Two large studies recently reported have confirmed that smoking bans result in a 26% decrease in heart attacks. Communities which enact secondhand smoke regulation benefit in more ways than one. It is estimated there would be 110,000 to 250,000 fewer heart attacks in the US if reasonable regulations were nationwide. See CNN link.http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/22/moh.healthmag.smoking.heart/index.html
Smoke Free Pulaski County coalition’s efforts to promote a regulation to protect workers and patrons from second hand smoke was selected by the Commonwealth Journal as one of the top 10 community issues/stories in 2008. The local group was also cited in reporter Bill Estep’s Lexington Herald Leader feature “Southern KY bucks smoking ban trend”. Both indicate that although southern KY lags behind the rest of the state in protecting employee/customer health, momentum is building in Somerset and Pulaski County for a clean indoor air ordinance for the area. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah… the term for which I have been waiting: “libertarian”. Thank you, Chris Harris (CJ editorial, August 6). It may help to have a label for that force in southern Kentucky which attempts to take us back where we were 200 years ago. (Not that that would be a bad thing; it just doesn’t work in the modern world). Many here have Chris’s belief: that liberty means each one doing as they please - they just didn’t know the word for it. Defined in my dictionary, libertarian: one under the delusion that “each man is an island”, also see John Donne, Meditation XVII. It is a delusion because we are all part of a community. In a community, we are responsible to each other. We can be thankful for many of the protections our government has given us. Commercial fire codes, for example, violate the “rights” of businesses, but protect us. And responsible officials must continue to protect the public; if we were a “libertarian” society, we wouldn’t need you, quite frankly.
Posted by A.Perkins (views not necessarily those of all SFPC members)
http://www.kentucky.com/591/story/436955.html
Pulaski County is the latest Kentucky place to consider going smoke-free.
Last week, the fiscal court in Somerset received a petition from 36 local physicians supporting a smoke-free law, reports The Commonwealth Journal.
The county commissioners also heard from an opponent who said smoking bans are un-American and that the Bible is mum on the subject of tobacco use, which he takes as approval.
Any number of judicial bodies, including the Kentucky Supreme Court, have declared that protecting the public from secondhand smoke is a constitutional and proper use of government power.
And the Bible teaches that we reap what we sow. Right now, Kentucky’s tolerance for tobacco is reaping a bumper crop of disease, death and disability, along with billions of dollars in avoidable health care costs and lost productivity.
Consider findings by a team of researchers, including University of Kentucky nursing professor Ellen Hahn, who used a well-known computer-simulation model to predict effects of tobacco-control policies.
They concluded that 1,807 lives a year could be saved by 2026 if Kentucky made a stronger effort to prevent and discourage smoking.
The study was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and published last month in the Southern Medical Journal.
Of all the ways to discourage smoking, the study says, three would have the biggest immediate impact: price, smoke-free laws and media campaigns.
Kentucky has the 46th- lowest cigarette tax and some of America’s cheapest cigarettes.
The state has never had a statewide media campaign, and Kentucky youth receive little exposure to anti-smoking advertising.
Lexington, Louisville and a few other places have smoke-free laws. But there are no state-level clean-air laws.
Kentucky is No. 1 in smoking, lung cancer and lung cancer deaths, but 39th in tobacco-control activities.
In other words, there’s a lot of room for improvement.
The study used goals set by Healthy People 2010, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which include taxing cigarettes at $2 a pack.
The tax in Kentucky is 69 cents — 39 cents levied by the federal government and 30 cents by the state. The state Senate this year blocked a chance to ease the state budget crunch with a modest cigarette tax increase. There’s lots of room for improvement there, too.
Kentucky makes smoking cheap and easy and pays a high price as a result. More than 7,500 Kentuckians a year die directly from smoking. That doesn’t even count victims of secondhand smoke and smoking-related fires.
And the number of smoking-caused deaths will increase, the study predicts, if our tobacco-control policies stay the same.
Kentucky cities and counties which are smoke free:
Ashland, Daviess Co, Elizabethtown, Frankfort, Georgetown, Henderson, Letcher Co, Lexington/Fayette Co, Louisville/Jefferson Co, Morehead, Oldham Co, Paducah, Paintsville, Pikeville, Richmond/Madison Co, London, Campbellsville (updated 9/09)
In our area of
If everyone did the “right thing”, smoking bans would not be necessary; neither would traffic laws, policemen, or taxes for that matter. We could all be libertarian, happy and secure. Clearly, the problem with secondhand-smoke bans comes because of the collision of the rights of business owners and the rights of others. The factor that has brought us to this confrontation is the recent conclusion about secondhand smoke and health. Specifically, in 2006, the
Based upon the health risks to workers and to the public, the Smokefree Pulaski County Coalition and the Pulaski County Medical Society request that the Pulaski County Fiscal Court pass an ordinance prohibiting smoking in workplaces and public places. We believe the following supporting assertions can be easily substantiated:
1. Indoor smoking exposes non-smokers, especially workers, to the harmful effects of tobacco smoke, and increases the exposure of smokers.
2. The Surgeon General’s report of 2006 details the consequences of secondhand smoke expos Read the rest of this entry »