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The Washington Post has a good story this week detailing how more nonsmokers who live in apartments and condos are speaking up about secondhand smoke intruding into their living spaces. The article notes that while it used to be assumed that smokers have a right to smoke in their homes, more people are realizing that nonsmokers [...] Secondhand smoke costs the state of Indiana $1.3 billion – yes, billion with a “b” — per year, a new study shows. The study, by Indiana University’s School of Medicine, comes as the state considers enacting a smokefree workplace law. Clearly, it should. The numbers alone are staggering – the cost of secondhand smoke amounts to $201 [...] Here’s more reason to support smokefree laws: A new Mayo Clinic study shows that in one Minnesota county that instituted a smokefree workplace law, heart attacks dropped by half. In addition, the number of people who died suddenly of heart disease was cut in half. These were the effects of a smokefree workplace law enacted in [...] Herman Cain, the former pizza CEO now running for president in the Republican primary, worked closely with the tobacco industry and supported efforts to defeat smokefree workplace policies, Think Progress reports. Cain was a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association, and in that capacity met frequently with tobacco industry lobbyists. He even signed up for a [...] On the bright side, the huge exemption to the smokefree workplaces law just got just smaller. The D.C. Council today approved a measure that would limit it to two events per year: Fight Night (a charity fundraiser) and the annual event held by the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, to which Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) [...] flickr photo courtesy of HitTrophy The D.C. Council is poised to yet again attempt to narrow the exemption it has been trying all summer to carve out of the smokefree workplaces law. You may recall that language passed in June permitted 79 hotels to hold cigar-smoking events once a year. In July, the Council narrowed that [...] Flickr photo courtesy of fashionfightspovertydc It isn’t often that a politician admits that his strategy is to bypass the public so he can win. But that’s what D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) told us yesterday when we ran into him outside the Wilson Building. We were talking to Councilmembers about the large exemption the Council put [...] On Thursday, Smokefree DC sent the following letter to D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown. We ccd the entire Council. Aug. 25, 2011 The Hon. Kwame Brown Dear Chairman Brown, We’re writing to tell you that the information you relied upon to support your vote for an exemption [...] “That’s life.” So muttered the woman next to me at a community meeting convened last night in the Greenbelt Community Center last night to discuss the problem of intrusion of secondhand smoke from one apartment to another. The woman was not very sympathetic to the plight of nonsmokers. What an appalling comment. I wonder how she [...] |
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