do my friends who smoke. Some of them don't even smoke in their own houses because they want their non-smoker friends to feel comfortable there. However, I have noticed that nowadays the reason most people want a ban on smoking isn't because of the second-hand smoke considerations, which they really don't need to worry about anymore. There are plenty of smoke-free bars and restaurants around. They also don't need to worry about secondhand smoke because smoking, indeed, has been banned in most places in Minnesota and has been since 1975. It's called the Clean Indoor Air Act and it prohibits smokers from firing up indoors in public---and private---places of business. It also regulates how much seating must be available in restaurants for non-smoking sections, in bars and the like. And it works. Take it from me: if you want a smoke, unless you're in place with a bar you have to go outside to fire up. So, this isn't about smokers potentially giving people cancer via secondhand smoke, as that's already been taken care of. This is about the smell of cigarettes, pipes and cigars. But they'll use the cover of secondhand smoke to keep their noses from the faintest whiff of tobacco. Pawlenty has been an interesting governor, to be sure. When he was in the legislature, he was constantly fighting off the DFL's attempts at socialism. He had a rep, in other words and he used that rep when he decided to run for governor. I got the impression he was more of a libertarian Republican, someone who was tough on terrorism, yet was also a free-enterprise Republican, someone who believed regulation was strangling the economy of the state. But now it seems that's not really true. While I applauded his efforts during the bus driver's strike earlier this year, I wasn't really crazy about the education commissioner he appointed, who tried to overhaul all of the social studies and history textbooks in the state school system to books that pretty much didn't focus on anything but America, in essence, swinging the pendulum to the other end of the spectrum. Pawlenty has proven over time that he's got an agenda, and it's more about social conservatism and telling me how to live than it is about less regulation. His support of a state-wide smoking ban just proves the point. This move isn't about anything more than playing politics: he's got an agenda he wants passed through the legislature in the upcoming session and he's got more DFL'ers to deal with this time around: he's throwing them a bone to get them to cooperate on his agenda. Well, I for one, won't stand for it. I've had it with having my rights as a smoker consistently being thrown up for sacrifice because I'm an easy target. After all, this is the Uber-healthy state of Minnesota: we don't do things that are bad for ourselves so we'll tax the hell out of everyone that does something we consider to be bad. This is also why we don't allow anyone to sell liquor after eight o'clock on a weeknight, or at all on Sundays, because booze is bad for them. This is why we don't allow grocery stores to sell wine or beer, because someone might---gasp!---get crazy over the dinner table if they don't have to go to an actual liquor store, during the legally alloted time period, to purchase the stuff! Well, fuck that. I may live in Minnesota, but first and foremost I'm an American. If I want to kill myself with booze or cigarettes I'm allowed to do so. You can't save me from myself, assholes: it's not your right to interfere with my personal choices, especially when I go out of my way to make sure my behavior doesn't bother anyone else. I regulate myself. But it's not like that matters, right? You want me to quit. You've made that abundantly clear with your regulation: you're trying to change my behavior by baby-stepping your rules, thinking that if you introduce change slowly, I won't notice. Well, I've noticed and the buck stops here, bub. I've had it with being considerate. It's turned me into nothing but a doormat because anti-smoking Nazis assume that, since I'm considerate, I won't mind one more tax or one more regulation on my "bad" behavior. They think I'll just adapt my behavior to their whims, because I'm in the minority. Screw it. No more Mrs. Nice. If you, the State of Minnesota, want me to adhere to your socialist regime by quitting, you'd better actually behave as if you want me to do just that by ending your reliance on the taxes I pay whenever I buy a pack. Would that be hard to do? Nope. I don't think so. But we all know government has an issue with ending a stream of income that they've come to love, so it's not like that's gonna happen anytime in the near future. If you, the State of Minnesota, want me to quit smoking my coffin nails, but still want me to go to bars and restaurants because it's good for the economy, well, you can go and take a leap off a cliff. I'll stay at home. After all, staying home is good for my economy. I can cook a five star meal---why do I need to go out and have one served to me? I make a damn good martini---why do I need to go out and pay eight bucks for a drink that costs less when I make it? I can entertain friends with style and panache, thank you ever so much, so why shouldn't I have more parties at home than meeting up with friends at a bar or a restaurant? I won't buy my ciggies from your state. I'll go to Wisconsin or Iowa and start buying them there in bulk. Or I can buy them over the internet, and at much cheaper prices, too. If you think I'll voluntarily send in my tax payment, like I'm supposed to do with the sales tax on catalog purchases, you're nuts. Yet if all this fails to convince you that my money is just as good as a non-smoker's, I could move to a state where they don't believe in socialism, like Texas, and take my income---and all the taxes that are derived from it---elsewhere. That's freedom. Freedom of choice. And Pawlenty, someone whom I thought was all about free choice, is playing politics and has aligned himself with people who think I shouldn't have any because I'm a bad, bad smoker! Well, I guess he doesn't need my vote then when it comes time for him to run for reelection in two years. Posted by Kathy at November 1, 2004 12:30 PM | TrackBack