Pat Lowry says that the new statewide clean indoor air law is flawed, and he's right.

True, it does extend protection to tens of thousands of Kansans who can now conduct business in most public venues without risking exposure to a toxic brew of tobacco smoke.

But Lowry is correct when he notes that some people "still will" suffer injury and even death due to tobacco smoke pollution in those places that the law exempts.

His solution, though -- just scrap the law -- is silly, akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Why deny protection to so many people who are covered by the law just because a relative few are not? The obvious solution is to continue efforts to revoke the exemptions, building on this strong foundation.

Those exemptions, as Lowry charges, represent a compromise driven by special interests, courtesy of some misguided legislators. Without some compromise, they made it clear, there would be no clean air law now, nor in the foreseeable future. That's politics.

Some of the exemptions were based on misconceptions -- that revenues in casinos would fall drastically if they were smoke-free, or that it is doing a few residents of nursing homes and long-term care some sort of favor by allowing them to continue exposing others to their indoor smoke.

But what if state or other casinos did lose some of their profitability? (Non-smokers tend to replace many of the smokers who drop out.) No one has a right to succeed at business by injuring or killing patrons or workers, many of whom still remain unaware or unconvinced that smoke pollution is serious.

When new knowledge comes along, enterprises based on outdated concepts can suffer.

When rural electrification became available, kerosene purveyors were mostly driven out of business. Should we have saved their jobs by foregoing electricity?

Now that we know what second-hand smoke can do, any business model based on creating it might suffer, though usually not, and not so much as tobacco industry (the Godzilla of special interests) claims.

Most of us can breathe more freely in most public venues now. We should celebrate that, but continue efforts to overcome special interests that work to deny everyone equal protection and a fair business environment.

Jon Hauxwell

1335 Central