Distancing Ourselves from Secondhand Smoke

Search for Orange County’s scores for tobacco control on the OC Register website, and the first few entries are from 2008 and 2011.  While written 3 years apart, O.C. flunks for bans on smoking and O.C. flunks anti-smoking efforts are essentially identical.  The articles, based on the American Lung Association’s State of Tobacco Control report, indicate only minor countywide progress, and an unchanged “F” grade for Orange County’s lack of tobacco control policies.  And for 2013?  Local inactivity and disinterest reigns once again.  Orange County received another F, evidence of its laxity to protect its residents against secondhand smoke.  

In 1995, the ban on indoor smoking was a leading example of statewide commitment to public health.  Now, recent tolerance for smoking has allowed secondhand smoke exposure to adapt to our present day lifestyle and become reincorporated into normal routines.  Recently, I joined a long food-truck line where I was struck with the unfortunate luck to be in front of someone smoking in line.  The wait was over half an hour and with health risks stemming from any amount of secondhand smoke exposure, there is clearly an urgent need for public protection. 

Chances are that at, some point this week, you too were exposed to cancer-causing chemicals while doing your average errands.  Dining out, stopping by at the Laundromat, walking into work, cigarette smoke is reemerging back into our lives.  Exposure to cigarette smoke means exposure to over 4,000 chemicals found in pesticides, rat poisons, car exhaust, embalming fluid, rocket fuel, and paint thinner.  Californians may not encounter secondhand smoke inside the workplace, but now face it in public areas instead.  All places where the public unwillingly encounters secondhand smoke needs to be established as smokefree, regardless of whether it is located indoor or outdoor. 

Many are fooled by the delusion that smoking outdoors is safer than smoking indoors, but this isn’t always the case.  Stanford researchers report similar secondhand smoke levels when they compared levels of someone indoors with a smoker and someone outdoors and a few feet away from a smoker.  Secondhand smoke consultants like Repace Associates, Inc. recommend a minimal 25 feet away from cigarettes, even when outdoors to be considered completely free of exposure to secondhand smoke.

Of all the preventable deaths in the United States, tobacco is the largest cause of mortality.  It is well-established that smoking cigarettes leads to personal harm, illness, and death.  But, it is inexcusable that nontobacco users suffer from tobacco-related deaths as well.  For every one smoker who dies from the health complications of smoking, twenty faultless nonsmokers suffer from smoke-related health problems such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, or lung cancer. 

Cities need to get tough.  As the Register reported in 2010, municipalities are granted the right to “ban smoking on outdoor restaurant patios, require non-smoking units in apartment complexes and prohibit pharmacies from selling tobacco products”.  It is worth mentioning, that only one city in Orange County improved upon their score in the year since the American Lung Association released their 2012 report.

Simple requests to put out a cigarette are not always welcomed (or heeded) without some sort of supporting policy, so I ask restaurants, dining and housing associations, and our entire community to give the healthy a hand and support a plan to distance ourselves from secondhand smoke.  Ultimately, the responsibility falls to local elected officials to take control over this issue, and fight for residential health and regional appeal.