On June 7 the Fayetteville City Council failed to pass a comprehensive clean indoor air ordinance that would have protected bartenders, servers, and musicians from secondhand smoke. The vote required a super majority because it amended a popular vote in 2003.5 voted positively with 3 siding with the tobacco industry. And in this is the real story. The expected 6th vote to pass would have come from a former board member for the American Lung Association. Alderman Mark Kinion failed the people of Fayetteville and embarrassed himself and the Lung Association. This is reprehensible. Yet again evidence of the tremendous influence of the tobacco industry in Arkansas.
For your amusement, my presentation to the City Council is below.
Handsel Art
7 June 2011
contact J.R. Few
http://handselart.blogspot.com/
or 870-427-1365
ADDRESS TO THE FAYETTEVILLE, AR CITY COUNCIL
Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening.
My name is J.R. Pinky Few. I’m Creative Director for Handsel Art and Advertising. I’ve been a tobacco free advocate for about a decade. In 2006 I was recognized by the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas with the Trailblazer Award. The National Public Health Information Coalition cited my work in print media w gold and silver medals in 2007. In 2009 I was invited to speak on effective rural media at the ASH Wales conference in Cardiff, Wales. I currently work as a volunteer w the Arkansas Cancer Coalition on the Communications Committee and act as co-chair of the Lung Cancer Work Group.
I have to ask why a public health issue as evidence based as smoke free air is even being debated. The Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s report in 2006 stated that there was unequivocally no safe exposure to secondhand smoke. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin’s 2010 report, “explains beyond a shadow of a doubt how tobacco smoke causes disease, validates earlier findings, and expands and strengthens the science base.” She adds,” Armed with this irrefutable data, the time has come to mount a full-scale assault on the tobacco epidemic”. So why are we here?
George Santayana is quoted that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
In 1954, responding to growing epidemiological evidence relating tobacco to disease, the tobacco industry took out a full page ad in 400 of the largest newspapers in the country. Titled a “Frank statement to cigarette smokers”, it promised to work closely with public health officials to understand the ‘speculation’ about tobacco and disease. This spawned the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. That developed into the American Tobacco Institute and marks the beginning of decades of deceit, pseudoscience, and manipulation of our laws and public opinion. In 2006 a Federal Court convicted the tobacco industry of Racketeering and Fraud. In her final opinion Judge Gladys Kessler notes,
“These public promises were intended to deceive the American public into believing that there was no risk associated with passive smoking and that Defendants would fund objective research to find definitive answers. Instead, over the decades that followed, Defendants took steps to undermine independent research, to fund research designed and controlled to generate industry favorable results, and to suppress adverse research results.”
We are here because this historic fraud was, and continues to be, so very successful. The industry created, funds, and manipulates hospitality groups and smokers clubs to create the illusion that there was any question about the science or rights behind clean indoor air. Smoking is a privilege. Breathing is a right.
We hear concerns about lost business revenue when there are no legitimate, peer reviewed studies of tax receipts that do not show clean indoor air to be revenue neutral or advantageous to smoke free businesses. The only business that loses money with clean indoor air is the tobacco business.
I’ll warrant you’re hearing the same pro tobacco arguments today that you heard in 2003. The forecast economic doom didn’t happen then either. And in fact since 2003 research has shown that comprehensive smoke free space significantly reduces deaths from cardiovascular disease. In 2003 the study in Helena, Montana showed a 42% reduction in area heart attacks after a comprehensive law. This was replicated in Pueblo NM, in CA, in NY, in Italy. The National Academy of Sciences concluded from 11 key studies that comprehensive smoke free air in public spaces reduced heart attacks from 6% to 47% . These results were often seen almost immediately. This makes sense because we know that even brief exposure to secondhand smoke compromises the cardiovascular system.
Because of the lag time between exposure and the onset of cancers we have not seen the reduction among cancer deaths caused by tobacco smoke yet. However, the California EPA has classified secondhand smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant and as such subject to regulation even out of doors. This finding was the result of research showing a causal relationship between adult asthma, pre-term deliveries, and a significantly increased risk of breast cancer among primarily younger pre-menopausal women. This is pertinent today because so many young women work in bars before they start a family.
The risk of death from heart disease or cancer should never be a condition of employment or patronage.
100 years ago infectious disease was the leading cause of death. Simple sanitation, clean water and hand washing, saved millions of lives. Today tobacco is the leading cause of death and second hand smoke is the third leading cause. 100 years ago we did not have multinational corporations hiding behind rhetoric minimizing the risks to public health and claiming personal liberties. Today we do. We don’t force this rhetoric on sanitation or hand washing requirements. We don’t carefully weigh an individual’s right to build unsafely, to drive drunk or faster than the speed limit. Why should we phrase the question about clean indoor air as one of personal liberties? The fact is we shouldn’t. Smoke free air is a matter of public health. The only place that rights come into play is a human right to every opportunity for health and safety.
Clean indoor air requirements are simple and will save lives. Smoke free air protects nonsmokers, helps smokers quit, and is the example to young people that tobacco is never appropriate, desirable, or normal.
The data and ethics are straightforward and clear. It is well past time for a comprehensive clean indoor air ordinance. That is why we are here.
Thank you.
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