Even ardent ex-smoker isn't sure how to vote

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© St. Petersburg Times
published October 11, 2002

Years ago the St. Petersburg Times began cracking down on smokers.

I work in bureaus in the far-flung regions served by the Times and sometimes go for days and weeks, even months, without seeing a manager or evidence of authority and so, when the first rules came out, we were rather casual about enforcement.

But in the Times' St. Petersburg office, where you will usually find more brass than in a drum and bugle corps competition, they were a little more, well, rigorous.

First, without any real regard for physics or the dispersal of gases, they declared half the newsroom nonsmoking, and there was so much "tsk-tsking" going on that sometimes you couldn't hear the editors yelling.

But I, dutifully, stayed on the correct side of the newsroom when smoking.

Then they placed a row of computer terminals off to one side and made that the smoking area, and I dutifully stayed in that area.

Then they roped off a square section in the middle of the room with a small table and ashtray in the middle, and smokers, like people used to be placed in stocks, could go and stand alone and indulge their increasingly solitary vice.

By the time the entire joint went smoke-free, I had quit.

And, like most former heavy smokers, I am ardent about it.

But, ardent or not, I am not sure how I am going to vote on Amendment 6.

It would seem to be a no-brainer. I am a firm believer that it's a person's right to use tobacco, or any other substance they wish for that matter, as long as that use doesn't adversely affect me or others.

I am married to a smoker, who I wish would quit and who won't. She is polite about leaving the house to smoke, is (well) over 18 and pays her own medical expenses. This summer job constraints made it impossible for her to accompany me to a campground in Colorado where smoking was prohibited anywhere on the grounds except inside private vehicles -- and I had rented a nonsmoking car. If she had come along, I'm pretty sure she would have been on the next flight back to Florida and I just may have to invest in a tranquilizer dart gun to get her onto an eight-hour trans-Atlantic flight to Ireland this August.

Supportive of others' right to smoke as I am, I remain equally adamant about my right not to have to breathe their smoke in public places. I prefer to patronize nonsmoking establishments and avoid those where the secondhand smoke is overpowering.

All of that said, it is not the role of a constitutional amendment to accomplish what can easily be accomplished by legislation. If there were an enumerated constitutional right to smoke in restaurants and other workplaces and we needed to repeal that, an amendment would be the way to go.

All it takes is a law that says you can't smoke in restaurants.

If there were an enumerated constitutional right to keep pigs in tortuous gestation crates or to catch fish with gill nets, then an amendment would be called for to change that.

And if there were such a thing as a Legislature that didn't take major contributions from special interests and which had the guts to do the things that are needed to fix Florida, a simple House or Senate bill would take care of all those issues.

Passing up money, getting rid of lobbyists and finding intestinal fortitude are, alas, beyond the capabilities of the people we keep electing to office to make our laws, and the constant flood of citizen-initiative amendment referenda is eventually going to make the state's Constitution as thick as its six-volume book of statutes.

I favor Amendment 6's intent, but I do not think it is the proper way to bypass what should be the legislative process.

I may just decide that the only amendment I will ever vote for is one that captures Florida legislators with gill nets and transports them by bullet train to farms where they will be put in gestation crates and have smoke blown in their faces until they start doing things their constituents obviously want done.

Except for the crate thing, it might work.

Unless you could convince them it was pork barrels they were climbing into.

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