DaytonDailyNews.com

It was announced this week that cancer is expected to overtake heart disease as the world's No. 1 killer by 2010.

Somebody ought to point that out to Sen. Tom Roberts, D-Dayton, and the other 12 state legislators who are working to undermine the public smoking ban resoundingly approved by Ohio's voters in 2006.

Somebody ought to tell the folks in charge of enforcing the smoking ban — or not enforcing it, which seems closer to the truth.

How could anyone chip away at this law, when the voters have spoken so clearly?

Equally disturbing is the fact that violators are rarely punished. How could the state fail to enforce the law, when so many lives are at stake?

Future generations, it is to be hoped, will be baffled that cigarettes remained legal so many decades after we learned about their lethal properties. The FDA would laugh as maniacally as the Joker if someone submitted such a substance for approval today. Yet we continue to allow the widespread distribution that kills vastly more people every year than car accidents or drugs. We lose more Americans to smoking-related causes every month than we lost on 9/11.

Ohioans finally and unequivocally said, "enough," at least when it comes to secondhand smoke that perpetrates its poison on unwilling victims.

Roberts isn't a smoker, yet he's co-sponsoring Senate Bill 346, which would create new exemptions to the state smoking ban for private clubs and family-owned businesses that don't admit minors. "This allows us to see what the voters really wanted," Roberts said.

If this bill dealt strictly with private clubs, that would be one thing. Fraternal organizations and VFW halls had reason to be confused about their status. (The Ohio Department of Health was fine with exempting private clubs if workers were volunteers, but the Ohio Attorney General's Office struck it down.)

Extending the exemption to family-owned businesses would create a two-tiered system that would be unfair to other restaurant owners — not to mention confusing for customers. Would we be forced to roam from restaurant to restaurant, wondering who's smoke-free and who isn't?

"It would be an unfair competitive advantage to the family-owned restaurants," noted Amy Haverstick, owner of Jay's Restaurant and president of the Miami Valley Restaurant Association. "The law was passed two years ago, and people are used to it. I'm sure we've lost a few customers, but I feel we have a better atmosphere now for food and wine. Our building is in an old warehouse, and smoke permeates everything."

Bill Castro, owner of El Meson in West Carrollton, said the proposed bill is "five steps backward" for Ohio's bar and restaurant industry. He's not convinced the smoking ban hurts business; his restaurant has more than doubled its seating capacity, to 450, after instituting a smoking ban 10 years ago. "We won't go back, ever," he said with conviction. "Good food and good health, they go hand in hand."

Castro is disgusted by restaurant owners that flout the ban: "How can they say it's all right so long as you don't get caught? There's no pride, no responsibility. It was voted on, and they're saying, 'We didn't like the answer.' "

Concurred Haverstick, "We need to believe in our voters." For her, that applies not only to restaurant owners but also to state legislators.

Roberts said he's getting an earful from both sides. "I haven't decided what I'll do," he said. "When I make a decision I like the deliberative process. For me this is healthy debate and dialogue that allows me to see what the voters really wanted."

Watering down the state's ban on indoor public smoking?

There's nothing healthy about that.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty@DaytonDailyNews.com.