Smoking Ban Satire Burns Him Up

Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) is relearning the elementary school lesson that sometimes things said in jest can still hurt people's feelings.

That is apparently the case with Michael Ferens , a now-former Schwartz political supporter who was not amused when she proposed a ban on alcohol as a satire on a very real smoking ban in bars and restaurants the D.C. Council is considering. ("I'm also now looking at some other legal choices to ban -- like driving, or sex -- for they, too, can be dangerous to your health and the health of others," Schwartz said in her wink-wink proposal.)

Ferens, 41, of Dupont Circle, was president of Log Cabin DC, an organization of gay and lesbian Republicans, in 2001-2002 and said he helped raise $20,000 for Schwartz's campaigns.

In a recent letter to Schwartz, Ferens wrote about the effects of secondhand smoke he experienced when he was a bartender and the pain of losing his father last year to lung cancer. His father had smoked for five decades.

"If you were drowning and counting your final days, unable to escape the pure agony of a slow death from lung cancer due to your smoking, or if you had to watch one of your children dying from disease due to years of your second-hand smoke, would you be laughing?" Ferens wrote. "Wouldn't that be REAL funny to lose a son or daughter to lung cancer? Would you be still chuckling if a government leader released mock legislation poking fun at people who want a smoke-free environment when you just lost a close relative?"

Ferens cited his work on Schwartz's campaigns and added, "as a result, I receive this mockery and laughing at me because I suffered second hand smoke, and my father died.

"Thanks a lot Carol.

"I used to have high thoughts about you as a community leader. All that is gone now. You should feel ashamed of yourself, but, with this hateful attitude you have displayed lately, I feel you have no shame."

Schwartz did not return a phone call Tuesday requesting a comment.

Although Ferens didn't like it, Schwartz won some laughs, kudos and perhaps converts to her side two weeks ago when she mockingly proposed banning alcohol in the city, using the same arguments that anti-smoking activists have used when arguing in favor of a smoking ban. An alcohol ban bill was actually introduced and formally referred to the council's consumer and regulatory affairs committee, chaired by Jim Graham (D-Ward 1).

But soon after the meeting, Schwartz withdrew the bill.

Schwartz is the leading opponent of a smoking ban, having bottled up the ban bills in her public works and environment committee until a "compromise" arises that is acceptable to her. Smoking ban supporters wonder whether Schwartz withdrew the bill after she got wind that Graham was considering holding a hearing on her alcohol ban, amending it to convert it to a smoking ban bill and then sending it to the full council, where a majority favors the smoking ban.