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Take That, Tobacco! A Crusader Fights On 

Perched 32 floors above the Hudson River, the Cherner-Seitz household is the portrait of boundless wealth, familial bliss and, on this day, utter chaos. With four hours remaining until their departure for France, where they will all spend the coming school year, everyone was rushing around the six-bedroom apartment accompanied by a symphony of ringing telephones and the soundtrack from "Oklahoma!"

That is, everyone except Mr. Cherner, who was sitting at his desk as tranquil as a Buddha. After 15 years of fighting the tobacco industry through legislation, elementary school lectures and self-financed advertising campaigns, Mr. Cherner was savoring his greatest victory yet: the likely passage of a bill that would ban smoking in all New York City workplaces, including bars, restaurants and dance clubs. Although the City Council must still hold public hearings, the mayor, the Council speaker and six of the seven health committee members already back the bill, which would drastically alter the lives of an increasingly alienated constituency.

While Mr. Cherner's money and relentlessness helped bring about the disappearance of the cigarette vending machine, the end of the subway tobacco ad and the advent of mandatory nonsmoking sections in restaurants, the city's chief executive, Michael R. Bloomberg, has taken the initiative this time . . .

After years of being branded a millionaire kook by his opponents, Mr. Cherner, 44, finally feels vindicated. "All truth goes through three stages," he said. "It's ridiculed, then violently opposed and then accepted as self-evident." . .

. And how will he cope with the French and their love affair with Gitanes? "I've got my list of smoke-free restaurants," he said. "And besides, even the French can change."

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All truth goes through three stages. It's ridiculed, then violently opposed and then accepted as self-evident.
Tobacco control activist Joseph Cherner, on smokefree legislation, in a major profile.