Wednesday,September 17, 2003

Restaurants, public refuse to address smoking health issue

In response to the letter asking why I question the level of responsibility already shown by some of our area's restaurants, it is from painful personal experience and observation.

While I commend and encourage those who serve liquor to protect others on our streets from the intoxicated people they have helped create, please recognize that protecting themselves from being held financially liable is often their main concern.

It is those who protect others when it is not legally required who I consider showing true responsibility. The very restaurants listed in the letter are my example. Instead of taking the steps needed to contain the smoker's overflowing waste from the other customers, they have chosen instead to continue to ignore the problem. Why? Because they can. It is not legally required and as I've been told, until it is, they cannot justify the effort.

Unlike E. coli, salmonella, or drunk drivers, the damage done by secondhand smoke cannot be traced back to its source. I will never know if it was the smoke from my parents in our home or that in my workplace (where the danger was carefully recirculated so nonsmokers could share the danger along with the smokers) that was the source of the carcinogen, the time bomb, that caused my smoker's throat cancer. Knowing not to smoke isn't enough. You have to stop sitting in it.

Because there is no consequence to the irresponsible smoker or the equally irresponsible businesses that encourage them, they are still successfully ignoring the problem, just like their customers. But you are right; it is the responsibility of more than just the restaurants. It is also a reflection of our community and what we value.

No one is trying to limit smoking. We are just trying to limit the current right the irresponsible smokers exercise to harm others needlessly with their smoke.

Restaurants understand that sooner or later, smoke-free workplaces will be required. They just want to keep on encouraging smoking until then, and by doing nothing, you help them.

Stop sitting in the smoker's overflowing waste; the waste that can make you sick enough to die.

Kathie Cheney

Peachtree City, Ga.