Smoking Ban Voted Down In Gallup
July 2, 2005
GALLUP, N.M. — The Gallup City Council voted 3-2 Tuesday against an ordinance that would ban smoking in most public gathering places, including restaurants and sports venues, said Gallup Mayor Bob Rosebrough.
Rosebrough said a referendum initiative will begin next, and the issue will be voted on by the general public.
For this to happen, the ordinance will have to get 20 percent of the voters from the last governor’s election who were registered in Gallup to sign a petition.
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City council: Feel free to smoke (RAT gets it right)
Armijo said she would try placing the ordinance, which would have banned smoking in restaurants and other public places across Gallup, on the ballot for a referendum during the city’s next general election, in 2007.
She thinks the plan will have a better chance of passing in a referendum “because the people that really care are the people that vote.”
The plan split the council between those Armijo and Mayor Bob Rosebrough who thought the government had a responsibility to look after the public’s health and those Pat Butler, Frank Gonzales and Bill Nechero who thought it had no right telling business owners what to do.
The American government has already infringed too far on individuals’ rights, Nechero said. “Where does it stop?”
“The council doesn’t have the right to tell businesses what to do,” he said, summing up the majority’s position. “It is my choice to go to whichever restaurant I want to go to … that’s my choice as an American citizen.”
“I look at this as a health issue more than anything,” Armijo said, just before the vote. “Yes, this is a choice of five people, but that’s why we were elected.”
“We are elected and we are called upon to make these decisions,” Rosebrough agreed.
Following the lead of others, Rosebrough sighted the U.S. Constitution, reading the preamble and focusing on the part about the government’s responsibility to look after the general welfare of the people.
Most of the audience members who lined up inside El Morro Theater Tuesday evening urged the council either to let business owners set their own smoking policies or to step in and protect people from the dangers of second-hand smoke.
While the plan would have banned smoking in most public places including government buildings, offices, theaters, sports arenas and convention halls, bars being the main exception its restrictions on restaurants and retail stores drew the most attention.
“It’s an issue of individual liberty,” one businessman said. “If a restaurant wants to be a non-smoking restaurant, then I guess it’s up to that restaurant.”
Others thought the pro-business half selfish and ill-informed.
“What I’m hearing here tonight, many people don’t realize the harm of second-hand smoke,” one teacher said.
While people have a right to the pursuit of happiness, she said, “if those enjoyments are inflicting diseases and death on others, then, yes, I am for a non-smoking ban.”
One Anglo argued that the ban would infringe on the “sacred right” American Indians had to smoke, a practice that he said was tied into their traditional beliefs.
The American Indians who spoke rejected that line. Lighting up a common cigarette and smoking as part of a traditional American Indian ceremony, they said, were two very different things.
After the council’s vote came down, Armijo said she wasn’t surprised. Despite the predominantly favorable reception her plan received during the council’s last meeting, she said, the two weeks since gave the opposition time to build.
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