EDITORIAL: Smokefree Air Long Overdue

Statewide Ballot Initiative Likely in Washington State

Parts excepted from the Bellingham Herald, 2/20/04

It's curious why people react so strongly when smokefree workplace laws are proposed for restaurants and bars. After all, you can't smoke at your desk at work. You can't smoke on an airplane or a bus.  You can't smoke in the grocery store or in the mall. And all for the same reason: because it's unhealthy, bothersome and dangerous to those around you who don't want to breath your secondhand smoke.  In Washington state, like most states, approximately 80 percent of adults don't smoke.

A smokefree workplace bill in the Washington state legislature this session has met with obstacles.  Rep. Joe McDermott's Clean Indoor Air Act is still alive in the House, but barely.  If it gets to the floor for a vote, it has the support it needs to pass, according to Marina Cofer-Wildsmith of the American Lung Association of Washington, but tobacco lobbying might prevent that from happening.

The issue may now be headed for a statewide ballot initiative.

Smokefree workplace laws aren't some new thing.  Six states, including Connecticut, New York, California, Delaware, Maine and Massachusetts have already passed them. California's smokefree workplace law has been in effect for nearly a decade and has the data to support the fact that the law has not hurt the restaurant and bar industry as naysayers predicted it would.

Smoking in the workplace was banned in Washington state in 1993 - unless your workplace is a restaurant, bar, bowling alley, or bingo hall.  It's unfair to say that workers in those places somehow deserve less protection from cancer-causing chemicals.

The employees are the people so often lost in this debate. While non-smokers can opt not to go to a smoky restaurant, the people who work there can't. Telling them to get another job is an unfair rejoinder.  Jobs are tough to come by and nobody should have to choose between putting food on their family's table and compromising their own health.

(excerpts from smokefree.net)