• Smoking gun Smoking gun The one American in four who has heart disease got a sobering warning last week: Stay out of restaurants, bars and buildings that allow smoking. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned that
• Smoking gun
Smoking gun
The one American in four who has heart disease got a sobering warning last week: Stay out of restaurants, bars and buildings that allow smoking.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned that secondhand smoke greatly increases the risk of heart attack for those with heart disease. For such people, even 30 minutes’ exposure can be lethal, the government warns.
It might be easy to brush off that advisory had it been based on laboratory studies. But in this case, the warning came with a smoking gun: a study on heart attacks in Helena, Mont., published in the British Medical Journal.
For six months during 2002, Helena had an indoor smoking ban. During that time, the number of heart attacks dropped by 40 percent. There was no similar drop in the surrounding communities where the smoking ban was not in effect. Unfortunately for Helena residents, a judge struck down the ban after six months.
For well over a year, antismoking advocates have cited Helena’s decline in heart attacks to argue for smoking prohibitions around the country. But publication of the study last week – along with the CDC’s most pointed warning to date about the dangers of secondhand smoke – will further buttress their case. Clearly, they still have a long way to go.
Smoking is banned in public buildings in St. Louis and Springfield, Mo. It is also banned, with some exceptions, in restaurants in Springfield and Maryville. But in December, Jefferson City Mayor John Landwehr vetoed a smoking ban in his city’s restaurants. He said he acted out of concern for fairness; pool halls, bowling alleys and bars were exempt from the ban.
A 1989 Illinois law gives only 20 cities the power to prohibit smoking. Wilmette and Skokie passed smoking bans last year. Evanston and Champaign-Urbana are debating similar measures. A bill in the Illinois General Assembly would return local control of smoking to all of the state’s 1,300 other municipalities.
Smoking advocates – often organized and funded by tobacco companies – like to say that smoking is a matter of personal preference. It’s a great argument, because it casts efforts to prohibit public smoking as somehow undemocratic.
But there’s no question that tobacco causes the deaths of tens of thousands of nonsmokers every year. It also causes serious, chronic conditions like asthma in children exposed to smoke from their parents’ cigarettes. There’s no question that millions of Americans with heart disease are endangered by other people’s tobacco addiction.
Those who try to argue otherwise are just blowing smoke.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
