The title used to be my wish fulfillment.
When I was 14, my sister, about 12, asked our mother if she could have a puff of her cigarette.
“Sure,” Mom said.
I tried it, too, and started coughing.
That was enough to convince me that I didn’t want to smoke.
At Oberlin College on a slow January, 1964, news day, I made up the Anti-Smoke League to protest the horrible taste of smoke coming out of the college smoke stacks.
It ended up as front page news in the Oberlin Review.
Smoke has bothered me for my entire adult life. I literally walk away from people with a cigarette or a cigar.
For most of my life the smokers reigned supreme. I was in the minority…or so it seemed.
When the elegant Victor Arrigo, from Chicago’s 1st Ward, had lung cancer and pleaded for passage of a no smoking rule on the House floor as his seatmate smoked, I supported the effort, which I believe was led by dentist Bruce Douglas, another Chicago Democrat, but one who was significantly more independent that Arrigo.
I started the “No Smoking” section on the floor of the House of Representatives. We put up American Lung Association signs with tape to mark its boundaries. It was down front near the press box on the Republican side. Virginia Macdonald, Harry Leinenweber, Giddy Dyer, Susan Catania, Bill Maher, Bernie Epton and I were the charter members.
A new state rep., Josephine Oblinger, sat behind us. Every once in a while we would smell smoke. When we looked at her, she tried to hide her cigarette. It was pretty funny.
By the 1990’s the House Rules had been changed to prohibit smoking. (One GOP chain smoker kept the roll call and voted against bills of those who imposed the rule.)
Unfortunately, Speaker Mike Madigan would not enforce the rule in the men’s room, where, of course, the smoking went on, as it did in the back of the chamber on the Republican side.
I convinced Mike to buy a couple of electrostatic air cleaners from a man in Cary that I met at a business expo.
That improved the air quality
I cheered Congressman Dick Durbin on in his fight to ban smoking from airplanes.
When I ran for governor in 2002 as a Libertarian, the Democrats, with the help Republicans had just hiked the cigarette tax astronomically. I thought I saw a political opportunity.
After all, smokers made up, what, 28% of the electorate.
We made up cards to hand out to smokers.
They would take the literature, look at them, agree they had been taken to the cleaners, but…
…they certainly did not desert the parties that had cost them money.
Just in case you are interested in the segments of the electorate we targeted in the campaign for governor, you can find Charlie Wheeler’s Illinois Issues article–the best analysis—here.
And, would I have voted for the bill?
Nope.
Voting with my feet is working just fine.