She was the chief author and advocate of the 1975 Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act, one of the first laws enacted anywhere in the world banning the smoking of tobacco in public places. This law has been used as a template for later legislation to protect the public from "secondhand smoke," and was updated and expanded in 2005. In 1989, Kahn proposed reducing the voting age in Minnesota to 12. She said "history has shown us that when a segment of society is denied the right to vote, all the rights of that segment of society are then inferior."