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Indoor smoking laws: What are we waiting for?
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
5/20/2009
On May 4, during a PBS "Newshour" report on the swine flu outbreak, Manuel Camacho Solis, former mayor of Mexico City, said about how the huge city was responding: "It's a simple balance: It's the health of the people or the economy, and in a case like this the health is more important. These are extreme measures but if you can save some lives, it's worth it."
If you can save some lives, it's worth it — but not when it comes to the smoking pandemic, estimated to kill 420,000 American smokers and 53,000 non-smokers annually. One of government's primary duties is protecting public health and welfare, so why does it generally fail miserably when it comes to smoking and secondhand smoke?
"The Smoke Ring" by Peter Taylor, published in 1984, was the first book I read to shed light on this paradox. He described the interdependence of the tobacco industry, smokers and government, noting that the industry knows its product is deadly but is addicted to the enormous profits it generates; smokers are addicted to nicotine and many cannot quit; and government is addicted to the almost recession-proof tobacco tax revenues.
To counter smoke-free air laws that threaten its profits, the tobacco industry has worked to create doubt on the science of secondhand smoke and hired lobbyists to defeat or weaken smoke-free air legislation.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop's landmark 1986 report on environmental tobacco smoke, "The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking," concluded that secondhand smoke caused lung cancer in healthy nonsmokers. The tobacco industry responded by vilifying Dr. Koop, accusing him of bias.
I have seen how the tobacco industry and its surrogates work at both the state and local level.
In 1987, Tobacco Institute lobbyist John Britton worked covertly with a Missouri Department of Health lobbyist to pass a weak statewide Clean Indoor Air law, provided it pre-empted any stronger local ordinances. The effort failed, but only when Missouri GASP played a leading role in its defeat.
In 1993, St. Louis County considered a bill making Lambert Airport smoke-free, anathema to the tobacco industry, which regards such high-profile locations as strategically important. Former councilman John Shear, chair of the Justice and Health Committee considering the bill, colluded with Tobacco Institute lobbyists to weaken the bill, which ultimately was withdrawn by its sponsor.
In 2005, Harrah's helped defeat a comprehensive St. Louis County bill that would have included limited smoking in the Harrah's Maryland Heights casino. Harrah's bused in hundreds of employees to protest the bill on the night of a crucial St. Louis County Council vote. A just-released National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report shows gaming-area employees in several Las Vegas casinos are exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke carcinogens.
These days, smoke-free air laws generally are opposed by tobacco industry surrogates, using such industry-inspired arguments as: They infringe on private property rights; drive away smokers; if you don't like the smoke, patronize or work someplace else; discriminates against smokers; prevent the free market from deciding; interfere with businesses' decision to display smoking or no-smoking signs; disregard that ventilation will take care of it and it should be a statewide, not local, regulation.
Dr. Koop had it right in his concluding remarks accompanying the release of his 1986 report:
"Therefore, for involuntary smoking and lung cancer: We know ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) contains carcinogens; the exposure to ETS by non-smokers is large enough to expect a lung cancer risk; and human epidemiologic studies have demonstrated an increased risk of lung cancer in involuntary smokers. If this evidence were available on an environmental pollutant other than ETS, we would have acted long ago. To fail to act now on the evidence we currently have would be to fail in our responsibility to protect the public health."
That was 23 years ago. What are we waiting for?
Martin Pion is president of Missouri GASP (Group Against Smoking Pollution) Inc.
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