Comments by clancy
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Posted on December 10 at 9:27 a.m.
Not much difference between spitting tobacco juice on the floor of a bar and puffing out secondhand smoke into the surrounding air. Both actions are not only offensive but unhealthy. Spitting anywhere you wanted used to be an acceptable behavior--in the old days. Smoking in public will soon be remembered as an unusual behavior that many people were addicted to--in the old days. Ashtrays and spittoons should be relegated to museums and so should the thinking and the companies that fostered them.
Smoking not only harms the primary breather, but also the secondhand breather who is inhaling in the same toxins from someone else's cigarette smoke. No business or individual has a constitutional right to harm another person. Freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness does not include harming another person--or forcing non-smokers to protect themselves by absenting themselves from smoky environments.
Congratulations to the three Emporia city commissioners who voted to protect the majority of their residents from a public health hazard.
Posted on September 30 at 9:41 p.m.
A statewide clean indoor air law would be good, but such a policy can be adopted faster at the local level, including Emporia. Such a policy improves health.
A cigarette tax increase is also an effective health strategy. Such a tax increase reduces the number of cigarette packs sold, but the additional 75 cents per pack would provide Kansas even more tax revenue than it does at the lower tax rate.
The expansion of available funding could then help provide health care and prevention care for those Kansans with low incomes and oftentimes with expensive chronic illnesses that cost the state so much to provide through emergecny room treatment.
Support an improvement of public health in Kansas. Let your local and state policy makers know that you support clean indoor air laws and increased tobacco excise taxes.
Posted on September 29 at 12:22 p.m.
All businesses must meet safety and health requirements.
Once business owners apply for and receive various licenses from the city and the state to operate, they then control a lot of what happens in their businesses. But these licenses (business, liquor, food establishment, etc.) provide the privilege of doing business in a community, and they also set out the safety and health norms to protect workers as well as customers. So there are requirements for rodent and pest control, clean kitchens and restrooms, the hotness and coldness of certain food and beverages, limitations on what workers under 17 years old can do, designation of closing times for some businesses, restrictions on noise level, etc. These requirements—or regulations-- help provide a safe environment for the people entering or working in such businesses.
The requirements change over the years as more information is learned. Do we allow spittoons on the bar room floors or the common drinking cup in food or drink establishments? Now we expect clean glasses and buffet tables with protective shields.
We now know exposure to secondhand smoke is a danger to patrons and workers alike. The easiest protection against secondhand smoke is a smoke free policy for public indoor areas, with smokers still free to smoke outside where they are not contaminating other people’s breathing space.
Since 2002, twenty-eight cities and two counties in Kansas have adopted restrictions on secondhand smoke in public places, and many other communites are considering such policies.
Everyone should have the right to breathe clean indoor air where they work, where they eat and where they play. Why shouldn’t all workers as well as all customers in Emporia have that right also?
Posted on August 20 at 5:52 p.m.
In answer to rbow who questions the accuracy of health studies on secondhand smoke. Actually for every 15 studies on the adverse health effects of secondhand smoke, there is one that claims secondhand smoke may not be all that bad. Of course those skimpy studies are often financed by the tobacco companies whose profits depend on keeping people smoking while attracting new smokers, mainly kids, to replace the smokers who die off or give up smoking when they are too sick to maintain the addiction.
On Opponents say Clean Air Emporia over-reaches with smoking ban plan
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Posted on December 19 at 3:26 p.m.
There have only been two petitions on clean indoor air issues that have gone to a vote in Kansas. And the advocates for smokefree air won both. In Salina pro-smoking folks brought a petition to a vote to rescind the smokefree restaurant ordinance passed in that city in 2002--and they lost. This past November, Clean Air Manhattan brought a clean indoor air policy to a vote--and they won.
After all the majority of people in Kansas--over 80%--do not smoke and most of them do not like having to inhale tobacco smoke toxins. The majority of Kansans –83%--believe that secondhand smoke is a health hazard. In addition the majority of Kansans—73% --want clean indoor air policies protecting them from exposure to secondhand smoke in their own communities.
If the Emporia Open for Business petition actually comes to a vote, it is logical to assume that the majority of non-smoking Emporians will vote for a healthy environment in workplaces and public places. And Emporia will still be open for business but in a much healthier way.
On Smoking petitions circulating