NORMAN — Oklahomans by and large are a populist bunch. Early leaders feared the railroads, banks, utilities and corporate greed. The government shouldn’t take your land, tell you how or where to live and what to eat, drink and smoke. We like to drive 75 miles per hour and carry concealed weapons. Some would repeal the open container law if they thought the feds wouldn’t take away our highway money. Don’t get in my way.
Those frontier roots give ground when the talk turns to local pre-emption laws. Oklahoma is one of only two states where communities like Norman or Noble or Slaughterville can’t pass tougher anti-tobacco laws than the state already has on the books. It’s inconsistent with our populist makeup.
The issue will come up again this year as lawmakers wrestle with convenience stores over the matter. Some cities, Norman included, would like to restrict public tobacco use to a higher level than the state allows but are precluded from doing so.
House Speaker-elect Kris Steele has pledged to address the issue when the legislature meets this spring. It has been defeated before as convenience stores don’t want to deal with hundreds of city councils and county boards. Steele faces an uphill battle. Only Tennessee has a similar law.
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“Right now, the tobacco industry is telling you what to do,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Terry Cline told a room full of anti-tobacco advocates meeting at Norman Regional Hospital this past week. “Right now, you don’t have the ability to protect your community. You don’t even have the right to make those decisions. That decision is being made for you at the state Capitol.”
“It’s my personal belief that we will look back on today and say how ridiculous it was that we were even having that debate,” Cline said.
Restoring such local control — gone for more than a decade — will be a goal of the county’s tobacco-free coalition. It wants lawmakers to understand the public health, economic and personal challenges that come from policies that encourage tobacco use.
About a quarter of Oklahoma’s adult population still smokes on a regular basis. Most of them want to quit but can’t. The state has showed some signs that smoking was on the decline but that may have hit a plateau.
“I have had cocaine users tell me it was easier to give up cocaine than to give up tobacco,” Cline said. “It’s killing us. Unless we change that piece of it is going to be hard to change the overall health of our state.”
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Oklahoma ranks next to last in overall health. Cline says we’re making progress in tobacco use, obesity and levels of physical activity but other states are doing better.
“We don’t go far enough. We give it lip service but we don’t go far enough to keep people safe,” he said after telling of seeing airport smoking lounges with open doors.
But change doesn’t come easy. He recalled smoking sections in the back of airplanes, legislators who smoked in their Capitol offices, hospital meetings where smoking was permitted and handing out cigarettes to mental patients as part of their treatment plans.
Cline remains optimistic. Students working against tobacco — known as SWAT teams — are building mass around the state. Sixty percent of the Oklahoma school population attends class on a campus that restricts tobacco 24 hours a day. That’s come about only in the past few years.
“We’re seeing that incremental change in our state,” he said. “But it’s an uphill battle.”
Andy Rieger editor@normantranscript.com 366-3543
