DOING A SLOW BURN
On Friday, the Senate voted to ban smoking in Minnesota's bars
and restaurants. The measure passed the House 81-48 early this
morning, sending it to Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty is expected
to sign the measure into law.
Now that lawmakers have approved the ban, Romero knows what she
will do.
She will retire from the Legislature by Oct. 1, Romero decreed,
the day the statewide smoking ban would go into effect.
"The effective date is my retirement date," Romero said.
"Why would I continue to work with people who are ...," she
said, pausing as she considered the best way to describe
lawmakers who supported the smoking ban. "Who have stigmatized
smokers?"
Romero, 59, picked up the smoking habit late in life. . . .
"I didn't smoke until after my son was born. May 19, 1976," she
said. His birthday is her anniversary as a smoker. "I had a
bottle of beer and a cigarette in the hospital."
More than three decades later, she's not ready to quit.
"I like to smoke," she said. . . .
During the Senate's televised debate on the ban, she talked back
to the television. She used derisive nicknames for ban
supporters. And she explained what she believes is at the root
of a statewide smoking ban.
"This is about behavior modification. The behavior modification
people won," she said. "This is legislating legal intolerance
and discrimination."
