July 15, 2008, to:

Angie T. Huber
Vice President of Government Relations
Smoke Free Ohio
5555 Frantz Road
Dublin, Ohio 43017

Dear Ms. Huber:

Your July 3 letter opposing Senator Schuler’s SB 346 typifies the casual disregard for the truth that we have come to expect from the “Smoke Free Ohio” crowd.

You claim that the initiated statute “treats all businesses with employees the same” and “protects all workers and customers from exposure to second hand smoke”, and that the campaign unswervingly advertised that “fact”. Nothing could be further from the truth. What about hotel workers? 3794.03 (B) of the Act exempts up to 20% of the rooms in any hotel. What about nursing home workers? 3794.03 (D) of the Act allows indoor smoking rooms in nursing homes. What about tobacco retailer workers? 3794.09 (E) of the Act exempts such facilities. This isn’t an argument; it’s plain fact, and you, who wrote the law, should know better than to mislead the General Assembly as you have plainly misled the voters.

Because the misleading just goes on and on. The ballot language (copy attached ) plainly told voters that family-owned businesses and private clubs would be exempt. It did not say, “but only if they have no employees” nor did it include the other limiters that are in the law that you wrote to make these exemptions wholly illusory. To claim, as you now do, that your campaign, “requested as much detail as possible be included” in the ballot language is sheer sophistry. I would like to see where you proposed including in the ballot language the language that in fact limits the scope of the family business and private club exemptions. If you cannot produce that document, I hope you will have the decency to quit claiming that you wanted all the details to be included.

You next claim that 28 states have passed comprehensive smoke free laws (including Ohio). Why don’t you have the intellectual honesty to tell us which ones – so we can then prove that the vast majority of them contain the very kind of real exemptions that Senator Schuler has proposed in SB 346, and why don’t you also concede that no state bordering Ohio has a smoking ban nearly as draconian as Ohio’s? After all, it is these states that we compete against for hospitality business.

Finally, you rely on your own polling. I rather suspect it is as faulty as your purported factual representations, but I, for one, have never assessed proper public policy by a fleeting poll. I would hope my colleagues in the General Assembly feel the same way. My support for SB 346 is instead based on grim and real facts about the devastation that your zealotry had inflicted on the Ohio hospitality industry and the private clubs that have long supported local charities and constituted a vital part of the social fabric of our neighborhoods. I am talking about real businesses and real people who have suffered real losses that show up in the bottom line of Ohio’s grim economy. Like any other statute, an initiated statute is subject to revision by the Ohio General Assembly. We would be remiss in our duty if we fail to revise this one.

Very truly yours,

William J. Seitz