Up in Smoke: Unassuming Davidson County legislator could effect landmark tobacco restrictions

Rep. Hugh Holliman of Davidson County wouldn't fit anybody's definition of a radical.

He's a balding, soft-spoken man of 64, a moderate, pro-business Democrat from a county with a rich tobacco history. He's also the state House majority leader, and a survivor of lung cancer that he believes may have been caused by second-hand smoke. This legislative session, he might just make North Carolina history in a radical way. His bill aimed at protecting nonsmokers from second-hand smoke would ban tobacco in virtually all workplaces and buildings open to the public in North Carolina. It would bring the tightest smoking restrictions ever to this state that tobacco helped build.

House Speaker Joe Hackney supports the bill. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight is open to it. Gov. Bev Perdue says she'll sign a "comprehensive, equitable smoking-ban bill" if it reaches her desk. Nearly two-thirds of North Carolina voters support the proposed ban, according to a poll released last week by Public Policy Polling in Raleigh. And so do 70 percent of the 305 respondents to the non-scientific SpeakOut survey on this page.

Other states and cities nationwide have been enacting similar bans for the last several years. But North Carolina's ties to tobacco are especially long and strong. Even as feelings against tobacco have hardened elsewhere, many North Carolinians, including many nonsmokers and ex-smokers, have resisted attempts to further restrict smoking. Few wanted to bite the hand that fed them. And even as the profits and donations have lessened, people from Winston-Salem to Wilson still hold nostalgic feelings toward tobacco -- and resent smoking restrictions as government intervention.

But many other residents have been sickened by smoking, or had family and friends who were, or who died of cancer or heart disease caused by smoking. The medical evidence against smoking has been mounting since the 1964 Surgeon General's report.

Second-hand smoke causes the deaths of an estimated 35,000 Americans each year, including more than 1,200 North Carolinians, according to a recent resolution from the Forsyth County Board of Health that supports Holliman's bill. The State Health Plan estimates the annual direct medical costs of second-hand smoke at almost $32 million, according to Tim Monroe, the county health director.

Holliman has heard from the critics, including the ones who say alcohol is more dangerous than tobacco. He doesn't belittle the dangers of alcohol.

"But alcohol doesn't travel through the air," said Holliman, who runs a printing business in Lexington. "You can sit down next to somebody who's drinking and they don't make you drink."

His battle is as much a public-relations one as it is a political one. He works at convincing his fellow legislators and his constituents that his goal is not to persecute smokers, but to protect children, co-workers and everyone else from cigarette smoke.

"People have a right to smoke, but they don't have a right to force it on the people around them … We don't want to be the heavy-handed government telling everybody what to do," Holliman said. "But where the health and safety of people are concerned, it (the bill) is the proper role of government."

Holliman grew up in Graham, the son of two heavy smokers. His sister, a nonsmoker, died of lung cancer in 1999, when she was 59. As she was dying, Holliman began battling his own lung cancer.

He was shocked by the diagnosis. He'd smoked a pipe, but that had been almost 20 years before, and he'd never smoked cigarettes. In the painful days ahead, through two operations to remove spots on his lungs, he learned from his doctors that his cancer may have been caused by second-hand smoke.

He thinks his sister's cancer may have been caused by that as well.

There was the cigarette smoke in his house growing up, the smoke-filled meetings he sat through as an executive at Burlington Industries and all the other smoke that he, like many North Carolinians, inhaled almost everywhere else. But Holliman, like many others, didn't realize that second-hand smoke was a threat until he studied the issue.

"To be quite honest, when the first people complained, you thought they were crazy," he said. "But they were visionary of things to come … I don't think we should pass this bill because I had cancer and lost a sister to lung cancer. It needs to stand on its own merit as good public policy."

In 2005, he proposed a bill that would have banned smoking in restaurants. "It shocked everybody," Holliman said. "I think it was the first time anybody had seen a bill like that."

But surprisingly, the bill made it to the House floor, where it was narrowly defeated. The same thing happened in 2007 with a bill that was slightly broader in scope.

"Every time we do it, we've learned a lot from other states, both positive and negative," Holliman said.

More than 20 states ban smoking in all or most restaurants and bars. Tennessee officials say a ban that took effect there in the fall of 2007 is working well, and the economic impact on bars and restaurants has been minimal. Virginia lawmakers approved a smoking ban last week.

Bans are already producing beneficial health effects, advocates say. For example, "a recent review of communities that implemented smoke-free policies showed a 20-percent reduction in hospitalizations for heart attacks within a year or two," Ronny Bell and David Goff Jr., professors at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, wrote in a recent guest column in the Journal.

Healthier workers can also translate to lower health-care costs for employers.

Many restaurants and other workplaces in North Carolina have voluntarily banned smoking.

Holliman's bill would greatly expand those bans and make them mandatory. The bill, which would be enforced by fines, would only allow smoking in a limited number of buildings: tobacco shops, tobacco factories and smoking rooms in hotels. Smoking in restaurants and bars would be prohibited.

Rep. Hackney "like most other people in North Carolina … supports the effort to stop smoking in our restaurants and workplaces," Bill Holmes, the spokesman for Hackney, said in an e-mail. "It's now clear that secondhand smoke is a hazard, and the Speaker believes it's time to allow people to earn a living without endangering their health."

Basnight, as a restaurant owner, thinks that the bill is "likely for the best," said Schorr Johnson, the spokesman for the senator. If the House passes it, Johnson said, Basnight "will consult with his fellow senators and is very open to taking it up in the Senate."

No one, however, is guaranteeing that the bill will pass. Reynolds American, the nation's second-largest cigarette manufacturer, based in Winston-Salem, says that adults-only businesses, such as bars and nightclubs, should be allowed to set their own rules about smoking.

The company has been low-key in its public statements about the bill. "What's happening around the country is now happening within our own state, which is not terribly surprising," said Maura Payne, a spokeswoman for Reynolds American. "It's certainly a trend you see at the city, county or state level around the country."

Rep. Larry Womble of Forsyth County, who voted for Holliman's previous bills on smoking bans, said he won't know how he'll vote on the latest one until he sees the final version. He said he's "leaning toward the health side."

But as a smoker himself, one who now has to go outside the Legislative Building for a cigarette, he says that part of him resents continuing restrictions on tobacco. "We keep chipping away, chipping away at this whole thing," he said. "Why not just go ahead and outlaw tobacco, and we won't have to be worried about this anymore? You know they're not going to outlaw tobacco … but part of me is saying, ‘Where are we going to stop?' "

Womble would like to see some sort of compromise legislation, such as continuing to allow smoking in adults-only bars, as Reynolds has suggested.

Others say there is no room for compromise. Bars are also workplaces, they point out. And why should workers be protected from secondhand smoke at some businesses, but not at others?

Holliman doesn't believe his bill, if it becomes law, would hurt the tobacco industry's overall volume.

And even if it does, he said, "Our first responsibility should be for the health and safety of our citizens. I just think it's time that we recognize the health issue for what it is."

■ John Railey writes local editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at 727-7357 or at jrailey@wsjournal.com.