The issue: Earlier this month, Des Moines City Councilwoman Christine Hensley announced plans to pursue a ban on smoking in municipal parking garages. Hensley said she receives frequent complaints from people who dislike walking through secondhand smoke to get to or from their cars. The city banned smoking in municipal buildings, but not the garages, in 1988.
That was part of a flurry of smoking-related news in Iowa recently.
In their campaigns, both Governor-elect Chet Culver and his opponent, U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle, said they supported allowing local communities to decide whether to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. (Ames and Iowa City had passed ordinances to prohibit smoking in restaurants, but they were struck down by the Iowa Supreme Court in 2003. The court said the local ordinances were not permitted under state law.)
Meanwhile, some college and university campuses in Iowa are considering further restricting smoking on campus or banning it altogether.
Curb smoking in parking ramps
The Des Moines Register recently ran a story about banning smoking in city parking garages. This came about as the Des Moines City Council was reviewing our parking-garage system.
Since that time we have received numerous e-mails and calls regarding this issue, and 95 percent or better applaud the efforts the city of Des Moines is undertaking to review whether smoking would continue to be allowed in our parking garages.
Reasons to look at this issue include, first and foremost, concern about secondhand smoke. Because most companies have banned smoking in their buildings and on their property, smokers choose to go to the parking garages for their smoke breaks. We have received more and more complaints about the smoke filling cars as people drive through the smokers, the smell penetrating their clothes when they walk through the smokers to the skywalk and the large groups gathering at many of the skywalk entrances, causing safety concerns.
When a cigarette is smoked, about half of the smoke is inhaled/exhaled by the smoker, and the other half floats around in the air. Secondhand smoke is a toxic cocktail consisting of poisons and carcinogens. There are more than 4,000 chemical compounds in secondhand smoke, 200 of which are known to be poisonous, and upward of 60 have been identified as carcinogens. No one should be forced to breathe in air tainted with cigarette smoke.
Another issue of concern is the cigarette butts that are thrown on the ground and not in the ashtrays or receptacles provided. These butts do not disintegrate, and they make our city appear dirty, especially to our out-of-town guests. This has become so much of an issue that the parking management company is required to hire the equivalent of a fulltime employee to go through the garages daily and pick up the butts.
We understand that smokers have their rights; however, they should not infringe on others’ rights and endanger their health or litter parking garages or other public places. We believe we can all work together to designate smoking areas in public places that will accommodate smokers, but will not endanger others.
— CHRISTINE HENSLEY is a member of the Des Moines City Council. This essay was also signed by council members Chris Coleman, Michael Kiernan and Bob Mahaffey.
Smoking outdoors poses no public threat
At first, I thought maybe Christine Hensley was trying to protect smokers from the double-whammy of smoking while inhaling toxic fumes from car exhaust. Then, my more cynical side told me it must be a ploy to make smoking bans in bars and restaurants sound more reasonable. (“Keep the ramps, just give us the bars!”)
Whatever the case, the fact remains that brief exposure to secondhand smoke may be irritating to some, but it is not a public-health issue, despite what the George W. Bush-appointed surgeon general claimed last summer.
Fortunately, there are a few brave souls in the science and medical community who have dared challenge the “science” of the anti-smoking hysteria sweeping the country. Dr. Simon Chapman, editor of Tobacco Control journal, has stated outdoor smoking bans are baseless.
“For some rare individuals with exquisite sensitivity,” he states, “an acute exposure (to SHS) might precipitate an adverse episode. Similar claims are made about a large range of environmental agents. But, in general, public policy is not based on cocooning such people from exposures that are inconsequential to nearly everyone.”
Dr. Michael Siegel, current professor of public health at Boston University and a former scientist at the Centers for Disease Control’s Office on Smoking and Health, has repeatedly stated that “these policies (outdoor smoking bans) are not supported by scientific evidence.” He calls such non-science-based policies “social engineering at its worst.
It treats smokers as social pariahs, demonstrates intolerance, and takes tobacco control out of the realm of public health, turning it instead into a non-evidence-based moral crusade.”
In short, if you hate something badly enough, you’ll believe just about anything. This type of blind-faith thinking has gotten our country into all kinds of trouble, including our current mess in Iraq.
So, what’s the endgame here? How much segregation will be enough? How much are we, as a society, willing to compromise civil liberties and further marginalize 22 percent of the adult population in the name of “public health”?
RICHARD MAYNARD of Indianola is the Iowa Coordinator for The Smoker’s Club Inc., an international nonprofit organization formed to counter the intrusion on personal choice and civil liberties by the anti-smoking movement. The club neither advocates smoking nor is it funded by the tobacco industry.
Cigarettes to be snuffed on campus
Several of Iowa’s colleges and universities are considering tightening restrictions on smoking or enacting campuswide bans.
According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, 34 campuses nationwide have banned smoking on campus, inside and out, including Des Moines University, a medical school.
In July, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics banned smoking on its grounds. The five health-science colleges have pledged to follow suit next year.
A U of I committee is now studying a campuswide ban. Des Moines Area Community College and Drake University also plan to consider bans.
At Iowa State University, a ban was considered, but committees instead have recommended bans on smoking within 10 or 25 feet of buildings. Examples from a draft smoking policy: Smoking would be prohibited within 25 feet of building entrances, operable windows and fresh air intakes. It would be prohibited within 10 feet of outdoor eating areas. It would be allowed in designated private apartments in university housing.
Forums on the draft policy will be conducted from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday in the Cardinal Room of the Memorial Union and from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday in the South Ball Room.
