AUGUSTA (AP) – Public health interests prevailed over warnings that personal freedoms are being eroded as the Maine House gave its final approval to a bill to ban smoking in bars and taverns.

Representatives’ 95-47 enactment vote sent the measure to the Senate and put Maine a step closer to joining California and Delaware in imposing statewide bans on smoking in bars. New York’s ban starts in July, and Connecticut’s newly enacted ban on smoking in bars takes effect next April.

“We’re tired of working in an environment that is not safe or healthy,” said Rep. Leila Percy, a Phippsburg Democrat who works as a singer and bandleader in the haze of clubs that serve alcohol.

Rep. Roger Landry said that after his decade-long battle against cancer, he puts health concerns over personal freedoms cited by the bill’s opponents.

“I don’t think we’re chipping away at people’s rights as much as steering them toward a more healthy lifestyle,” said the Sanford Democrat.

And Rep. Thomas Shields, a retired surgeon, said smokers are still free to puff away, but whether they should do it around others is a different issue.

“This bill is about protection of other people,” said the Auburn Republican.

Opponents of the ban said more is at stake than personal freedoms.

Rep. Joshua Tardy, R-Newport, said a tavern owner to whom he rents living space fears a 30 percent loss of business when his patrons leave for a private club where they can smoke while they drink.

“It’s going to shut that business down,” said Tardy. “It’s going to put my tenant out of business.”

Rep. Matthew Dunlap, D-Old Town, said some eateries in his part of the state have shut down not so much because they lost business under Maine’s 1999 ban on smoking in restaurants, but because the owners became exasperated over the stream of mandates from Augusta.

Several other states have also banned smoking in restaurants.

Dunlap also found lawmakers’ professed concern over bar employees’ health “absolutely hilarious.” As a bartender, Dunlap said he finds that his low pay, bad working hours, threats from customers and abuse from angry table servers are more hazardous than secondhand smoke.

“Never once did I consider smoking in the top ten,” said Dunlap.

Rep. Maitland Richardson said he’s received a stack of e-mails from constituents who feel disenfranchised as they see their personal freedoms being taken away one by one.

“Let’s think in terms of what we’re doing to individual choice,” said the Skowhegan Republican, noting that he long ago gave up smoking.

Another opponent, Fryeburg Republican Rep. Kevin Muse, used the words of a bar waitress to underscore his case: “I sling beer and chicken wings to feed two kids,” Muse quoted the woman as saying. “You guys on the hill better leave us alone.”

The bill that passed Tuesday also bans smoking in pool halls, but allows smoking in designated areas of off-track betting facilities.

AP-ES-06-03-03 1617EDT



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