Throughout
the United States, approximately 425 local governments have
enacted smokefree air legislation for outdoor areas, especially
recreational facilities like parks, playgrounds, and beaches,
as well as school grounds and near buildings. (That is a
February 2004 total; for a current count, contact Americans
for Nonsmokers' Rights, 510 841-3032.) Hundreds of private
decision makers have instituted smokefree outdoor policies
for sites within their authority, including company grounds,
condo pools, sports stadiums, etc.
Lawmakers
in Sharon, Massachusetts eliminated smoking at ballfields,
parks, and public beaches. New York City legislation mandates
smokefree school grounds, playgrounds, and requires parts
of restaurant outdoor eating areas to be free from smoking.
Davis and Palo Alto, California ban smoking near entrances
and at bus stops. Honolulu City Council banned smoking on
Hanauma Bay beach, Honolulu Zoo, and the Koko Crater Botanical
Garden.
In New
Jersey there are more than 70 smokefree outdoor ordinances
for parks, pools, beaches, ballfields, and zoos in locations
including Belmar, Cape May County, Cedar Grove, Ft. Lee,
Hackensack, Hackettstown, Mt. Olive, Ocean City, Princeton
Borough and Township, and Vineland. (That's an early-2004
tally; New Jersey GASP tracks local ordinances and provides
current totals including on www.njgasp.org in the legislation
section.)
Smokefree
outdoor policies are in place in various sites. Workplaces,
including Schering-Plough, Scott Paper, Calgon, Comsat,
and Merck, have smokefree grounds. These organizations decided
that, in places where they have authority to set healthful
standards, they will not enable nicotine addiction. Many
professional and amateur sports facilities are smokefree,
including almost all 28 major league baseball stadiums.
The Pine Valley Golf Club in New Jersey, ranked as the number
one golf course in the world by Golf Magazine, "started
posting 'No Smoking' on the board when the weather conditions
became so dry that we were afraid of fire," said club
manager Charles Raudenbush. Then the club noticed how much
cleaner the course was (many cigarette filters are not biodegradable)
and that costs for litter removal were reduced. So the policy
became permanent. (For more sites, contact New Jersey GASP.)
Some
people may question smokefree outdoor laws and policies.
Any consideration of smokefree policies must start with
the fact that tobacco use and secondhand smoke are the primary
public health problem in our nation, killing almost half
a million people every year. Most jurisdictions, of course,
haven't enacted smokefree air laws for indoors, where the
hazards are greater. But legislators and decision makers
have many good reasons for mandating smokefree outdoor areas:
Environmental
Tobacco Smoke (ETS) can be a health hazard outdoors, especially
for a child with asthma or a person with emphysema sitting
among smokers in a stadium with 70,000 fans in assigned
seats. Certainly secondhand smoke can be offensive outdoors,
triggering immediate responses like eye irritation, headache,
coughing, and difficulty breathing.
With
the proliferation of smokefree indoor air policies and laws,
some organizations have also mandated smokefree grounds
so people don't have to walk through a cloud of smoke to
enter buildings. Also, smoke outdoors can become smoke indoors,
entering through entrances, windows, or air-intake vents.
Smoking
outdoors poses a fire and burn threat, just as it does indoors.
The U.S. Department of the Interior reports that, from 1990
to 1999, almost 44,000 acres of forests were burned because
of cigarettes. Smoking creates a burn hazard, especially
on beaches, at swimming pools, and in crowded places.
Cigarette
butts, packages, and other tobacco-use debris are a source
of litter, particularly in outdoor smoking areas or near
entrances, and a poison hazard. The Center for Marine Conservation
found cigarette butts to be the largest single source of
beach trash, in its 1995 study in 33 states. Kids making
sandcastles don't need cigarette butts; in fact, poison
control centers and emergency rooms report incidents caused
by children ingesting cigarette butts. Tobacco debris adds
nothing good to nature trails.
Eliminating
smoking outdoors helps educate everyone, especially children,
about good health by providing more examples of smokefree
environments and less smoking by role models. Governments
and schools teach that nonsmoking is best but undermine
that message if they allow smoking in places where they
have authority to eliminate it.
Smokefree
outdoor laws and policies are similar to other outdoor standards.
Alcohol use is forbidden in many public places outdoors.
People are required to clean up after their dogs outdoors.
The
tobacco industry may object, and trumpet "freedom of
choice". But freedom and choice are peculiar words
to describe smoking -- an addiction, almost always begun
in childhood, promoted by massive disinformation, that most
users want to quit.
Outdoor
smokefree policies and laws are in force in many places
now. In New Jersey, smokefree outdoor ordinances are passing
at the rate of more than one a month. (Municipalities have
been challenged on their authority to enact smokefree indoor
air ordinances and are taking action where they can.) Like
anti-littering laws, seat belt requirements, even smokefree
indoor air policies and laws, they were once considered
unusual but then increased and became accepted.
The
choice that proprietors and legislators make every day is
whether to enable addiction and public health nuisance or
to encourage health for all. Smokefree outdoor air policies
and laws protect public health and preserve the choice of
the nonsmoking majority to be free from tobacco's damaging
consequences.
Regina Carlson, Executive Director, New Jersey GASP (Group
Against Smoking Pollution), a nonprofit, educational organization
working for smokefree air for nonsmokers and tobacco-free
lives for children.
March
2004
