Opinion Editorials
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The time has come
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Published: February 15, 2009
For generations, the Winston-Salem Journal has been tied to tobacco, just as have so many other organizations and people in the city that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. helped build. The tobacco industry has put food on our tables; it built our hospitals, colleges and churches and supported our charities. Tobacco has been a proud, hard-working way of life for everyone from farmers to factory workers, a way of life we have long supported on this page.
But starting today, with the full gravity of overwhelming medical evidence against second-hand smoke weighing on our judgment, we must break with the past and support further restrictions against smokers, in the interest of public health.
Rep. Hugh Holliman of Davidson County has filed a bill in the state House that would ban smoking in virtually all enclosed workplaces and buildings open to the public in North Carolina to protect nonsmokers from second-hand smoke. The N.C. General Assembly should pass this bill.
We've stood up for the rights of those who produce and partake in tobacco, both in Winston-Salem and across our state. But smokers' rights must end where those of nonsmokers -- whether they're children or coworkers -- begin. The dangers of second-hand smoke, once belittled, are now undeniable. It would be untenable for this newspaper, or this state, to fail to act on that knowledge.
"Today, massive and conclusive scientific evidence documents adverse effects of involuntary smoking on children and adults, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases in adults, and adverse respiratory effects in both children and adults," then-Surgeon General Richard Carmona wrote in the preface to a landmark 2006 study of second-hand smoke, a complex mix that includes known carcinogens. "Exposure to second-hand smoke causes excess deaths in the U.S. population from lung cancer and cardiac-related illnesses."
Second-hand smoke puts children at risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It can also cause low-birth weight, a factor in high infant-mortality rates, long a problem in Forsyth County.
Our endorsement of Holliman's bill, which would be a stringent restriction on smoking, represents a major change in the Journal's stance on the industry.
The time has come.
Holliman is no voice in the wilderness. He's the House majority leader. Similar bills he filed in 2005 and 2007 were narrowly defeated on the House floor. This year's bill would allow smoking only in a few work places and buildings open to the public, such as tobacco shops, tobacco factories and smoking rooms in hotels. Smoking in bars and restaurants would be over. Those business owners who haven't already banned smoking would be forced to do so.
Smokers who continue to light up in prohibited areas would face fines of $50. Business owners who still allow smoking after repeated warnings would be fined $200. There might be some kinks in enforcement to be worked out. But we suspect that most business owners would obey the law to avoid risking costly lawsuits.
Smokers would still be able to go outside for a cigarette, although some companies and institutions have their own restrictions about that. Most important, the law would protect all workers, whether in factories or bars, from secondhand smoke.
The law protects workers from asbestos and other dangers. There's no reason it shouldn't protect them from smoke. With work hard to find, people shouldn't have to choose between their job and their health.
Holliman tells a compelling personal story of surviving lung cancer that he believes may have been caused by second-hand smoke.
"At the time of the 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health … many physicians were still smokers, and the tables in U.S. Public Health Service meeting rooms had PHS ashtrays on them," the surgeon general's 2006 report noted. "A thick, smoky haze was an accepted part of presentations at large meetings, even at medical conferences and in the hospital environment."
The '64 report and others about the dangers of smoking continued to accumulate. Doctors quit. So did many of their patients. They still had to endure the "smoky haze" in public places ranging from courthouses to restaurants.
That started to change as reports about the dangers of second-hand smoke came out. Recent laws have prohibited smoking in prisons, state-government buildings and adult-care homes.
In Winston-Salem, smoking is now banned on the grounds of the two main hospitals and at many other places -- including inside the Journal building. These moves are not only necessary for public health; they're good for business. Winston-Salem has transformed from a city dependent on tobacco and textiles to one making a name in biotech circles.
Meanwhile, the tobacco industry continues to struggle against mounting evidence about the ill effects of smoking, as well as its human and financial costs.
In regard to the dangers of secondhand smoke, "the debate is over," Holliman said recently.
We agree. The legislature should pass Holliman's bill.
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