Local group seeks support for smoking ban in public places

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been changed to correct Dr. Jeremy Barnes' name.

With the passage of a smoking ban for most public places in St. Louis and St. Louis County, a local group wants to find out if there is support for a similar ban in Cape Girardeau.

The Breathe Easy Cape Girardeau coalition has a website detailing its goals of eliminating smoking in public places. The website includes a petition pledging support for "having totally smoke-free indoor public places and workplaces in Cape Girardeau, including bars and restaurants."

The sign-up is designed to show support, not be a specific drive to present the Cape Girardeau City Council with a finished ordinance, said Dr. Jeremy Barnes, a coalition member who part of the Health, Human Performance and Recreation Department at Southeast Missouri State University.

"This is not an attack on smokers, as some people have construed it," Barnes said. "It is simply a health issue."

Under the city charter, the council must either pass an ordinance backed by signatures from 10 percent of the people registered to vote at the most recent city general election or submit it to city voters for approval.

St. Louis' new ban covers almost all public places -- it exempts casinos, bars that earn less than 25 percent of their revenue from food sales and smoking lounges at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Neither the state nor Cape Girardeau have passed laws restricting smoking for nearly two decades.

The state, under a law passed in 1992, requires smoking areas to be separate from nonsmoking areas and allows restaurants to designate a smoking area. Cape Girardeau's ordinances are silent on smoking, except for a ban on smoking in grocery stores passed in 1991.

Several states, including Illinois, have statewide bans on smoking in public places. Many cities nationwide, including Paducah, Ky., and Columbia, Mo., have also enacted bans.

That momentum has one downtown Cape Girardeau restaurant owner, Hunter Clark of Broussard's Cajun Cuisine, 120 N. Main St., expecting a local ban. He also expects a ban to hurt his business. A former smoker, he said "I can't stand it to leave here after a night to the end, the way the smoke smells."

But he's not ready to take the step and ban smoking on his own. "It is my customers that pay my bills, pay my salary and keep me in business."

It is an issue of who runs the business, Clark said. "My concern is that ultimately it is government reaching into my business and telling me what to do in my business as if they aren't already telling me what to do enough."

Terry Baker, tobacco prevention manager at Saint Francis Medical Center and a coalition leader, said bans don't have the negative impact on businesses that many claim. The goal is eliminating risk for employees and patrons who don't smoke, she said.

The coalition recently received a grant that allowed it to hire a coordinator as its first paid employee. That will increase the visibility of the campaign, Barnes said. But community education must precede a push for a ban, he said. "That is probably quite a way down the road. Right now we are trying to educate people."

rkeller@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

401 Independence St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.

120 N. Main St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.

On the web:

capebreatheeasy.com