Breath of
fresh air
in Maine
We can truly wish each other a healthy and happy new year in 2004 because, starting next year, public gathering places will be smoke-free.
On Tuesday, Gov. John Baldacci signed into law a measure to make all bars, lounges, pool halls and some off-track betting facilities smoke-free. The law, which acknowledges that smoking is already banned in most establishments, goes into effect Jan. 1.
It is solid legislation designed to protect workers, but it could be widely interpreted in the coming years as an all-out smoking ban in every public place.
Good.
The new ban on smoking in public places defines those places as anywhere “not open to the sky into which the public is invited or allowed.” That, of course, excludes private residences, but it includes nearly all gathering places.
That means that the clean air we enjoy in our restaurants will become the standard climate everywhere we gather.
Contrary to criticism that the ban goes too far, this law treads lightly on personal privacies while protecting the public. Smokers are not required to crush their smokes entirely. They are merely required to keep the poison to themselves by smoking at home or outdoors.
Maine hasn’t gone as far as other states in controlling cigarette use.
Since 1988, Massachusetts has banned police officers and firefighters from smoking either on- and off-duty. If caught smoking, they can be fired. While probably a stretch to believe not one police officer or firefighter in the Bay State smokes, the Commonwealth has the authority to punish public employees for smoking. A Fall River police officer was fired just last month after an internal investigation found he had been smoking.
The line that Maine has drawn between freedom to smoke in private and strict limits on public smoking is one we must maintain. The idea that the state can give itself authority to control what we do in private is obtrusive. But the state is well within bounds to ban smoking in public gathering places and Baldacci’s signature guarantees us many breaths of fresh air.
Fair reporting
The idea that agencies submit uniform data to form statistical foundations is good. It’s not always done that way, though, which leads to incomplete statistics, poor conclusions and inaccurate public perception.
We see this frequently with crime statistics. Police departments across Maine and elsewhere report crimes differently, but the numbers are blended as if the reporting techniques match. They’re not, and we get weird results that show statistically higher rates of crime in Lewiston than some larger cities.
If statistics are to be of any use, the reporting process must be uniform.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other highway agencies have finally recognized that and are working to align reporting statistics for accidents, requiring police departments to follow established guidelines for reporting frequency, severity and cause of crashes. Those stats will then be used to determine what factors are most likely to cause accidents, providing hints about what we could do first to lower accident rates.
If highway departments can set uniform reporting standards, police departments and other government agencies can do the same. It’s the only way we can guarantee statistical validity that often translates into government funding and certainly impacts public views.
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
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