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The Pennsylvania Smoking Ban
| 25 replies(Update: the public smoking ban goes into effect on September 11th 2008.)
The PA House of Representatives and the PA Senate were both working on legislation in the past few weeks that would ban smoking in most public places, including restaurants. But the ban ultimately stalled because the two chambers could not agree on a set of exemptions to it. The ban is now shelved until September.
I hate breathing other people’s smoke. That’s not only because second-hand smoke kills 50,000 Americans including 3,000 Pennsylvanians every year; it’s also because it’s freaking disgusting. So naturally I want this ban enacted into law as soon as possible.
The main arguments I’ve seen that are against the ban -- i.e. that are pro-smoking -- are:
1. Waaaaah I want to smoke and you can’t take away my rights and next thing you’ll be making it illegal to eat thumb tacks!!
2. Restaurants (etc) should just have smoking and non-smoking sections as they do now.
3. This is a decision that’s best left to market forces to decide.
The first argument makes me angry because it’s so common and yet so moronic and/or disingenuous. No one is trying to take away a smoker’s right to kill himself. The issue is whether smokers should be allowed to kill other people, as they have been doing for years and years without punishment. When you’re spewing cancerous filth in an enclosed area, others have to breathe it in, and that’s as issue of their rights, not yours.
The second argument is invalid because the "non-smoking" sections are still contaminated with smoke, as anyone who’s eaten in one knows. Any high-schooler who’s taken a physics or chemistry class can tell you that smoke, like all other fluids, moves freely within its container and does not pay any attention to the "non-smoking section" signs. This whole concept is exactly like having a peeing section in a public pool, except that urine is a sterile fluid, whereas tobacco smoke is a lethal fluid. Air ventilation and filtration systems have been shown to be ineffective in solving this problem, and in any case, the workers in the smoking sections are not protected at all.
The third argument says that anyone who doesn’t like smoke can simply avoid establishments that allow smoking. I’ve seen a bunch of news or opinion articles making this argument, stating that "many" or even "most" restaurants are already smoke-free so non-smokers should just patronize those businesses instead. I don’t know where these people are coming from, but around here, literally none of the restaurants that we go to on a regular or semi-regular basis are smoke-free: not Chili’s, not the Olive Garden, not Carrabba’s, not TGI Friday’s, not Ruby Tuesday’s, not Red Lobster, not Outback Steakhouse, not Applebee’s. If there were such a restaurant, we would be all over it. Instead, when we’re being seated, I always have to say "please seat us as far from the smoking section as possible," and still about half of the time, we need to ask to be moved once we’re seated, because the "non-smoking section" is too darn smoky.
Second-Hand Smoke Statistics
therecordherald.com, 20070619:
According to the American Lung Association, secondhand smoke is responsible for approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers annually in the United States.
nosmokeindoors.com, 20070621:
Three-thousand Pennsylvanians die each year as a result of the health conditions caused from breathing in someone else’s tobacco smoke.
For every eight smokers that die from the effects of their own tobacco use, one nonsmoker dies from the effects of secondhand smoke.
84 percent of Pennsylvanians believe that all workers should be protected from exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace.
Waitresses are almost four times more likely to die of lung cancer compared to workers in other fields, and bartenders face a 50 percent greater risk of dying from lung cancer, other cancers, and heart disease than other workers.
Secondhand smoke is harmful and hazardous to the health of the general public, and particularly dangerous to children. It is a proven cause of lung cancer, heart disease, serious respiratory illnesses, low birth weight and sudden infant death syndrome.
businesswire.com, 20070626:
In June 2006, the Surgeon General of the United States declared that there was no safe level of second hand smoke, ever. Secondhand smoke - a carcinogen classified in the same league with asbestos, formaldehyde and radon - is known to kill more than 53,000 Americans each year, including 3,000 in Pennsylvania alone.
And that doesn’t include people who actually smoke. These are just the people who stand within breathing distance of smokers and suffer the fatal consequences.
During just a one-hour dinner in a restaurant where smoking is permitted, nonsmoking patrons "smoke" the equivalent of three cigarettes. That’s enough to cause stiffened arteries, prompt irregular heartbeats, exacerbate colds, bronchitis and pneumonia, worsen heart attacks, and trigger asthma, particularly in children.
Nonsmokers who are regularly exposed to tobacco smoke pollution, either at home or at work, have almost double the risk of heart disease. And secondhand smoke causes 30 times as many lung cancer deaths as all other regulated air pollutants combined.
