While there will be no parades staged or statues erected, this month marks the 10th anniversary of the passage of a piece of legislation that can be said to have truly improved the lives of the vast majority of New Yorkers — a bill that was derided at its genesis as a revenue-reducing, job-killing example of the nanny state run amok.
I'm referring to the March 2003 passage of the statewide ban on smoking in all workplaces, which effectively ended smoking in bars and restaurants.
In the same way that only Nixon could go to China, it took Republicans to pass a bill that many business groups decried as the End of Western Civilization, Smokers' Section. State Sen. Charles Fuschillo of Long Island sponsored it in the GOP-controlled chamber, and Majority Leader Joe Bruno boosted it through the chamber to the extent that it was approved 57-4, a tally usually reserved for only the most feel-good resolutions ("WHEREAS it has been widely acknowledged that puppies are cute ... ").
In the Assembly — where the bill was sponsored by future Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis — the 97-44 vote was tighter due to the Republican minority's decision to vote against it more than 2-to-1.
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Most readers will remember the impact when the law took effect a few months later. For me, the difference was felt most of all in the beer drinker's mecca of Mahar's, located on Madison Avenue within stumbling distance of my house.
Before the ban, the low-ceilinged faux-British pub was positively blue with cigarette smoke on most nights. On weekends, walking through the doors was like entering a diseased lung — but with much better beer on tap.
Mahar's, alas, was recently booted from its former home by its landlord. On my way to pick up Indian food last week, I peered through the window and saw that the bar's interior had been taken down to the proverbial studs. I'll bet those studs are still suffused with the ghosts of decades-old Chesterfields and Winstons.
The turning point for the smoking ban came a few months before passage, when the state Restaurant Association reversed its prior opposition to smoking bans by advocating for the statewide ban — not necessarily because it cared about public health but because a blanket ban would create a "level playing field" instead of a crazy quilt of local bans of differing intensity.
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Many of the trade groups that inveighed against the smoking ban are the same ones currently denouncing a boost in the state minimum wage. The Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association, which launched a doomed legal effort to block the 2003 ban on the eve of its effective date, is one of those organizations.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was less than a year into his first term when he first proposed a citywide smoking ban. As he completes his last year in office, Bloomberg is trying to lock in a ban on plus-size sodas as part of his war on obesity.
But just as there are all sorts of nannies — from sweet Mary Poppins to Rebecca DeMornay's memorable psychopath in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" — there's a whole spectrum of laws governing human behavior. Figuring out which ones go too far is the permanent work of representative democracy.
Smokers who read this might come to the conclusion that the 2003 ban was an obvious example of government overreach. Non-smokers might remember how it felt to be sitting in a restaurant and have the first waft of burned tobacco hit you in the face, and offer a different definition of "overreach."
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619