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That’s more than a shoe company slogan, it’s good advice to the La Crosse County Board on the topic of enacting a law to create smoke-free workplaces throughout La Crosse County.
The county board — starting with the Health and Human Services Board on Tuesday night — can send a great message about public health and workplace safety by moving forward to ban smoking in all workplaces and other public buildings.
If the Health and Human Services Board approves the idea Tuesday, the measure would move to the full county board for a public hearing and further deliberation.
Plain and simple, it needs to happen.
The smoking restriction already has been enacted in 24 states, including our nearest neighbors, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.
Sadly, Wisconsin legislators haven’t yet worked up the nerve to do the right thing and ban smoking in all workplaces and public buildings.
If the statehouse won’t do it, local elected officials should step up and make it happen on a countywide basis.
There is no doubt that exposing people to second-hand smoke has detrimental health effects. Overwhelming levels of health research support that notion, and all the denials in the world won’t change that.
And the “just don’t go there if you don’t like it” argument doesn’t work in the case of workers who have to go to places such as bars and bowling alleys to earn a living. It’s simply not fair and not right to expose employees to such an unwanted health hazard.
Also specious is the “we should let a business operate any way it wants to” argument. If that were the case, we would not have in place any of the obvious and necessary safety precautions that government already regulates in many business operations.
Lastly, of course, we often hear the “it will put me out of business” argument from opponents of a smoking ban. We can’t find much evidence to support that conclusion, but in some of the smoking ban states there is evidence to the contrary, whereby some businesses see increases in revenue by making themselves more appealing and available to non-smokers.
Again, it just has to happen. And it will happen statewide in Wisconsin at some point. That’s also a certainty.
But the residents of La Crosse County shouldn’t have to wait for state legislators to clear the air. Not when we can do so ourselves.
Let’s just do it.
