This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 9, 2010 - The Creve Coeur City Council voted Monday to approve a public smoking ban with far fewer exemptions than an upcoming smoking ban in St. Louis County, making the city the fifth to pass a stricter ban than the county's and bringing smiles to advocates' faces.
With the council's 5-0 vote, Creve Coeur joins Clayton, Ballwin, Kirkwood and Brentwood as the fifth city in St. Louis County. The ban takes effect Jan. 2.
The bill's sponsor, Councilwoman Beth Kistner of Ward 1, said she introduced the bill so Creve Coeur could go beyond the county's ban and protect workers and customers in places the county's ban exempts, such as nursing homes and bars. Before final passage, however, she reluctantly exempted some private clubs, following complaints from some local clubs.
Arder Jordan of Creve Coeur's American Legion said the veterans in his group have gone through far more than just secondhand smoke in their workplace, the battlefield.
"The ships and planes that carried us there were loaded with asbestos, and your ban wants to protect us from secondhand smoke," Jordan said.
Kistner's ordinance grandfathers clubs that open before Jan. 2 from the ban, to the relief of Jordan as well as representatives from Elks Lodge. After that date, any club that employs people or serves as a public meeting place cannot allow smoking.
The recent surge in stricter smoking bans at the city level has reignited a push to get the Missouri Legislature to consider a statewide ban, though supporters acknowledge they face an uphill battle. The trend has also brought cheers from public-health and smoking ban advocates, who have reservations about county's ban because they say its exemptions leave some workers and customers at risk of health problems from secondhand smoke exposure. The county's ban, which takes effect the same day, applies to most public places but exempt some bars, as well as casino floors, private clubs and nursing homes.
But the trend has also kept alive a local debate over whether governments should regulate smoking in businesses and whether air-cleaning systems can serve as an effective alternative.
Advocates grew more optimistic about their chances of passing stricter bans in other county cities after the Sept. 9 release of a Washington University study that found that ventilation systems failed to remove nicotine from the air in certain bars and restaurants. Officials at Wash. U. and the American Cancer Society touted the study as the first objective study lending support to enacting comprehensive smoking bans in the St. Louis area.
Meanwhile, smoking ban opponents such as Bill Hannegan of Keep St. Louis Free have continued their opposition efforts. They prefer using ventilation systems and other technologies instead of passing bans that they view as government overreach. Opponents have also contended that the Wash. U. study was misleading because it conflated ventilation with other air-cleaning technologies that, the opponents argue, do a good job of cleaning the air.
"Shouldn't private clubs be allowed to install such technology, if they have not done so already, rather than face a smoking ban? Shouldn't they be allowed that option?" Hannegan asked Kistner in an e-mail before Monday's meeting.
Hannegan remains concerned with the final version of Creve Coeur's ban because Kistner's ordinance puts police in charge of enforcing it. He is pleased, however, that she inserted the grandfather clause.
"That's the best we could have hoped for," Hannegan told the Beacon after the vote. "I'm really surprised that they went ahead and exempted the existing private clubs, and I'm very happy for those clubs."
Kistner said she put the grandfather clause in "reluctantly" to attract broader support for the ban: "My personal feeling is that like any other exemption, it's not in the best interest, but I think in the interest of having an ordinance that would have more support from community and council that it was worth doing."
The next step for supporters is at the state level. Supporters like Kistner say they feel a groundswell of momentum as city after city moves to implement strict smoking bans.
She said the numbers have grown and could grow further. She pointed to O'Fallon, Mo., whose residents overwhelmingly approved a petition to put a smoking ban on the April 2011 ballot.
Jefferson City and Lake St. Louis have recently enacted bans of their own.
For Councilman Robert Haddenhorst of Ward 3, a statewide ban would be more than about public health. He said Missouri is one of only two states -- the other being Kentucky -- that haven't yet passed any sort of state-level smoking measure. The Associated Press in a 2009 article estimated that more than 30 states have passed statewide public smoking bans.
"Municipalities such as Creve Coeur [and] counties have to talk collectively and have to speak up loudly to send a message to our legislators in Jefferson City to get out of the Stone Age and pass a statewide ban on public smoking," he said.
The bad news, Kistner said: "I haven't gotten any very positive indications, unfortunately," that the chances of that happening are good.
Puneet Kollipara, a student at Washington University, was an intern at the Beacon.