The Unified Government likely can’t hold out any longer.
Facing mounting pressure from its citizens and health advocacy groups, UG officials and the Board of Commissioners finally began formal discussions earlier this summer regarding the adoption of a smoking ordinance in Kansas City, Kan.
That debate centered largely around what other Kansas City metropolitan area communities have done to strike a balance between the free market and the unquestionable health consequences of a society hooked on cigarettes.
Commissioners will return to the issue during a special session tonight at City Hall.
While the debate is clearly overdue, the proposed remedies are fraught with challenges.
In Kansas City, Mo., a recent no-smoking ordinance has left the city divided between business owners who want to retain the right to offer indoor smoking to their customers and the broader public that doesn’t want to deal with smokers any longer.
The ordinance, which has been challenged legally in multiple instances, has nearly as many nuances as a cigarette has dangerous chemicals.
There are six exemptions in KCMO’s ordinance: private residences, 25 percent of hotel rooms can be designated as smoking, retail tobacco stores, bars, casinos and after 9 p.m. in clubs with a liquor license that enforce a 21-and-older admissions policy.
Other cities have similar exemptions. In Lawrence, smoking is permitted in restaurants and meeting rooms that are being used for private functions without the presence of contracted food and beverage personnel.
Shawnee’s ordinance exempts bars, private clubs and restaurants with a license to sell cereal malt beverages that show food sales as less than 33 percent of gross sales.
Mission likely has the “toughest” ordinance, with the only exemption for private residences not being used as a place of employment.
But the very concept of a nuanced ordinance means that both proponents and proponents of a smoking ban lose out.
The UG is in a unique position in that it’s the largest governing body in the metro yet to adopt such an ordinance. Wyandotte County and KCK have taken heat for sitting on the sidelines, and while the smoking issue should have been addressed earlier, it also presents an opportunity to forge a new path.
The outcome of initial debate on the issue is that UG legal staff will come back to the commission with three different ordinances for further discussion and at some point in the process, public comment.
One of the three ordinances is likely to call for a complete ban. But it’s disingenuous for the UG to spend time drafting such an ordinance when they do not intend to implement it.
Does anyone really think they’d craft an ordinance banning smoking at The Woodlands, the destination resort casino or the Kansas Speedway?
A second option, discussed by Commissioner Nathan Barnes could call for the creation of a “smoking district,” in which all businesses within such a district would be exempt from a smoking ban enacted everywhere else. But once again, the future casino would likely be included in such a district, forcing the district to basically overlay on the Village West area.
Such a move would rightfully anger locally-owned businesses outside of Village West.
A third option could represent a piece-meal approach, taking the best components of ordinances already passed throughout the metro area while leaving out the worst components.
But just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should do it to.
Instead, the UG should forge ahead with an anti-smoking incentive program that aides businesses who chose to go smoke free.
Every employer in Wyandotte County is required to obtain a business license every year from the UG. By creating an anti-smoking incentive program, businesses who are smoke-free or pledge to become smoke-free would receive a discount on the cost of the business license, while smoking businesses would be forced to cough up more dough to obtain the license.
The Federal government used a similar tactic back in the 1980s. In an effort to get states to raise their legal drinking age to 21, the federal government told states that, if you didn’t raise the age to 21, offending states wouldn’t receive federal highway funds.
If a certain state wanted to lower its drinking age back to 18, it could do so without violating the law – it just wouldn’t receive federal highway money.
The states complied.
Dangling financial benefits has also been used by various states, including Kansas, to reduce tobacco consumption. So called sin-taxes on tobacco or alcohol, are primarily revenue generators for states, but proponents say higher taxes on tobacco also make them prohibitively expensive for some users, eventually driving down tobacco usage.
Creating an incentive program would show Wyandotte County citizens and outsiders that county leaders are serious about limiting smoking. But it would also show free-market supporters that it cares about them too.
