Private club members divided over smoking ban

Terry Masters and Mike Gentry lit their first cigarettes as soldiers on the battle fields of South Vietnam.

Four decades later, the combat veterans have found themselves on opposite sides of a much smaller skirmish -- a proposed smoking ban that will go before Cape Girardeau voters April 5.

If approved, the ban would prohibit smoking in bars, restaurants, casinos and -- here's the rub -- private clubs.

The private clubs provision would include places like the Eagles Club, the Elks Lodge and the Cape Girardeau Country Club.

The ban would also be enforced at a club Masters and Gentry frequent, a place reserved for veterans who have served during times of war: The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3838.

As a smoker, Masters is adamantly opposed to the ban.

Gentry, who smoked his last cigarette in 1989, thinks a smoking ban would be great for the city and the VFW.

"I used to smoke five packs a day," Gentry said Tuesday afternoon during a stop at the VFW on Kingshighway. "I'd like to come into a place that didn't have smoke everywhere. It gets so bad in here, on our clothes, everything."

Masters, who was smoking a cigar and drinking beer at the bar, said he doesn't think it's the government's role to tell those who fought for freedom they can't smoke in a club where they pay dues, which range from $50 to $80 a year.

"We know smoking is stupid," Masters said. "But it shouldn't be up to the government, or voters for that matter, to tell any business what it can or can't allow. That's just not right."

Managers at the VFW, the Eagles and Elks say the smoking ban is a hotly debated topic among its members. Those who run the VFW and Elks say their members are largely split about the smoking ban, but a trustee at the Eagles said its members are strongly against it.

Those with Breathe Easy Cape Girardeau, the group of citizens that worked to get the issue on the ballot, said they feel that private clubs belong in the ban. Clubs are no different from bars and restaurants, they say, because one of the group's goals is to protect everyone who works in a public place.

"They all need to be protected, whether it's an employee or a patron," said Breathe Easy member Dale Humphries. "I've heard people from the VFW tell me that the smoke really bothers them."

Many of the members at the VFW are older with respiratory and cardiac problems, she said.

"The last thing they need is an environment that will hurt them," Humphries said.

"To me this is all about the dangers of secondhand smoke. People say we have an ulterior motive. I want to ask them what that would be? It's a health issue. So many other states have already gone nonsmoking. I'm asking myself the same thing: Why haven't we?"

At the Cape Girardeau Eagles No. 3775, club leaders are working to get the word out against a smoking ban. Board member Bill Stoffel said they are putting a notice in their monthly newsletter encouraging people to vote against the ban.

The Eagles would lose members, he said, if the club went nonsmoking. Most of the members there smoke, he said. The club donates to 19 local charities, all of which help adults and children who suffer from health-related problems. If they have fewer members, he said, they have less money to give.

"We believe it would hurt many of the businesses that allow smoking in the city," said Stoffel, who does not smoke. "We should be able to manage our own clubs the way we want to."

Ray Drury is a board member for the Elks Lodge in Cape Girardeau. He said the smokers at the Elks are adamantly against it and the non-smokers are for the ban. Drury said he doesn't particularly care for the ban and will probably vote against it, even though he doesn't smoke.

But as long as its enforced at all the clubs, he doesn't see how it could hurt business.

"If it's a level playing field for everybody, I don't think it will make that much difference," he said.

smoyers@semissourian.com

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Pertinent address:

1049 North Kingshighway Street, Cape Girardeau, Mo

639 Elks Lane, Cape Girardeau, Mo

321 N. Spring Ave., Cape Girardeau, Mo

250 Country Club Drive, Cape Girardeau, Mo.