How to make your community safer

If your community is not already protected by either state or local clean air laws, you can change that! Over 2200 cities and municipalities have enacted local laws to protect workers and citizens from secondhand smoke.

It may take years to convince Senator Murray that far more workers are dying from secondhand smoke than from asbestos. She has so far ignored our letters and emails. You can save lives NOW by making your community a safe place to live and work.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) has designed ordinance wording that reduces loopholes and weak language to assure that locals laws will be effective and enforceable. The ACS also has power point slide shows that provide the education about the dangers of secondhand smoke, which can be presented to the city government and to the public. Simply contact your local office of the ACS (listed in your phone book).

Another good resource is the Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights (ANR). There is lots of good information on their website at www.no-smoke.org.

Get involved in your local Smoke Free Communities group. Get all your friends involved as well. Many people are naive about local politics, thinking that such a law would surely pass, since it obviously saves many lives. So many cities have lost their proposed ordinances, due to apathy of the supporters, while tobacco influences easily bought off the local officials, causing the proposed law to be defeated. Don't let up for a minute! This is NEVER an easy fight.

One of our coalition members, Dr Melissa Walton-Shirley, recently gave this very informative talk to her city council in defense of enacting smoke-free laws. This will give you an idea of how to do it right!

Ashland, Elizabethtown, Frankfort, Georgetown, Hardin County, Letcher County, Lexington, Fayette County, Louisville, Jefferson County, Madison County, Morehead, Oldham County, Paducah, Paintsville, and Pikeville.

These are the names of the county and city governments in the state of Kentucky who have weighed all of the issues that Glasgow Kentucky is currently asking you to start to consider. They are city council persons and magistrates just like you who have heard the same concerns from  business owners who insist that secondhand smoke is not dangerous. They all come from a tobacco growing state, just like us. They’ve heard the argument that it  should be the business owners right to choose whether or not they wish to provide a safe environment for their workers and patrons.  They’ve heard the same threats that they won’t be re-elected. They’ve heard that business revenues will decrease.  They’ve heard each and every argument against safety that has and will come up in this discussion. 

But the important point  here is that they have understood that grandparents are precious commodities that were approaching extinction in many neighborhoods in their counties and cities. They understood that asthmatics should not have to drop and run in the middle of a meal. They understood that the Americans with disabilities  act states that no citizen should be denied safe presence in any public venue and they respect the fact that human beings with lung disease are now officially considered disabled. They get it that children are sickened less when they are exposed less to second hand smoke. They knew that only 43% of their service industry workers were protected from secondhand smoke but deserve to enjoy the same safety in employment as Kentucky teachers, 90% of which work in a smoke-free environment. 

Despite impassioned claims that businesses will suffer or fail without secondhand smoke, they understood that any tobacco addicted individual CAN and should wait until they are outside the airspace of any other patron before they light up. They took a chance 5 years ago in Lexington when they began in the Dark Ages of understanding the dangers of secondhand smoke. Even though the rest of the world and many other states knew full well of the dangers, little information had been revealed about it in Kentucky in 2003. Why? Because the tobacco industry spent 535 million dollars in a single year to convince Kentucky otherwise. They only had 56% of their citizens in favor. But because it meant life or death or health for some individuals and it meant dramatic savings in health care costs , with courage they voted on the side of safety. But thanks to their efforts, one year later, their favorability rating increased to 64% for that decision. But popularity is NOT what’s important, even though the masses are calling for smoke free air. Safety is what’s important.  As one of you told me in conversation, “sometimes, you have to do the right thing to protect your citizens”.  This is your best opportunity to help your citizens live longer and stay healthier. 

Some simple facts: 

18 studies with 21 different references prove that businesses are not hurt when they provide a smoke free environment to all of their patrons. The business owners who argue this can shake their heads all they want, but try as they might to find them, there are NO studies to date to support those claims.   

Another claim on behalf of smokers and a few business owners is that “all we need to do is separate the smokers from the nonsmokers or utilize ventilation systems.” 

Simply separating smoking sections from non-smoking sections does not work. Measurements made of dangerous particle density found 181 ug/m3 in the smoking room, and 178 ug/m3 in the non smoking room. After Fayette county went smoke free, they went back to that restaurant and measured both rooms at 10 ug/m3. You see, what you smell at a restaurant might tickle your nose, make you sneeze, or make others wheeze, but the hidden carcinogens you can’t see or smell. The stuff that’s left behind after what we recognize as smoke is gone also contains chemicals that kill from lung cancer and heart attacks.  Helena (Montana) saw a 40% decrease in heart attack rate after they insisted on a smoke-free city. France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Greece, Scotland and numerous other countries and US cities mirrored these results.  Why? Cadmium, Benzene , lead and arsenic are just a few of the components in cigarette smoke that the minority argues that we should feel comfortable breathing.  Separate ventilation would require tornado-force winds to cleanse the air and simply don’t work. That’s why we are asking for smoke-free dining, shopping, employment and entertainment here in Glasgow because these proven dangers that have already been discussed in other cities are the same dangers that we are allowing to go unchecked here in our city.    

The Centers for Disease Control issued a warning that secondhand smoke should be avoided by patients with risk factors for heart disease. Those at risk include common characteristics such as patients on cholesterol medication, those who have diabetes, hypertension, are sedentary, or are overweight.  You and I are average Kentucky residents and a study recently found that we are exposed to secondhand smoke unknowingly an average of 18.6 hours per week.  If all workplaces in Kentucky would observe a smoke-free environment, a decrease in heart attack rate alone will save 49 million dollars in the first year.  We surely can see that we have an obligation and an opportunity  to help  dent the 1.5 BILLION in costs of caring for those who suffer from first and secondhand smoke and the 2.13 billion in lost productivity due to outpatient illnesses from tobacco use.   

Guaranteeing smoke-free air gives us the greatest and easiest opportunity to change how long people can live healthy lives here in Glasgow and the need to change is greater than we know. Currently, 24% of our Glasgow teenagers smoke.  24.4% of our pregnant Glasgow women smoke and often in the home with other children.  107,000 Kentucky kids will die premature deaths due to tobacco use as young adults.  This accounts for more deaths than car crashes, illegal drugs, murder or suicide. When asked to help with the methamphetamine problem in this area, no one hesitated, and that is commendable, but consider the death toll due to first and secondhand smoke in Glasgow.  Thousands more will die at a young age from tobacco use, than will ever die from methamphetamine.  Aren’t those who are exposed to secondhand smoke worthy of at least the same concern and consideration?      

There is even more proof that Glasgow can benefit from a smoke-free city:  30% of us don’t have a high school diploma and only 10% of us have a bachelor’s degree.  Our economy suffers directly from the choice to buy pack upon pack of cigarettes instead of funding our children’s education and dental work. Not only are cigarettes a direct cost to families but there is a continual siphon of cash flow of our tax dollars to fund Kentucky Medicaid and disability patients who have become ill from tobacco use.  An additional concern is the fact that children do not just mimic their parent’s habits, they also emulate their peers.  Many of our children will go to work part time this summer in the service industry between the ages of 16 and 22.  A recent study concluded that it is at these venues where many our children establish their tobacco addiction.  If we can hurry to create smoke-free venues before we open new restaurants in town, we will most certainly prevent some young adults from becoming hooked but we need to be diligent with our time.  The "Take Care New York" program lowered high schooler’s smoking rates from  >20% to an all-time low now of 8%.  None of this could have ever occurred without courage to stand up for change. 

Quality of life improvements will occur on multiple fronts when fewer people are exposed to secondhand smoke. Families will be less burdened by the back and forth treatments for radiation and chemo for cancer. Fewer patients will die of heart attacks and stroke. Dr. Braden will not have to tell so many folks they only have 6 months to do all of the things they always wanted to do which is a frequent conversation in the confines of TJ Samson community hospital. Dr. Marcol will treat less bladder cancer , impotence, and pelvic cancers.  The family doctors and pediatricians will see less bronchitis, emphysema and COPD and fewer asthma attacks, not to mention ear aches and pneumonia. 

More families will become smoke free so more families will say yes to a college education for their kids.  They will say yes to good dental care and others can say yes, I’ll be happy to go to any restaurant in this town and sit down and enjoy a meal without having to wonder who is going to light up near them in the "pretend" smoke-free sections that we have now.    

Glasgow citizens deserve the same protection as the towns and counties listed above.  If I told you for any other reason that hundreds of peoples’ lives will most definitely be saved in the next 5 years by a simple and inexpensive change, most people wouldn’t hesitate to sign up. Most people would stand in line for an opportunity to save a life.  The citizens of this city are more than ready to reverse the death and dying process. We are sick of secondhand smoke both literally and figuratively. 

There is no other issue, no other right, no other claim, no other concern and no other point that can ever over-ride the right to breathe clean air.  Establishing a smoke-free environment sends a message that you care about the health and longevity of each and every one of your Glasgow citizens and that you have the courage to stand up and say it.         

Dr Melissa Walton-Shirley (March 10, 2008)