PACKET EDITORIAL, Dec. 6
By: Packet Editorial
New Jersey’s lame-duck Legislature has plenty on its plate to carve through between now and Jan. 10, when its term expires and all the bills that haven’t been passed by both houses get carted out with the after-dinner trash.
In the four Senate sessions and two Assembly sessions planned between now and the end of the term, lawmakers will grapple with a host of controversial and potentially costly matters facing the state. They’ll be asked, among other things, to look for ways to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund; take an early whack at closing an anticipated $5 billion hole in next year’s state budget; find another $12 billion to fix the state’s broken pension system; and authorize bonds for the construction of a stem-cell research institute.
And those are just the big-ticket items. Toss in hundreds of other measures, dealing with matters ranging from reorganizing the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to prohibiting the sale of contact lenses without a proper license, and the stage is set for what promises to be a busy if not necessarily productive month in the state capitol.
Many of these issues will require more consideration, discussion and debate than the Legislature can reasonably give them during this narrow window of opportunity. Others can be put off until after the new legislative term begins without doing great harm to the public. There is, however, one item on the crowded lame-duck agenda that has had all the consideration, discussion and debate it requires and is plainly ready for adoption: the Clean Indoor Air Act.
This is the bill that would add New Jersey to the growing list of states that ban smoking in most public places. If the law is adopted, the Garden State would join California, Delaware, New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington as states where most citizens can enjoy a meal at a restaurant, a drink at a bar and a workplace environment free from the annoyance and health risks associated with secondhand smoke.
At this point, nobody including the tobacco industry itself bothers to challenge the overwhelming body of statistical evidence that exposure to tobacco smoke is hazardous to people’s health. The only arguments that seem to get trotted out these days are the libertarian one (people have a right to do whatever they want to themselves, and government can’t tell them not to) and the economic one (a ban on smoking will hurt business in bars, restaurants and other public places where it is imposed).
Yet the libertarian argument is fallacious on its face. Smokers do not have a right to endanger the health of the people around them and government not only can tell them not to; it has an obligation to do so. And the economic argument is being debunked by study after study showing that the nation’s first comprehensive smoking ban, in California, had virtually no financial impact on restaurants and bars, and that subsequent bans were actually accompanied by an increase in business in New York and Massachusetts.
The only outstanding issue at the moment is whether New Jersey’s ban should apply to Atlantic City casinos. We think it should; we see no reason why the health of casino employees and patrons should enjoy any less protection than that of people who work or congregate in restaurants, bars and other public places. But if exempting the casino industry at least for the time being is the price the Legislature and acting Gov. Codey have to pay to get this bill passed and signed into law, they should do it. Even a less-than-comprehensive smoking ban delivered by the outgoing Legislature and acting governor would be a wonderful gift for this holiday season.

