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SMOKING BANS AND COMPROMISE

By Terry Gray

          The issue of smoking bans has taken a new turn in Louisville Kentucky, and it is a turn that every rights oriented activist should approach with caution.  The Mayor, Jerry Abramson, has stated that he is opposed to smoking bans but wants a compromise.  I question the Mayor’s motivation in the whole mess.

          I’ve been told by good sources that it was Mayor Abramson, several months ago, that initiated the idea of a smoking ban in Louisville.  After the storm began brewing, the mayor stayed on the sidelines.  Now he is opposing a ban but open for a compromise. 

It would seem that the Mayor made a grand political play in his stance.  One of the signs of a great marketer, albeit a sneaky leader, is in being able to create a need and then filling it; just as the Mayor has done.  He opened the door to controversy, stepped out of harm’s way, and now proposes to help both sides.  This is a very clever political strategy, but sorry, no cigar.

          There is really only one compromise that should be considered by business owners and smokers alike; using some of the tobacco settlement money to help businesses in Louisville assure their quality of air.  After all, this is the antis’ main point of contention.

          Tobacco settlement money was supposed to be used for tobacco education.  Smoke Free Louisville got a substantial chunk of the settlement money, $88,000 by last count, and used it to fund their anti-tobacco campaign.  Funding the campaign included lobbying city government to initiate a smoking ban. 

          Smoke-Free Louisville cites the health of the workers in smoking optional establishments as their concern. 

Did you know that in a small bar, it would take burning 375,000 cigarettes per hour for the air to reach the EPA’s permissible exposure limit to arsenic?  Did you know that some perfumes have more toxins than tobacco smoke?  Did you know that coffee contains 16 known carcinogens?  Did you know that airport take-offs in a day emit a billion times more pollutants than smokers?  Did you know that the EPA announced that the heavy black smoke emitted from the burning towers in New York two years ago was not toxic?  Did you know that several studies have confirmed that children of smokers are less likely to get lung cancer?  The anti-smoking groups don’t want you to know these things.         

The only compromise that I would accept concerning a smoking ban in Louisville would be an equitable share of tobacco settlement money earmarked for subsidizing air filtration in smoking-optional establishments; then leaving it alone.

          In a google search on the internet, I uncovered several affordable, efficient air filtration systems.  These systems are specifically designed for tobacco smoke filtration. The cost of such a system for a 1,800 square foot building (60’X30’) is about $800.  Eighty-eight thousand dollars would have purchased 110 of these systems.  That would have made a good dent in the problem of protecting workers and patrons.

          Antis keep telling us that filtration doesn’t work for tobacco smoke.  Yet, they will readily protect themselves from anthrax by putting duct tape and plastic on their windows.  The particulate matter of anthrax is smaller than the particulate matter associated with tobacco smoke.  Anthrax slips past the best of filters and kills. 

Antis will allow their children to play outside in neighborhoods surrounding airports, hand in hand with children from normal, non-zealot American families concerned with their children’s health and welfare while jets spew tons of toxins directly on the kids.  Antis that do catch on to this poisoning of their kids and themselves will move away from the dangerous areas as soon as possible.  One could compare their avoidance of airport pollution to that of staying out of smoking-optional restaurants. It seems simple enough in comparison. 

Antis will wear perfume and drink coffee.

          I urge all citizens that are concerned about any and all of their rights, including smoking and property, to take with a grain of salt the claims made by Smoke Free Louisville and groups of their ilk.  Their purpose is not the protection of the health of workers or patrons; their agenda calls for the eradication of tobacco, regardless of the right or wrong of it and regardless of whom they hurt in the process.

          Any compromise that reduces our current system of freedom of choice will only serve to expand the restrictions in increments until a total ban on tobacco is put into effect.  Then a new ban project will begin.

Terry Gray

President – Forces Kentucky

5110 Emery Ave

Louisville, Ky. 40214

502.363.1042
 

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