CLEARING THE AIR: 10 years after smoking ban, supporters — and some skeptics — tout its benefits

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Steve Menser, standing behind the bar at Snappers, was a skeptic of the smoking ordinance a decade ago. Now, he appreciates what it has accomplished. (Tom Russo | Daily Reporter)

GREENFIELD — The Hancock County Tobacco-Free Coalition celebrated a significant anniversary this week. It marked 10 years since the passage of a countywide ordinance that banned smoking in all workplaces, a milestone that has led to cultural shifts and measurably improved health, according to experts.

Brandee Bastin, the tobacco initiative coordinator at Hancock Regional Hospital, said the coalition’s objectives have come a long way in 10 years, but plenty of work remains. The county’s smoking rate, which has declined to 16 percent from 22 percent as recently as 2011, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, still means thousands of county residents are lighting up. Despite decades of efforts to decrease the spread of tobacco use, it remains the most common cause of preventable death in the United States, Bastin told those gathered for an anniversary celebration on Monday.

“It kills more people than AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, homicides, illegal drugs, suicides and fires combined,” Bastin said. “And yet we’re still struggling in 2019 to really kind of raise awareness and get folks on board with how devastating this is in the United States and in our world today.”

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Bastin recalled that before the ordinance passed, the coalition worked to convince businesses one at a time to ban smoking on their premises. The effort, she said, was aimed at protecting as many workers as possible from inhaling secondhand smoke in their workplaces.

“We had the first smoke-free Steak ‘n Shake voluntarily; did you know that?” Bastin said. “We had the first smoke-free Ponderosa voluntarily. We got Wendy’s, we got Chicago’s Pizza, we got Mi Casa. We did a pretty good job. But it all came to a grinding halt very quickly when we got to some of the bigger chains and bigger employers, and the bars and things like that.”

As smaller towns within Hancock County began to establish tobacco-free policies, Bastin recalled, many young people in Greenfield got involved in advocating for their community to become smoke-free as well.

A comprehensive ordinance, which included all public places of employment, took effect on March 25, 2009. Since then, all local school corporations have developed comprehensive non-smoking policies that include e-cigarettes and vaping, while county parks are currently working to develop smoke-free policies for outdoor spaces. Many workplaces set up outdoor smoking areas. Others banned smoking on their property entirely.

Former State Sen. Beverly Gard, who spoke at the event, worked for years to attempt to pass state legislation restricting smoking in public places. It was an uphill battle, she said.

“The people who were advocates of doing nothing had lots of money,” Gard said. “They had lots of money for campaign contributions, they had lots of money for entertaining, lots of money for all sorts of media and public relations.”

Gard, a Greenfield Republican, eventually played an instrumental role in the 2012 passage of that statewide legislation. The bill was the last Gard filed before retiring from the legislature and was less comprehensive than she would have liked — it excluded bars, private clubs, some home-based businesses and casinos.

CULTURAL SHIFT

Karena Walker is one person who has experienced the effects of secondhand smoke in the workplace. Walker, currently a manager at the Hancock County Fraternal Order of Police, worked in a casino in Lawrenceburg for 16 years.

“When you get home, you don’t want to go in your house, especially if you have children,” Walker said of working in an environment with so much secondhand smoke. “You take your clothes off in the garage. It affects your health. I had pneumonia at least twice a year, every year.”

Walker got involved in efforts to advocate for a statewide smoking ban that would include casinos. Soon afterward, she said, she and her co-workers were asked to sign documents stating they would not sue their employer over any health impacts related to secondhand smoke exposure. Walker quit instead.

Indiana’s statewide law still exempts casinos. Walker said most of her former co-workers have since left their jobs to work for casinos in Ohio, which are smoke-free. Walker, meanwhile, said she loves her job at the FOP.

“I love it mostly because I don’t have to deal with the smoke that I used to have to deal with for 16 years,” Walker said.

Steve Menser is now the owner of Snappers Bar and Grill in Greenfield; when the smoking ordinance originally passed, he was just a regular patron of the bar, then known as Ro’s. As a smoker, he was opposed to the ordinance at the time. When he ran for Hancock County commissioner in 2010, overturning it was part of his platform. He didn’t win. In fact, the incumbent who handily defeated him, Derek Towle, was one of the “yes” votes months before.

Ten years later, though, Menser said he and his customers have come around to supporting the ordinance.

“What I’ve seen and what I’ve heard from the customers is that they really enjoy a smoke-free environment. Everybody was up in arms in the beginning, saying, ‘it’s a bar, it’s over 21, we should be allowed to smoke. That’s what you do in a bar.’ But as things kind of rolled along, people started getting used to it,” Menser said.

One day this week, several customers at Snappers, both smokers and non-smokers, agreed that the ordinance is a positive thing. Mike Harper, who has quit smoking but uses a vaping device, said he appreciates the cleaner environment at the bar.

“It’s awesome,” Harper said. “Our clothes smell normal when we go home.”

LOOKING FORWARD

Jim Bever, the chairman of the Hancock County Board of Health and director of student services at the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation, grew up in Hancock County and has seen attitudes toward smoking shift drastically in his lifetime.

“My parents, like many of their contemporaries, were hardworking, blue-collar folks who believed in making things better for their families — and smoked like chimneys,” Bever said. “I remember many, many trips in the closed car, looking through the fog of tobacco smoke and everybody thinking I became carsick. No, I was nicotine poisoned.”

Today’s youth have very different experiences, Bever said, with smoking in public places having become so uncommon that most students have never walked into a restaurant with a smoking section.

But that doesn’t mean the problem of youth nicotine addiction has been solved. In fact, Bever said, it’s seen a resurgence with the advent of electronic cigarettes and similar products, which are easier to use indoors without detection and come in many flavors that appeal to children and teens.

Hancock County was far ahead of the state curve in including e-cigarettes and vape pens in its non-smoking ordinance. The County Commissioners voted to include the devices in its ban in 2011, following a recommendation by the Hancock County Health Department.

The popularity of vaping and e-cigarettes among teens, Bever said, means smoking cessation advocates have to “start all over again.”

“But in Hancock County, we know one thing for certain,” Bever said. “The use of those products is still against the ordinance.”

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