A Reason to Celebrate: New York State's "New Low" in Smoking Rates


The rate of smoking in the state of New York is now slightly less than one in five. This is news worth celebrating!

According to two reports released recently, the rate of smoking in the state of New York is now slightly less than one in five. Our current 19.9 percent smoking rate is .2 less than the rate it was in 2002, and 1.7 percent lower than the rate for the entire country.

Hooray! This is something we can really celebrate.

New York State has been in the forefront of anti-smoking laws (though California, my former home state, has been a bit ahead of us). One of the best things that happened in New York recently was the Clean Indoor Air Act, which banned smoking in all public places, including bars and restaurants. The major point of the law was that it protected workers in such places from the poisons prevalent in second-hand smoke. Of course, that also meant that it would protect patrons as well.

One of the results, of course, is that those of us who don't smoke (hey, we are the vast majority!) can now enjoy going to bars and restaurants in this state without being forced to inhale polluted air.

I know, I know. Smokers (that is, people whose brains are addled by the poisons they take into their bodies on a regular basis) are going to argue that these laws are an unwarranted invasion on their rights to kill themselves slowly if they so choose.

Problem is, unlike other vices, smoking doesn't just hurt the person who smokes. Smoking poisons the air for everyone around the smoker.

Cigarettes contain and emit large quantities of toxic chemical emissions including carbon monoxide. They are inherently dangerous. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking: 25 Years of Progress: a Report of the Surgeon General, Publication CDC 89-8411, Table 7, pp 86-87 (1989), lists examples of deleterious ingredients including but not limited to:

acetaldehyde (1.4+ mg)
arsenic (500+ ng)
benzo(a)pyrene (.1+ ng)
cadmium (1,300+ ng)
crotonaldehyde (.2+ µg)chromium (1,000+ ng)
ethylcarbamate 310+ ng)formaldehyde (1.6+ µg)
hydrazine (14+ ng)lead
(8+ µg)nickel (2,000+ ng)
radioactive polonium (.2+ Pci)

According to the U.S. Surgeon General's most recent report on smoking, these chemicals cause diseases in virtually every organ of the human body, not just the lungs. As stated by the S.G.'s 2004 press release: "Cigarette smoking is conclusively linked to diseases such as leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia and cancers of the cervix, kidney, pancreas and stomach."

I became acutely aware of how important New York's Clean Indoor Air Act is when I visited Maryland in late March/early April this year. Some 30-something friends of mine (actually, the daughter and son-in-law of my old college roommate Wendy...that's another story to tell) took me to a bar in Frederick to hang out and listen to music. The bar was crowded with people having a good time -- I would say 60 or so. Out of those 60, there were maybe five people smoking. So five people were imposing their poisons on all the rest of us.

Despite the small number of smokers, I came back with hair and clothes smelling of smoke -- and if it's on my hair and clothes, that means it is also in my lungs. I was lucky I didn't go into an asthma attack.

Now, we all had a lovely time listening to the band, which played mostly Beatles music. (I thought it was cute when one of these 30-somethings was stunned that I not only knew the words to all the songs but which albums the songs came from! Heck, those songs were on the top of the charts when Wendy and I lived in Santa Barbara way back when.) But I was anxious to get away from the smoke, fearing that I would have an attack (and remembering I had left my inhalers in my back pack at the condo).

Here's hoping more states will kick the habit! We could all breathe easier then...









Posted: Wed - June 1, 2005 at 09:56 AM          

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