Lawmakers, staff pan smoke-free Congress
By: Anne Schroeder Mullins
A new rule banning the sale of tobacco products on House of Representatives grounds has got Capitol Hill smokers — we hate to say it — smoking mad. “The health nannies’ arbitrary ban on a legal and heavily taxed product bodes ill for the future marketing of Mountain Dew and Moon Pies,” said Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter,
an infuriated Republican, and smoker, from Michigan. “This is silly ‘feel good’ crap by a bunch of do-gooders,” barked a high-level Democratic staffer (also a smoker). “We should be worried about the housing crisis, the unemployment rate and the national debt instead of making staffers walk four blocks to buy a pack of smokes.” We should have seen this coming. The transition to a smoke-free Congress can be traced to November 2006, when voters — stoked by a growing dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq and the state of the nation as a whole — ousted the Republican majority in both houses. The congressional elections replaced the likes of then-Majority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio — who lit up his beloved Barclays several times an hour, it seemed — with the more health-conscious Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who quickly banned smoking in the Speaker's lobby. (Her predecessors had already banned smoking in all public areas of the Capitol.)
Saddened but undeterred, Minority Leader Boehner demonstrated his opposition to the Democratic agenda by lighting up in his office even after the ban went into effect. Of course, his was a symbolic protest, since the rules don't prohibit members from smoking in their private offices. (Rumor has it that when Boehner vacated his office for incoming Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the room had to be specially fumigated.)
Sure sounds like a whole lotta smokers out here in flyover land when the gov'mint started passin' all their feel good laws doesn't it!
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