Wednesday, December 25, 2002

A few businesses are going smoke-free in PTC

Thank you, Peachtree City Wal-Mart. Along with Ruby Tuesday you are restoring my faith in our business community. Your companies care enough about your customers and employees to fix the problem of secondhand smoke without our having to rely on a smoking ban.

Ruby Tuesdays in both Peachtree City and Fayetteville have now gone smoke-free (the first of our many restaurants with a full bar area to do so). Our brand-new Wal-Mart is the first business outside of our industrial park that I have found willing to make the effort to qualify for our blue "separately ventilated" sign.

Wal-Mart has built a separately ventilated employees' smoking room along with their smoke-free employees' break room. After working for hours their employees can get off their feet in a safe and healthy break room while smoking employees are more safely accommodated in another contained area. Customers all breathe safe smoke-free air. (Remember, a No Smoking sign only tells you that you can't smoke, not if anyone else can smoke where you will be inhaling it.)

Thank you for showing that protection from the smoker's overflowing wastes can be offered in our caring and responsible businesses. It is a shame that all the restaurants built in the last four years with bar areas (especially in the Ga. highways 74 and 54 area) chose not to do the same.

It is time for all of the "we don't care because you don't care" businesses in Peachtree City to get rid of their red "tobacco smoke present" signs. Why do they still put encouraging smoking ahead of the health and safety of their customers and employees while they refuse to put in the time, money and effort needed to contain and separately exhaust the smoke away from everyone else?

It has taken us four years to start to accomplish what other communities have instantly created with a smoking ban, smoke-free air. The people in California, Florida, Delaware, DeKalb County, Albany, Ga., Montgomery, Ala., and others have already figured out how to stop sitting in the smoker's overflowing wastes. Why can't we? Just require smoke-free air! We can still allow smoking in separately ventilated areas. As long as doing nothing is an option, the danger is just being ignored.

How many more people have to die or have their quality of life destroyed by irresponsible smokers and irresponsible businesses before we fix the problem?

Kathleen Cheney

Peachtree City