Another municipal smoking ban

This week, the village of Weston (near Wausau) Village Board passed a smoking ban that will take effect in 2010. It appears to have many of the business owners in the area up in arms, and probably for good reason.

The problem with this is that hard-core smokers, or most "regular" bar patrons, tend to avoid bars where smoking isn’t allowed. With a small community like Weston, they’ll be able to go to surrounding areas in order to be able to smoke while they drink. An unintended side effect of this is that they’ll be driving farther to get home, likely over the legal BAC limit.

I don’t understand this one. With a Democratically controlled Assembly and Senate until (at least ) 2010, why didn’t the board just wait for a statewide ban? That way, losing business from community to community won’t be a problem because there won’t be smoking allowed indoors anywhere.

Another possibility is that the village board is looking to set an example to help hurry the process of a statewide ban. Municipal governments are the creatures of state governments, but in some instances they can have strong influence on state policy.

To me, this seems like an inopportune time to be enacting an ordinance that will negatively affect business, considering the economic situation we’re in. And another question: where was the tavern league on this one? Perhaps it’s not as strong as it’s made out to be, which will help speed up the process for a statewide ban.

Banning smoking in individual communities makes no sense and is really inefficient. However, the "it hurts business" argument is irrelevant when talking about a statewide ban.