Veterans Homes Likely To Get Exemption From Iowa Smoking Ban

A key Democratic state senator tells Iowa Independent that veterans homes are likely to get an exemption from a statewide smoking ban.

This senator tells Iowa Independent that he was ready to bring up the veterans issue during debate on the smoke-free legislation last week but was told by leadership that the matter would be handled in conference. A veterans administrator literally begged one legislator on the matter, saying that for many residents, veterans of our nation’s wars, smoking cigarettes represents one of the remaining “pleasures” they have in a challenging life.

According to the Marshalltown Times-Republican, legislators in that area want the Iowa Veterans Home exempted.

Here is Republican State Sen. Larry McKibben of Marshalltown:

“Some of those people have been smoking since World War II, and can’t go outside because of health reasons. You can say they shouldn’t be smoking, but for some of them, that 15 minutes may be the only enjoyment they get in the day.”

What remains to be seen is how casinos and bars will fare in negotiatons between the House and Senate on their respective versions of bans. Bars weren’t exempted in either one but owners have been giving legislators and the media a mouthful about the ramifications of a ban. Their chief argument has resonance. In places like New York City or California where bans have been in place for years, new customers flowed into the smoke-free bars. But in the sparsely populated and aging small towns of much of rural Iowa, there isn’t a non-smoking, effete professional demographic around to slide in and replace the hardened blue collar smokers.

Some bar owners in rural western Iowa towns have estimated the percentage of smokers in their businesses to be from 65 percent to 90 percent.

One of the staunchest defenders of these small business owners in western Iowa is Art Cullen, the progressive editor of The Storm Lake Times. He published a blistering column on the smoking debate this week.

Here is Cullen:

The Iowa Senate today is set to endorse a statewide ban on smoking in public places, including hole-in-the-wall bars where 95% of the clientele smoke like fiends. Those people are the new lepers of society – do not go near them because their rancid clothes might give you a case of the Big C.

Of course you haven’t. Now you can drive by that bar with the smug satisfaction that those mopes are standing in the alley shivering while their beer warms inside. Thank goodness you are not huddled among the unsaved and unshaved. Listen to public radio’s book club and it will take your mind off them.

You should realize that that addicted rat is actually saving you money – along with the fatty you look down your slender nose at.

The smokers, the obese, the drinkers and the nymphomaniacs are bound to die young for their depravities. They will not burden you with Alzheimers. They will not collect Medicare. They will not embarrass you at family dinners in the future. They will not tell you how to rear your children. They will be dead.

Kurt Vonnegut recently died of the Big C after smoking many years. The University of Iowa graduate called smoking “an elegant form of suicide.” It worked for him.

I don’t know if Vonnegut was a good Christian. He might have been a Jew, or worse, an agnostic. But if those good Christians are right and he was a man of faith, the author of Slaughterhouse Five is in a better place than sitting outdoors at a Paris caf