High School Student in MA Drafts Bill that Restricts Smoking

By Edward T. McHugh

In a Statehouse hearing room festooned with signs promoting "Kick Butts Day," the Legislature's joint Health Care Committee yesterday approved a bill submitted by a Northbridge High School senior to restrict smoking at indoor flea markets.

Russell W. Trottier Jr., 18, of Northbridge, who drafted the bill while working as an intern last summer in the office of state Sen. Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, told the committee he learned of the hazards of second-hand smoke "from research reports of government agencies and from my own experience as an employee of the snack bar in the Grafton Flea Market."

Trottier said he spends every Sunday from spring to late autumn working at the flea market, and by the time he leaves work, "I feel sick, I usually start to cough, and I lose my appetite."

That raises concern not only about the effect of second-hand smoke on his long-term health, but its effect on his performance as co-captain of his high school track and cross country teams, he said.

Trottier's bill was co-sponsored by the legislators who represent the district he lives in, state Rep. George N. Peterson, R-Grafton, and Moore, the Senate chairman of the Health Care Committee.

No opposition to the legislation was voiced at the hearing, and the joint committee voted at an executive session immediately afterward to recommend its enactment by the House and the Senate.

Teen-agers from the North Shore testified in favor of bills that would increase penalties for the sale of tobacco to a minor to the same level as those assessed for selling alcoholic beverages to anyone under 21, and make it illegal for a minor to possess tobacco.

But the committee held up action on those bills when they ran into opposition from the Massachusetts Coalition for a Healthy Future, which expressed concern that outlawing possession by anyone under 18 could make smoking more attractive to teen-age "rebels" and play into the hands of the tobacco industry by taking the spotlight off those responsible for supplying tobacco to minors.