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There is no proven link between secondhand smoke and disease.
Wrong. Every credible medical and scientific
organization in the world—including the World Health Organization,
the US Surgeon General, national environmental protection agencies,
colleges of physicians and surgeons—agrees that secondhand smoke
exposure causes serious illness and death in nonsmokers. In the US,
53,000 non-smokers die every year from heart disease and 3,000 die
from lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke. And secondhand smoke
makes kids sick: it causes pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, and ear
infections.
There are more important sources of
pollution.
Wrong. Many things pollute our air, and we
should walk to clean up all health hazards in our environment. But
tobacco smoke must be recognized as one of those hazards. Along with
solid fuel fires for indoor cooking and heating, tobacco smoke is
one of the biggest causes of indoor cooking air pollution, and it is
a form of pollution that has an easy solution: eliminating smoking
indoors.
Shared smoking and non-smoking areas will
solve the problem.
Wrong. This is like having a urinating and a
non-urinating section in a swimming pool. Would you jump in? If the
air is shared, the smoke pollution is shared. Smoke in the smoking
section causes disease in the nonsmoking section.
Secondhand smoke is just an issue of
ventilation.
Wrong. Better ventilation may reduce the outdoor
smoke, but it does not eliminate the harmful chemicals. To eliminate
these chemicals in an average smoking office, so many air exchanges
would be required that there would be a small hurricane. The
cheapest, most effective, and only sensible solution is to eliminate
smoking indoors.
Smoke-free environments will harm businesses,
especially bars, restaurants, and tourist industries.
On the contrary, workplaces that are smoke-free
lower their maintenance and insurance costs (health and fire
insurance, for example), and their workers are more productive.
The effect of banning smoking in bars and
restaurants has been studied in hundreds of communities. Sales
receipts show that sales increase or remain the same in smoke-free
bars and restaurants in comparison to those in jurisdictions that
still allow smoking.
Smoking restrictions infringe on smokers’
rights.
Wrong. As the old saying goes, my right to swing
my arm stops where your nose begins. Smokers do not have the right
to harm others with their smoke. Smoke-free environments do not
violate the “right” to smoke, they protect the right of
nonsmokers’ to breathe clean air.
-- Pan American Health Organization, April 2003
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