01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 27, 2005

The sweeping new Rhode Island law that, beginning Tuesday, will ban smoking in restaurants, bars, and virtually every other public place has taken decades to arrive.

Rhode Island becomes the 7th so-called smoke-free state. I wish it had been the first. Still, for many people, the law represents a proud achievement.

"It's the classic idea whose time has come," says Margaret Kane of the American Lung Association of Rhode Island. She began lobbying for smoking-ban legislation in the 1970s. She's the thread that runs through a long, tortuous history of unsuccessful bills and limited laws that preceded this one, which was enacted by the General Assembly last year and signed by Governor Carcieri.

"It's really a social change," says Kane, 57. There has been a major shift in public understanding of, or at least in government's response to, the damage caused by cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, and, especially, by second-hand smoke.

At Assembly hearings, Kane says, early lobbyists on this issue were deemed "fuss-budgets" and "nit pickers." She does a riff I've heard so often it has become trite -- but it's marvelous time travel:

"I'd say I was from the Lung Association and the committee would light up. I don't mean they were glad to see me. They thought it was the biggest joke. They'd pull out pipes and cigars. I would be choking before I ever got out of there."

She thought, "They don't get it."

It was amazing to me that, even in fairly recent years, when authorities like Dr. Patricia Nolan, state health director, would testify about the dangers of smoke in the air, would talk about cancer and everything else, legislators would be unmoved, siding instead with the restaurant industry, which claimed a ban would keep customers away. "We had to overcome a real ignorance," Kane says. She remembers a restaurant owner assuring a committee that his grandchildren liked to come and sit in the smoking section. It would make Kane nuts. "You go, 'WHAAAT?"'

She wasn't the only one whose head would spin at State House hearings.

Remember Sarah Conklin?

In 1998, she was a 13-year-old Barrington Middle School student crusading for a restaurant smoking ban. She appeared before a House committee.

Conklin, now a 20-year-old Providence College student and a legislative aide to Carcieri, recalls, "I was nervous because at the time -- and I go into those committee rooms now and they seem like nothing -- but at the time it was basically men, a couple of women, in suits, and they looked at me like I was a little girl, which I was. And they were very polite, once they started questioning me, when I stayed on the emotional aspect of losing my grandfather to tobacco. But the minute -- I had hard facts, I knew my stuff -- and the minute I started with that, I felt like a lot of them kind of wanted me to be quiet."

She once believed it would be easy. "I thought, 'This is a health issue. We're hearing it in Health, Education and Welfare.' I assumed, kind of -- I was very naive -- that the only job of that committee was to look out for people's health, education and welfare. And how soon I learned that that wasn't the case. It was about money."

States that already have gone smoke-free include Massachusetts and Connecticut. When Rhode Island's neighbors enacted bans, it was only a matter of time before the Ocean State followed; restaurants could no longer say patrons would flee across the borders.

A Rhode Island ban should have passed sooner, says Rep. Elizabeth Dennigan, D-East Providence, long a main sponsor. It's too bad, she says, that "we couldn't be leaders."

The new law builds upon previous measures, with some focusing on restaurants and others on such places as schools and offices. To get to this point took the efforts not only of the Lung Association but also the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association. And numerous legislators and other government officials. And people from the community, including some maverick restaurant owners who dissented from the line spouted by the Rhode Island Hospitality and Tourism Association.

Eventually, even that association came around. And there were other converts, including organized labor and Republican Carcieri.

This has been a long struggle. Rep. Art Handy, D-Cranston, who works for the Lung Association, cites two early bills from 1975. Then-Sen. Guido Canulla, D-Tiverton, introduced one, then-Senate Minority Leader Lila Sapinsley the other.

A 1977 law imposed restrictions in elevators, buses, and other areas.

I started paying close attention with 1979's enactment of a law, effective Jan. 1, 1980, requiring restaurants having 50 seats or more to have no-smoking areas. It was welcome -- but very limited. The smoke could waft over, the no-smoking area becoming almost useless. As the late Jerry Maldavir, a Cancer Society lobbyist, told me in 1997, "You can't chlorinate half a pool."

It took a quarter of a century to fix this situation.

The restaurant industry argued that people had a choice, not only about where to sit but also about which establishments to patronize: If you don't want to go to a place that allowed smoking, you don't have to go.

And labor, early on, opposed tough smoking bans. George Nee of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO says one reason was the national influence of tobacco industry unions.

And workers guarded the right to light up and there were debates about whether the legislature should act or matters should be left to collective bargaining. A memory from long ago: Nee recalls a debate outside the legislative arena. He represented nursing home workers. Facility owners tried to impose smoking bans; employees resisted. "It seemed wrong to me that, in an institution where you're trying to take care of the health of people, you're polluting the air, but people fought for their right."

Eventually, labor saw the light. In recent years, smoking bans increasingly were portrayed at the State House as workplace safety measures, with employees, especially in restaurants and bars, pictured as captives and in danger. "That's when it all came into place," Kane says.

Nee says that once labor came aboard, "We started to move a lot of people."

The honor roll of folks whose efforts over the years in one way or another paved the way for the new law also includes House Speaker William Murphy, House Majority Leader Gordon Fox, Rep. Paul Crowley, Rep. Paul Moura, former Rep. Nancy Benoit, former Rep. Sandra Barone, Senate President Joseph Montalbano, Sen. Susan Sosnowski, Sen. Elizabeth Roberts, former Senate President William Irons, former Sen. Myrth York, and former Sen. Tom Izzo.

Fox, perhaps the single most influential legislator in finally putting the law across, recalls a time last year when things were looking iffy and Carcieri sent word he'd sign a sweeping smoking ban. "That was an energizing moment," Fox says.

Republican Carcieri says there was a concern that foes could sink it if they felt he was sympathetic to them. He'd come a long way. As a candidate, he opposed a ban. Did his support for one as governor make him feel better? He chuckles, "It's the right thing to do."

Fox also remembers a moment when he had to put down a rebellion in House Labor. The House leadership, having worked out a compromise with advocates, the hospitality industry and others, had labeled it a "go" bill. But, in a legislative power play, some Labor members who actually favored the measure were planning to boycott the vote and deny the committee a quorum because they were aligned with a lawmaker who wanted to kill it. Fox had to lean on them.

The year before, Senate Health and Human Services, chaired by Roberts, had approved a restaurant smoking ban. Ultimately it stalled in the House, but it was still a big day. Roberts seemed nervous as she presided.

The Cranston Democrat prefers the word "excited." She wanted to make sure there were no late slip-ups. "People applauded when we passed it," she recalls, and she felt she actually accomplished something that day, which is not something most legislators can say on most days.

That bill was sponsored by Sosnowski. In enlisting in the fight, the South Kingstown Democrat says she thought about the damage that second-hand smoke was doing, especially to employees. And she thought about how much she disliked going into a restaurant that allowed smoking. "You see little children in there sneezing and coughing and you know it's just a bad scene."

When Margaret Kane ticks off the names of people who played a role in laying the groundwork for the new law, she includes C. Eugene Emery Jr., a Providence Journal reporter who often wrote about smoking issues.

And, of course, there was Bob Burke, owner of Pot au Feu, a vigorous smoking ban advocate. Burke told me recently that it was "one of my great days" when, in mid-2003, Angelo's restaurant, one of his favorites, chose to go smoke free. Angelo's is owned by Bob Antignano, who'd been chairman of the hospitality association and had led opposition to smoking-ban legislation.

Antignano tells me he still opposes laws on the subject. But for his restaurant, he reports, the time had come. "We thought it was right for our business," he says, citing the number of youngsters who eat there and requests from customers, including me.

There's something I'm going to miss about the smoking-ban debates: the wittiness and creativity of the advocates in making their points about second-hand smoke and fending off dumb arguments, like that question of what's next, should we ban ice cream? I'll think of people like Bob Burke, who would retort, "If somebody wants to sit in my restaurant and eat something fattening, it doesn't make the person at the table next to them fat."

But most of all I'll remember this. Once, in regard to Elizabeth Dennigan's smoking-ban efforts, I brushed off the old adage that one person plus the truth could make a majority.

The truth finally did prevail, and on Tuesday Rhode Islanders will breathe easier for it.

M. Charles Bakst, The Journal's political columnist, can be reached by e-mail at mbakst [at] projo.com