Madison gets it, by a 68 percent margin, the public health benefits of the current smoking ban. What many didn’t expect was a similar result state wide.
According to the Wausau Daily Herald the Mellman Group found that “69 percent of Wisconsinites said they favored statewide smoke-free laws, including bans in bars and restaurants.” The research group intentionally asked “more voters in state Assembly districts to assess how partisan the issue is.”
True to form, extremists were quick to complicate and redefine how the public really feels. Ryan Evans, who heads up the pro-cancer death group called Ban the Ban, “questioned how well the poll gauged sentiment in rural Wisconsin and whether the sample was big enough to project the findings onto the state as a whole”… blah, blah, blah.
Evans solution; put the issue up to voters through a referendum. Another words, they want to buy a no vote.
This “leave it up to the public” solution to everything has emerged as a highly successful political tactic. Instead of our elected representatives doing the peoples bidding, anti-health and anti-nanny state Republican lobbyists would prefer using lots of money to reflect the public's true feelings.
The whole issue is meant to be confusing. For example; Republicans love our current health care debacle and oppose change. They support instead a free market model of personal responsibility, blaming people for their bad lifestyle decisions and food choices. Yet at the same time, they support the incredibly reckless unhealthy lifestyle decision of inhaling smoke. Smoking has been proven to cause a painful list of expensive diseases that lead to death and raise health care costs for everyone, even Republicans.
Once the smoke clears, and the ban is in place, these tobacco pushing profiteers’ will have to find another health risk to support.
Anybody for a basket of fried pickled trans fat balls with your beer?
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