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VT Senate Passes Bill to Ban Smoking in Bars and Private Clubs [05/20-4]

Preliminary approval came on a 22-6 roll call vote, and from there the Senate proceeded to final approval on a voice vote.

"Secondhand smoke is a real thing," said Sen. Virginia Lyons, D-Chittenden, who explained the bill to her colleagues on behalf of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. "It's deadly. It's costly."

She listed toxins contained in the smoke and ill health effects caused by them, likening exposure to the pollutants to "going downstream from the International Paper plant and breathing the effluent from their tire burn."

She was referring to IP's request to run a test of tire chips as a fuel in one of the boilers at its mill in Ticonderoga, N.Y., a request that has alarmed environmentalists and state officials in downwind Vermont.

Critics of the bill said it would be an infringement on personal freedoms and private property rights. Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, argued that bars with cabaret licenses - meaning they make more money selling alcohol than food - and private fraternal and veterans' clubs were exempted from a 1993 law banning smoking in restaurants as part of a carefully crafted compromise. "Now we're going back on the compromise," he said.

Gov. James Douglas said later he expected to sign the smoking ban into law. He said it would have been his preference to have the question decided by individual cities and towns, but he acknowledged that the statewide ban has strong support in both houses of the Legislature.

Douglas said he was no fan of tobacco, noting that as state treasurer, he had led the move for the state's pension funds to sell off their tobacco company investments. He, too, cited the ill-health effects of breathing secondhand smoke, as well as what he called "the annoyance factor."

Passage of the bill in the senate came after the rejection of two amendments designed to address what some senators said had been the most common complaints about a smoking ban: that it would take away veterans' rights to smoke within the walls of their clubs, and that it would hurt business.

Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans, asked that an exemption be added to the bill for Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion clubs, arguing that those groups' oldest members typically had acquired the smoking habit during World War II.

Illuzzi called this group "the greatest generation," borrowing the phrase from a Tom Brokaw book of the same name. They were "ordinary people who did extraordinary things," and "were willing to risk their lives to fight for this country."

He asked that the exemption last for five years. "This will enable the remaining World War II vets to use these clubs the way they always have without interruption," he said.

Sen. James Leddy, D-Chittenden, argued that Illuzzi's amendment would be unfair to other bars that would lose their exemption from the smoking ban. He also said the main purpose of the bill was to preserve public health, and that he did not want to discriminate against the veterans.

Illuzzi's amendment lost on a 10-18 vote.

Sears also was unsuccessful in offering an amendment that would have called on the state to reimburse businesses that lost income due to the change in the law, a measure that would stay in place three years. That was defeated on a 24-4 vote.