[C-U Smokefree] Recommended: "From beaches to bars, fight flares over smoking in public"

Wed Apr 14 11:39:08 CDT 2004

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kdrea at lungil.org has recommended this article from 
The Christian Science Monitor's electronic edition.

This is a great article.

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Headline:  From beaches to bars, fight flares over smoking in public
Byline:  Ron Scherer Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 04/14/2004

(HOBOKEN, N.J.)The fight over secondhand smoke is heating up anew.

One study, which is likely to be published in the next few days, is 
expected to show a decrease in health problems when workplaces in one 
Montana town went smoke free.

And a major new study, released Tuesday, finds that more than half of 
US food-service workers, the nation's fourth largest occupation, have 
no protection from cigarette smoke. The report, issued by the American 
Legacy Foundation, which promotes antismoking policies, found that in 
general blue-collar and service workers are lagging compared with 
white-collar employees. Rates of cancer and respiratory diseases are 
higher among blue-collar and service workers, and their medical 
expenses are considerably higher.

"We're hoping this study will further accelerate a trend that is 
already accelerating, that is that more people are covered by 
smoke-free laws for their employment," says Cheryl Healton, president 
of the Legacy Foundation, which is based in Washington.

So far, five states - California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, and New 
York - mandate that all places of employment be smoke free. A 
Massachusetts law is waiting for the governor's signature, and new 
legislation is moving through the Georgia statehouse. Florida, Idaho, 
and Utah include most restaurants and some bars in antismoking 
legislation. And scores of individual communities from Whitehorse, 
Alaska, to Lexington, Ky., are now smoke free. Several towns in 
California have made headlines for banning smoking on beaches.

The debate is likely to heat up even more in the next few days after 
the publication of a study of smoking in Helena, Mont. The study is 
expected to show that when the city's workplaces went smoke free, the 
heart-attack rate dropped in half. After a judge reversed the 
smoke-free move, the rate went back up.

"It was not a scientific study but a natural study," says Ms. Healton.

The issue of banning smoking in restaurants and bars has been 
contentious for years. Restaurant associations often warn that 
patronage will drop if they can't provide smoking sections. The 
industry has tried to convince lawmakers that ventilation can resolve 
the problem. "A lot of studies have shown that secondhand smoke is 100 
times worse in a household than a restaurant," says Brad Dayspring, a 
spokesman for the National Restaurant Association in Washington.

The group had no comment on the study, which they had yet seen.

Stopping smoking in restaurants is not a priority for national unions. 
Tom Snyder, a spokesman for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant 
Employees International, says the union has "no stand" on the issue of 
a smoke-free workplace.

According to the study, other jobs where workers are exposed to smoke 
include machine operators, materiel moving in warehouses, and longshore 
equipment operators. "Under 50 percent of the workers in these 
occupations have a smoke-free policy," says Donald Shopland, a coauthor 
of the study, which is in the April issue of the Journal of 
Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Yet Hoboken is an example of how ambivalent wait staff and owners are 
about the issue. At the Mile Square Bar & Grill, Claudine Smith, a 
server, admits sometimes her eyes get dry and watery. But, overall, 
says Ms. Smith, a nonsmoker, she doesn't mind. "I'm so used to it."

At another restaurant, Buskers, general manager Robin Riker admits he 
sympathizes with those on the wait staff who don't smoke. But, he adds, 
"We didn't go out and grab them. They came and applied for the job."

Indeed, Danielle Schwartz, an aspiring actress who also works as a 
server at Arthur's Tavern, says her doctor recommended that she quit 
the restaurant after she was diagnosed with pneumonia. "I care about my 
health," she says. Still, she plans to wait another week to see if she 
gets better, since she needs the work.

* Adam Parker contributed to this report.

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