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Soon, the City Council will be asked to respond to those who would reverse the smoking ban.
The ban should be kept in place, as is. It showed real leadership for the City Council to take this important step to improve the health of our citizenry. It would be a real step backward to remove it or weaken it now that it is in place.
It would also be unreasonable to hop back and forth on an important issue like this. Those it affects have for the most part made necessary adjustments to it, and businesses that were on viable footing before the ban are not threatened by it.
I have spoken to a number of our customers (employers in Fort Wayne who purchase insurance from PHP) and have found that an overwhelming majority of them are happy to have the ban in place. Anything we can do to help make Fort Wayne a less expensive place to employ and provide health insurance for people makes Fort Wayne a more attractive city in which to locate businesses, do business and create jobs. We need to encourage smokers to quit in order to help get costs down, and most employers understand that.
This ordinance helps a wide variety of local business to be on stronger and more competitive footing. With fewer people smoking, and fewer exposed to secondhand smoke, Fort Wayne businesses find their employees to be healthier, and thus less costly to insure. Even if a handful of bars see the ban as a negative, which type of business would you rather see Fort Wayne support: a few smoky bars or the many other businesses that benefit from the ban, and can thus sell their goods and services more competitively in the world market?
I recently had lunch in a popular restaurant in Fort Wayne. I had to take a pager and wait for a table. We were eventually seated in the bar. There was no smoke. Had there been smoking in the bar, we would have declined that table and waited for another or left to go to another restaurant, and, since we are not the only ones who feel that way, I am sure there would have been empty tables in the bar. This is one restaurant, with a bar, where the smoking ban directly benefited the business. I am sure that is true for others.
As many countries around the world and hundreds of municipalities across the U.S. have taken the step of similar smoking bans, this is the direction society is going. I urge the City Council to leave the smoking ban in place and not to move Fort Wayne backward along the road to making ours a better, healthier and more marketable city.
