One of our Back Talk readers questioned why District 10 Councilman Jerry Allen changed his mind along the way on the bar smoking ban issue. I had a little time on my hands (not really but I squeezed out a few minutes), so I called him up to find out. He’s obviously spent many — possibly way too many — hours thinking about this thing and he had a lot to say. Here’s the jist of it:
Allen says he “had a finger on the ‘yes’ and a finger on the ‘no’ right down to the very last minute" (referring to "yes" and "no" buttons council members press to vote on agenda items).
Allen ended up voting ‘yes’ to the smoking ban expansion because that’s what his constituents wanted him to do, he says. “In the end, they elected me as their advocate. For every call or email I got urging me to oppose (the ban expansion), I got 10 urging me to support it."
He says his initial reaction to the proposal was that inside the free-standing businesses where smoking is still permitted, property owners should have the right to choose whether or not to allow smoking— "My first thought was that it is a matter of property rights".
But, the councilman says in the weeks leading up to yesterday’s vote, he put hours of painstaking research and thought into the matter (adding that he could probably write an in-depth news feature for us on his findings), and began to see it as a public health issue. “You can look at this thing one of two ways, as a property rights issue or as a public health issue,” he says. AND, if you see it as a public health issue — maybe you should take things a step further. That’s where he came up with the whole no-smoking-in-a-car-with-a-child thing, which nearly passed.
Yes, he decided it was a health issue. He introduced the proposal to ban smoking in a car with a child primarily to emphasize that point. “Most people who smoke, don’t smoke in their cars at all. This wouldn’t affect that many people. It’s mainly about making a statement.”
That, and the fact that most Lake Highlands residents voiced support for the ban, gave his “yes” finger the edge.
