MINNEAPOLIS, April 24, 2008—At the beginning of the year,. Minnesota stood alone in our poart of the country as a state that had taken strong measures to outlaw smoke int he workplace.

Just a few months later, we are no longer alone. Several of our neighbors, perhaps emboldened by the success of Freedom to Breathe, have followed Minnesota's lead, passing laws to protect people from secondhand smoke or encouraging them to quit smoking.

In January, Illinois went smoke-free, and Nebraska and Iowa recently passed comprehensive laws. North Dakota has a law for restaurants now, and Wisconsin and South Dakota both introduced significant clean-air legislation introduced during their 2008 sessions.

Meanwhile, support for Minnesota's Freedom to Breathe Act continues to grow — a recent poll found that 76 percent of Minnesotans support our law. That figure represents an increase of 7 percent since the law passed a year ago.

The best part of these surveys, says Kirby J. Erickson, chair of ClearWay Minnesota, is that "majorities [are] favoring it whether the data is broken down by political affiliation, location in the state, age or gender. Fortyfour percent – nearly half of all those polled – said they support it strongly."

Its hard to imagine achieving that kind of powerful positive consensus on just about any other political issue, Erickson said.

Other findings in the survey, conducted by Decision Resources of Minneapolis:

• 19 percent of smokers are smoking less
• 22 percent are thinking about quitting more
• 82 percent of Minnesotans now view secondhand smoke as a health hazard