A voter casts her ballot at Wydown Middle School Tuesday afternoon as other booths sit empty. Turnout in St. Louis County was under 20 percent as voters overwhelmingly passed a smoking ban. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

St. Louis County voters approved the smoking ban measure Proposition N by an overwhelming margin in Tuesday’s election, which saw low turnout throughout the county.

The proposition, which passed 65.3 percent to 34.7 percent, will ban smoking in public indoor places in St. Louis County in January 2011, with exemptions for casino floors, private clubs, smoking lounges at St. Louis airport, and some bars. The proposition’s passage also triggers a smoking ban in St. Louis that was passed by the city’s aldermen on Oct. 23.

“We have made a major step forward on cleaner air and obviously a healthy environment for our citizens in the county and city, and hopefully for the whole state in the future,” said County Councilwoman Barbara Fraser, D-University City, who introduced the St. Louis County Council bill that put the smoking ban on the ballot.

Proposition N opponent Bill Hannegan, though disappointed, downplayed the result, saying that “it was always going to be tough in the county” due to its low smoking rate.

Hannegan, who heads the group Keep St. Louis Free, added that “the fight’s not over” and that the opposition could challenge the constitutionality of the casino exemption, bring up a conflict between the two smoking bans and state law, or push to amend the city’s smoking ban.

Campaign leaders reported low traffic at polls throughout the county on Tuesday. Overall turnout was just under 20 percent, which was in line with county election officials’ predictions.

Students turned out in especially large numbers for the November 2008 election, but things were different this time around. Nearly all students when interviewed said they did not turn out to vote, despite most of them saying they supported the measure.

Senior James Mosbacher said it took him “three minutes, max” to cast his vote for Proposition N at his polling place, which he said was virtually empty.

“There was nobody there,” he said. “Absolutely nobody.”

The low turnout underscored the absence of a statewide or federal race on the ballot, an obstacle that campaign leaders attempted to overcome with last-minute mobilization efforts. Leaders from both sides said they called supporters on Tuesday in a final get-out-the-vote push.

Proposition N supporters gathered with posters and signs during the Monday rush hour at five street-side locations, including the intersection of Forest Park Parkway and Skinker Boulevard.

More than 200 Saint Louis University medical students and faculty gathered on their campus on Thursday to rally for the ban.

The Washington University community’s highest-profile supporter of the proposition is Martha Bhattacharya, postdoctoral fellow in developmental biology, who served as treasurer of pro-proposition County Citizens for Cleaner Air. Bhattacharya said last week she encouraged students to vote for the measure.

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay even made an appeal on his blog on Monday for county voters to vote for the proposition, writing that the ban “will make St. Louis County restaurants safer for their employees and more pleasant for everyone else.” He also noted that the proposition’s passage would trigger the city’s own ban.

Hannegan said members of the opposition had distributed flyers to bars and restaurants in the days leading up to the election. Bowling alley proprietors also rallied against the proposition in Hazelwood on Saturday.

Most restaurant and bar owners opposed the proposition out of concerns that a smoking ban would violate their property rights and drive their smoking customers to nearby counties that lack smoking bans.

Ban supporters pointed to peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking bans have no negative impacts on business.

Proposition N passed even without the support of some health groups that stayed neutral due to the measure’s exemptions.

In a statement issued shortly after the votes were counted, the St. Louis chapter of the American Cancer Society did not back the smoking ban but said the measure’s passage “confirms that smoke-free laws are uniformly popular with the vast majority of the public and brings critical momentum toward achieving meaningful health protection from secondhand smoke for all people who live and work in St. Louis County.”

“The focus now will be on delivering health protection from secondhand smoke for those workers who still do not have it—those in bars and casinos,” the statement said.

Supporters had long argued that the ban, despite the exemptions, was a good start and was the only ban that would have passed the County Council.

“I would prefer if there were not exemptions, but the bottom line is you need to get something passed,” Stuart Slavin, associate dean for curriculum at SLU School of Medicine, said Monday at the Forest Park-Skinker rally.

Fraser’s bill passed as a result of compromise. The initial bill had no exemptions, but the council voted it down. A later version of the bill with the exemptions passed the council by a 4-3 vote on Aug. 25, following weeks of heated meetings.

The Aug. 4 meeting saw Robert Blaine, medical public policy specialist at the University, urge the council to put on the ballot “as broad and as comprehensive a ban as possible.” The University supported sending the final ban to voters but did not endorse the measure itself.

OTHER KEY RACES

Proposition E-911: YES, 67.7 percent-32.3 percent
A 0.1 percent sales tax increase, revenues from which would go toward upgrading emergency communications equipment in St. Louis County.

Special election, Missouri House 74th District: STACEY NEWMAN (D) 61.3 percent, DANIEL O’SULLIVAN (R) 38.7 percent
Special election in the 74th Missouri House District to fill the seat formerly occupied by Democrat Steve Brown, who resigned the seat on Aug. 25 after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges.

Special election, Missouri Senate 4th District: JOE KEAVENY (D), unopposed
Special election in the 4th Missouri Senate District to fill the seat formerly occupied by Democrat Jeff Smith, who also resigned on Aug. 25 after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges.

Countywide turnout: 19.55 percent
Source: http://www.co.st-louis.mo.us/elections/

Known as Proposition N, the measure would ban smoking in most public indoor places in the county, effective January 2011. Bars that earn less than 25 percent of their sales from food, casino floors, smoking lounges at the St. Louis airport, and private clubs would be exempt.

The ban’s passage would also trigger a smoking ban in St. Louis that city aldermen passed on Oct. 23.

While the local community has been strongly divided, Washington University community members appear to favor the ban for public health reasons.

Senior James Mosbacher, a St. Louis-area resident, said he supports banning smoking in restaurants and will vote for the measure because it exempts bars.

“Part of the population that I think has made cities like Chicago so successful is young people,” Mosbacher said. “For businesses that conduct their sales not entirely on alcohol, I think that smoking is a drawback for those people to patronize these places.”

Martha Bhattacharya, postdoctoral fellow in developmental biology, has become perhaps the University community’s strongest advocate of the smoking ban, serving as treasurer of the pro-proposition campaign, County Citizens for Cleaner Air. Bhattacharya said she has encouraged some students she knows to vote.

In a recent op-ed submission to Student Life, Bhattacharya pushed students to turn out for the election, writing, “Last year, many of you registered to vote in St. Louis County in order to make a difference in the choice of our president. Please don’t let your civic responsibility stop there.”

When interviewed, some students who live in St. Louis County said they are not sure if they will vote, or they plan not to vote at all.
Sophomore Amy Plovnick said she supports the ban but has not decided if she will vote.

“This is really the only big issue people would be voting about,” Plovnick said. “I think it’s an important issue, but I don’t know if it’s that important to get me to go, but I’m going to try to vote.”

Turnout is expected to be very low throughout the county, largely because it is an off-year election with no high-level races on the ballot.

“We don’t have a Clinton or a Bush or even an Obama, much less a Senate race or House of Representatives race,” said Dave Robertson, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “The people who will turn out are people who feel unusually strongly about the issue, for the most part.”

It’s not clear whether low turnout would sway the vote. Representatives of both sides have said they are working to mobilize voters.

The referendum originated over the summer in the St. Louis County Council as a bill, which was sponsored by Councilwoman Barbara Fraser, D-University City. Fraser has said the ban would not be perfect due to the exemptions but would still improve air quality without harming businesses.

Business and bar owners opposed to the ballot measure have argued that the ban would infringe upon their property rights.

Bill Hannegan of the anti-ban group Keep St. Louis Free has touted air filtration as an alternative to a smoking ban and said many bar owners are “worried sick” about the ban because it would drive customers to nearby counties.

Cicero’s Restaurant, which recently went smoke-free only in its dining area, will have to go completely smoke-free if the proposition passes. Bobby Francis, front-of-house manager of the popular destination for students on the Delmar Loop, said a ban would be “problematic” for bar customers who smoke, but did not know how it would affect business.

Ban supporters have said peer-reviewed studies show that air filtration is ineffective and that smoking bans do not negatively affect business.

Supporters have also said the ban on the ballot, though not comprehensive, would be a step in the right direction.

“There are a lot of bans that have started as local ordinances, and most of the local ordinances are not 100 percent comprehensive,” Bhattacharya said in an interview. “We have to start with something maybe a little less than perfect, but something that will substantially help the health of the county.”

Due to the trigger provision in the city’s smoking ban, county voters effectively will be determining the fates of both jurisdictions’ proposals.

In a debate on Monday in Clayton, Fraser said the trigger effect invalidates opponents’ argument that the proposition’s passage would create an uneven playing field between county and city businesses. She added that nearby counties “are looking seriously at this legislation, and that the domino effect will take place.”

Hannegan responded that the ban would cause non-exempt businesses to lose money to those that would be exempt.

“That’s not a level playing field,” Hannegan said.

Some public health groups, including the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, have taken no stance on the proposition because they say it has too many exemptions.

Tuesday’s election will end a heated countywide battle that started in August, when the County Council debated multiple bill versions. The initial bill, which had no exemptions, was rejected, but a later bill version with the exemptions passed the council by a 4-3 vote on Aug. 25 and was later signed by County Executive Charlie Dooley.

At the Aug. 4 council meeting, Medical Public Policy Specialist Robert Blaine delivered a statement on behalf of the University urging the council to put a ban on the November ballot that was “as broad and as comprehensive as possible.” The statement came five months after the University announced a tobacco ban on its campuses, effective July 2010.

Despite the final bill’s exemptions, Blaine later said the University still supported putting the ban on the ballot, but he did not endorse the measure itself.

We understand and support the public health initiative behind Proposition N. The risks posed by secondhand smoke are real and frightening, and we commend the measures taken by the county to alleviate unnecessary exposure to such risks.

However, we feel that the ban would be fundamentally unfair to local businesses because it discriminates between bars that serve food and those that don’t, and it favors casinos. According to a spokesman for County Councilwoman Barbara Fraser, who introduced the bill, there are likely fewer than 100 bars in the county that would qualify for the 25 percent exemption, despite the approximately 1,000 businesses with liquor licenses in St. Louis County.

Gene Cantrall, who manages Duffy’s in Richmond Heights—a popular Tuesday night hangout among Washington University students—feels that the ban will hurt small businesses like the one he works for. “Smoking is an important part of a bar atmosphere, and exempt bars will probably end up getting more business because of [the ban],” he said.

The legislation also unduly favors casinos, which generate enormous amounts of tax revenue for St. Louis County and likely hold sway over the County Council.

When a smoking ban was passed in New York City in 2003, a study conducted by the Vintners Federation of Ireland found that 78 percent of New York City bars claimed that the ban had a negative impact on their business. This number shows that people are discouraged from going out to places where they cannot smoke.

We feel that discouraging people from going out is a necessary consequence of a smoking ban, but Proposition N’s exemptions will create unfair consequences for local businesses, hurting bars like Duffy’s and helping alcohol-only venues. Therefore, we think that an appropriate county-wide ban would prohibit smoking in all public places—even casinos and establishments that receive 25 percent or less of their gross sales from food.

A ban with fewer exemptions has become the norm elsewhere—in New York City and the state of California, smoking is prohibited in all public places—and we think that St. Louis should take a similar direction.

On this count, we encourage our readers to vote against Proposition N, and we encourage the County Council to go back to the drawing board, drafting a proposition that is fair to local businesses.

Well, you can. All you have to do is vote “yes” for Proposition N on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

On the St. Louis County ballot this year is a measure called Proposition N that would restrict indoor smoking in the county.

Thirty-seven states have restrictions on indoor smoking; 24 of these are outright bans, including one in Illinois. Missouri, however, is far behind the curve. Our state has the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation and the third worst smoking rate in the nation. We have been graded as having an “F” by the American Lung Association.

In most states, bans happen progressively, starting at the local level. Here in St. Louis, the movement toward cleaner air for all is happening now. St. Louis County is the most populous county in the state of Missouri, so what we do is heard loudly in Jefferson City.

In the past few weeks, a number of scientific reports have given support to the health benefits of restricting indoor smoking. The most recent, by the Institute of Medicine (the health branch of the National Academies of Science), published Oct. 16, finds that there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke, and that even brief exposure can cause acute symptoms of lung and heart dysfunction. Another study published Sept. 21 from the University of California, San Francisco, found that in places where indoor smoking bans are passed, the rate of heart attacks drops 17 percent in the first year when compared to places without bans. This rate increases to a more than 36 percent drop over three years.

Opponents of this measure argue that it will reduce revenue for businesses with smoking customers. There is some controversy in public opinion on this topic, but the facts are clear that there is no effect on businesses. One particularly convincing study is from the University of Michigan. Their group reviewed 86 previous studies on the topic of smoking and business revenue and found that almost all high-quality studies done find no lasting economic impact of legislation eliminating indoor smoking. Think about this on a personal level: Would you be more likely to go watch the Cardinals play in a smoke-filled sports bar or a smoke-free one? Businesses will also gain revenue from the people that have been avoiding them due to their smoke-friendly policies.

Proposition N will eliminate indoor smoking in public workplaces, restaurants and more than 94 percent of establishments with liquor licenses in St. Louis County. It will go a long way toward improving the health of workers in these establishments and the health of the patrons of these businesses.

We need your help to make sure this important health measure passes! Any student interested in politics, or in the health and wellness of our area, should e-mail propn​stl@yahoo.com to get more information about upcoming events. You can also find out more by going to the Facebook site for “Citizens for a Smoke-Free County” or subscribing to the Twitter feed for “STLCleanAir.”

Last year, many of you registered to vote in St. Louis County in order to make a difference in the choice of our president. Please don’t let your civic responsibility stop there. Make a difference in the health and wellness of your fellow students and your community off campus. Vote “yes” on Proposition N on Nov. 3.

Martha is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the School of Medicine. She can be reached via e-mail at bhattacharyam@wusm.wustl.edu.