Julia Garnett lives in perpetual fear. Every time she leaves her home, she puts her life at risk due to her allergy to smoke. She’s been rushed out of grocery stores and airports that claimed to be smoke-free. There aren’t many safe places in Charlotte. She likes to grab a drink from time to time, and her choices are limited. Therapy, the swanky martini bar downtown is smoke-free, but it’s only safe for Garnett on weekdays when they keep the inside door closed and smoke from outsiders can’t drift in. She’s thought about moving to a smoke-free state like California but in the meantime is mainly restricted to the confines of her home like a bubble person.
Julia’s case is the extreme, but she’s seen secondhand smoke’s debilitating effects on others. Two of her heavy-smoking friends had infants pass away from sudden infant death syndrome, a disease in which secondhand smoke, according to the new US surgeon general’s report released last week, has been proven to trigger the onset.
Standing in the way of Garnett and others who want smoke-free public places in North Carolina is legislation passed in 1993 known as a preemption law. In the early ’90s, tobacco companies’ lobbyists forecasting the national trend to ban public smoking began pushing lawmakers to ban the banning of smoking. In North Carolina, House Bill 943 dictates, with only a few exceptions, that a public place choosing to go smoke-free must also permit smoking on at least 20 percent of its space. House bill 943 also ensures no local law, ordinance or rule can contradict it.
In the last couple of years, Mecklenburg County activists and legislators have begun to take a stand. Before the 2005-2006 general assembly session, county commissioners voted six to one in favor of seeking the right to ban smoking in restaurants and other public places. The issue was given priority along with only a few others when the general assembly convened. The bill, which sought to give counties with populations above 650,000 local control over the smoking issue, was eventually stalled to a standstill.
County Commissioner Dumont Clarke says he was surprised by the attitude he received from members of the general assembly. “I went to Raleigh, I met with our delegation, and frankly I was more or less treated by, ‘Why are you bringing this difficult issue to us at this time?'” While difficult, Clarke says passing exemptions to laws isn’t out of the legislative norm. Clarke believes the surgeon general’s strong warning against secondhand smoke exposure in the report released last week, will help support the effort.
The report, entitled The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, quantifies what many suspected to be true. Secondhand smoke was shown to be developmentally damaging to children and harmful to adult’s reproductive and respiratory systems. Continual exposure to secondhand smoke increases the chance of heart disease by 25 to 30 percent and lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent — even infrequent exposure increases the risk of getting one of those life-threatening diseases.
The report did contain some positive news. The level of cotinine, a biological marker for second-hand smoke exposure in nonsmokers, dropped by 70 percent between 1991 and 2002. US Surgeon General Richard Carmona believes this decrease can be attributed to increased public health awareness and the proliferation of counties and states going smoke-free.
New Smokefree Mecklenburg chairman Dr. Michael Sloan has experience in the political arena for this issue. Sloan spearheaded the smoke-free efforts in Chicago. After three years of considered efforts, Sloan and others achieved a citywide ban on public smoking in late 2005. Politics in Chicago have a reputation for being fierce, Sloan says, but obdurate council members aren’t as great of a challenge as the preemption law.
“We should be given the right to make the decision for ourselves. All we want is that right,” Sloan says of the preemption law. “Do we really want to allow politicians to tell us we can’t act for the health of ourselves or our loved ones?”
Currently 20 to 30 percent of Charlotte’s bars and restaurants are smoke-free by choice, a number that Mecklenburg County’s Tobacco Control Coordinator Kate Uslan says is low for a major city. A survey conducted by Smokefree Mecklenburg found 71 percent of Charlotte residents would prefer restaurants to ban smoking.
Many restaurant and bar owners believe having separate non-smoking areas in their establishments is the compromise solution. But just because you can’t see the smoke doesn’t mean it isn’t harming you. A study in the new surgeon general’s report measured high levels of carcinogens in the bodies of restaurant patrons sitting in non-smoking sections of restaurants. Air filtering devices once thought to be a solution have been found to be largely ineffectual as well.
Printed in snazzy font across the door of the martini lounge Therapy, are the words “smoke free environment.” “I don’t think a busy night goes by that someone doesn’t come up to me and say, ‘Thank you. We love the fact that you don’t allow smoking,'” says owner Tim Low, who believes much of his success is due to Therapy’s unique smoke-free policy
Chris Brown, part owner of the Visulite, is against any ordinance that would prohibit smoking. Brown says business at the bar suffers on nights when artists request no-smoking shows. “On our non-smoking nights, people go outside to smoke so they’re not sitting around the bar buying drinks, buying whatever. If it’s a real busy show, we can have over 100 people outside who’ve paid 20 dollars to see a band and they’re outside most of the night because they’re smoking.”
Clarke, Sloan and other activists understand the importance of breaking the myth that a smoking ban would harm food and drink sales. A report conducted in 2003 by Cornell’s Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly found food and drink sales either stayed the same or increased after New York banned smoking. Studies in California, Massachusetts, Texas and Arizona have published similar results. Brown acknowledges that the long-term results of a citywide ban might not be a decline in sales after patrons adjusted to the new rules.
Sloan says the process to get the exemption in Mecklenburg County will involve grass-roots efforts as well as targeting the bigwigs. “What’s the most important thing? Votes. What you need is people who will be champions for your cause. Then you need to find other supporters. Then you have to find a way to work through the process to fruition. We think with widespread decimation of this information and already knowing that many in the population support the idea, and that it’s happening elsewhere, it’s just a matter of being persistent.”
To sign the petition visit www.smokefreemecklenburg.com.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2006.
Why NOT let the marketplace decide? As the owner of Therapy indicates and the Cornell study confirms, there are economic advantages for businesses that prohibit smoking. The owners of other venues cannot be presumed be to be either stupid or foolish. They are, after all, playing with their own money: they havce every incentive to go where the market leads them. That may, of course, lead to some establishments that do not choose to prohibit smoking. If that limits their market for customers and employees, the only detriment is to those who choose that path and those who choose to work or become customers there. It doesn’t impinge on the rights of anyone at all, nor the health of anyone who doesn’t make a voluntary decision to be party to it. (The argument that an individual has the right to go to a specific restaurant or bar and have present there the conditions they wish is specious. Were that the case one would have the right to the lighting or menu they wished as well. For that matter they would have the right to have a specific restaurant be or remain in business.)
As long as smoking is legal it should be enjoyed by consenting adults on private property. I understand there are some authoritarians who don’t believe in the constitutional right to private property. That is exactly what this is all about. Should government be allowed to tell it’s citizens how they may behave or invite others to behave on their own private property.
Our state pre-emption law does not state that public places must allow smoking in 20% of the space. That rule only applied to state buildings that did not go smoke free before October 1993. ANY PRIVATELY OWNED BUSINESS may go 100% smokefree at anytime under our state pre-emption law. This is REALLY misunderstood by many restaurant, etc. owners. PLEASE CLARIFY!!
Some believe that adults who wish not to breathe cigarette smoke can choose where they go or don’t go. Can we? What if a businessman with asthma has a meeting set up by a big potential client at a restaurant that allows smoking? What if a pregnant woman out with friends finds them wanting to go to a new restaurant that allows smoking? What if a family with children has cross Charlotte’s smoky terminals to fly cross-country for a funeral? What if you walked up to a bus or light rail station in the rain to find someone smoking in the only covered area? What if your child is a server or bus-boy at a restaurant? The hospitals in Charlotte are not even smoke-free. What are the choices here? The only real choices in this state for non-smokers are to suck it up or stay home. The health facts are now clear – other people’s right to smoke removes non-smokers’ right not to. This is an infringement on human rights, and deserves legal action just as other infringements have created a need for the government to protect its citizens.
Bill, I’ve entertained clients for many years. I don’t recall ever NOT selecting the venue for things I host. But add another “what if” to your list of hypotheticals: what if the client is a smoker? the answer to that is easy, isn’t it? You’ll either make the choice to accomodate him in your own economic insterests or you’ll ask him if he minds a non smoking venue. You decision, your choice, your cost-benefit analysis. “What if” the pregnant woman wants to go with friends who want to go to a smoking venue? Same set of choices. In either case, the only difficulty is that you DO have to make a choice rather than require that others (the owners of those venues) make the choice that you want. That said, you have a perfectly valid point with regard to the airport: there is only one, and that indeed leaves no choice. As to the hospitals, I think you’ll find that the smoking areas are not in any fashion near an area that a person has to pass by. They are out of doors, and in fact at Presby, the only reason to come anywhere near the smoking area is to be there. At CMC, you MIGHT pass the smoking areas, since they are not a “dead end” area like Presby, but again, they are not on a direct route that you would pass: you pretty much have to intend to be there.
I agree with Bill completely as do many, many people I know. The facts are no longer disputable. Secondhand smoke is deadly…it is deadly for adults, for the elderly, for children, for everyone. The Surgeon General’s report last week left no room for further debate. He clearly stated that there is no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure AND that there is no safety in smoking vs. non smoking sections in restaurants. The debate is over! There is no way to protect clients, patrons, employees or anyone without having completely smoke free workplaces. It is fine to make the decision as adults to smoke. It is not fine to impose that decision on others who simply want to enjoy their lives without having to suffer negative health consequences and expose their children to something that can kill them. It’s no longer time for debate…..it’s time for action.
Patti, I agree that the time for action is now. The question is, what actions? Well before the Surgeon General’s report many people assumed that it was not healthy and avoided places that permitted smoking for that reason. The only real question is whether one has a choice to do that. I think the answer is and for a long time has been that it is. At a time when many, many people smoked, there were very few such choice available. That is not the case now, and as regards private businesses that decision is largely market driven. If those who wish to avoid smoke simply DO THAT -withhold their custom from those businesses that permit smoking- they accomplish two things: they avoid smoking environments and they increase the market driven move toward more non-smoking businesses. That is wholly appropriate action and it is effective. Where you and I would probably disagree is in whether government should eliminate the alternative choice. I don’t believe for a moment that it should. No one is present in private business premises other than by voluntary choice, so laws to mandate smoke free environments in private business cannot be couched in terms of protecting people from being forced to be in the presence of smoke. It can ONLY be seen as allowing one segment of society to force another to surrender their liberty to choose and have their choice mandated by another segment of society. If someone wishes to allow smoking in their restaurant, no one can make me go there and breathe it, whether as a patron or as an employee. If I, as a non-smoker- decide that I wish to assume the risk associated with that because I percieve a social or business advantage to eating there, it is because I have evaluated the cost and benefit and no one else bears the consequences -good or bad- of that nor the responsibility for it. If I, as an employee choose accept that risk because I find it to my advantage, I alone will reap the advantage nor bear the costs and that too is my responsibility alone.
I appreciated this article and the health facts on secondhand smoke are indisputable. Most people would agree that where there is a public health hazard, it is the role of the government to help mitigate the risk. This is why there are health inspections of restaurants and there is a law that requires those who handle food to wash their hands. We have laws against driving while intoxicated. Much like smoking, these are personal behavior choices but when the risk of harm to the public is apparent, it is imperative that laws are in place to protect the public over the rights of an individual.
Smoke-Free Mecklenburg is not asking that government step in and tell restaurants and workplaces what to do, but is asking the state for an exemption from their 1993 law so that the citizens of Mecklenburg County can decide for themselves whether or not restaurants and workplaces should be smoke-free.
I’d also like to make a correction in this article. The author states that in House Bill 943, public places choosing to go smoke-free must permit at least 20% of its space to smoking. This is not true. This rule only applied to state building that did not go smoke-free before October 1993. Any privately owned business may go 100% smoke-free.
Kara, your analogies are thin. Patrons of a restaurant have no means by which to evaluate whether food is being handled in a sanitary fashion; government does that on their behalf and then posts the results. It is necessary precisely because no individual can make those determinations for themselves. They close those which fail to maintain minimum standards for the same reason: the health risk is hidden from the public. Patrons of a restaurant can easily determine for themselves whether smoking is allowed. No one needs government to do it for them since the health risk is not at all hidden.
Driving while intoxicated is even farther from the mark as an analogy. Those laws apply only on the public roadways, the management of which is accomplished on the public behalf -in other words, on behalf of the owners- by the owners’ representatives: government. No private business is public property and it is not appropriate for the public to manage private business. Beyond that, smoking in a privately owned venue is in no way analogous to DWI: you, as a driver, have no way to determine whether there is an impaired driver on the road you wish to use. You cannot, in other words, make an informed decision in your own self interest because you have no means of being informed. You absolutely CAN make an informed decision regarding exposure to smoking in a private business: all you have to do is ask in order to be informed, and make the decision that you find appropriate. Making smoking illegal in such places is in reality substituting the choice you prefer for people’s independent judgement. Beyond being an arrogant and heavy handed approach, it is also philosphically at odds with the progressive notion of expanded choice in society. Local control is still control, and it is control over the choices of others, not over one’s own choices. In the absence of anti-smoking legislation, you are still free to make the choice you find appropriate and so is everyone else. Prohibition doesn’t effect YOUR choice; it just prohibits everyone else’s.