Petition Calls for 100% Smoke-Free Indoor Public Places and Workspaces in St. Louis City
A new online petition targeted at St. Louis’ decision makers (aldermen?) calls for smoke-free places:
Yes, I support having 100% smoke-free indoor public places and workplaces in St. Louis City, including bars and restaurants! I support protecting the citizens and workers in St. Louis City from the dangers of secondhand smoke, a Group A carcinogen known to cause cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses.
The goal is 1,000 signatures — I was #571. If you agree, you can sign here.
Update 10/23/07 @ 11:15pm — the group’s main website is smokefreestl.org.
Steve, thanks for posting this!
About Us:
Our Coalition:
Smoke-Free St. Louis City is a coalition of concerned citizens and organizations including the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Tobacco-Free Missouri, St. Louis Regional Asthma Consortium, Saint Louis University Cancer Center, BJC HealthCare, National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, Missouri Public Interest Research Group, Maternal Child & Family Health Coalition, Institute for Family Medicine, and many others.
Our Mission:
To educate the community and local decision makers on the dangers of secondhand smoke and the ill health effects smoking in bars, restaurants and the workplace brings. With the long term goal of helping to pass a comprehensive smoke-free policy in St. Louis City that protects the health of all our city’s citizens.
Why:
Secondhand smoke is not a nuisance; it’s a community health hazard. Every day, thousands of people in St. Louis – customers and employees – breathe secondhand smoke inside public places. We need to protect our right to breathe smoke-free air. Fewer than 25% of people smoke – so if you want to breathe fresh air in St. Louis, you’re not alone. The time has come for a Smoke-Free St. Louis City!
Mary, you may come portraying yourself as a “concerned citizen” but you are bringing us legislation that is chipping away at our liberty.
If you do not like second-hand smoke, you are free to not patronize those places that do not allow smoking. There is a growing market for these types of public places, so you won’t even have to threaten property owners with fines and jail time to find a place that does not have smoking.
I suppose you don’t like women walking around topless either. When will I see your legislation outlawing that in public places (strip-clubs)?
Sinclair Lewis was wrong when he said “When Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Instead it will be out to rid the world of booze and cigarettes and lower your “carbon footprint”.
Forgotten Man, she’s doesn’t want to chip away at OUR liberty, but at smoker’s (your?) liberty.
I’m pretty much okay with that.
I don’t like being around smokers, but this needs to be done on a statewide basis, not city by city. Until then, I’m going to support the rights of individual businesses to decide what works best for them individually.
If the purpose is to educate the public on the fallout from smoke, the campaign would include the smoke from cars which is our collective killer. Yes we need to protect our right to smoke-free air but targeting a small minority won’t and cannot do it (yes I’m against smoking cigarettes in public spaces). Problem here is that the majority are auto-dependent while a minority are cigarette smokers. Are the majority so addicted to fossil fuels that they are unable to deal with their own destructive behavior? No doubt…
As I get older, I’ve become more and more sensitive to cigarette smoke – I’d actually go out more if a smoking ban were enacted.
BTW, does signing a petition anonymously really help anything?
FYI This let me vote from Arizona and it would seem from the comments that people from throughout St. Louis County are voting as well. I enjoy a cigarette from time to time but can step outside to do so and prefer smoke-less bars like in CA and AZ, but I would have to rank the political effectiveness of this online petition somewhere below a form letter and only slightly above 14 year old kids trying to play “Anarchy in the UK” in their parents’ basement with overturned trash cans as drums.
Obesity is a greater health risk than smoking. That’s right. More people die each year from stuffing their faces than smoking in the U.S. Why not a petition to tax fat people (say anyone more than 15% over their normal weight) to go along with the smoking ban?
I’ve used the Care 2 petition site for another issue and the petition owners (ie: Smoke-Free St. Louis City) will receive every signers’ name, address, and email. For political purposes, a list of only city residents and their voting address can be collected and delivered to the aldermen. Online petitions (ie. MoveOn.org) are the wave of the future and just as effective as regular petitions. I think it’s great that city outsiders are signing too – can’t they spend their money in the City’s bars and restaurants?
“Why statewide basis only? Why not county (the city is a county)? ”
One reason may be the incentive it would give smokers (who make up a large segment of the bar patronizing crowd) to take a short drive out of the city to an establishment that lets them have both cigarettes and whiskey together.
While I appreciate the thought of not having to drop my clothes immediately in the washer when I get home after a night on the town, I tend to hate nanny state initiatives like the smoking ban. Steve, I think you sum up best when you comment:
“I had dinner with a group in a smoking restaurant the other night and it was disgusting. I think I am pretty much done with restaurants that have smoking sections — they can’t keep the pollutants from reaching the kitchen or my lungs.”
If everyone who was as disgusted with smoking establishments as you are would stop patronizing them, there’d be more smoke free establishments. The press release says only 25% of people smoke. If 75% of an establishment’s clientele stopped showing up because of cigarette smoke, it seems like you’d get a voluntary change. In such a case, why is a legal ban required?
“Obesity is a greater health risk than smoking. That’s right. More people die each year from stuffing their faces than smoking in the U.S. Why not a petition to tax fat people (say anyone more than 15% over their normal weight) to go along with the smoking ban?”
To quote Jim Rome, “No one ever died from second-hand hot fudge.”
This “liberty” argument is bullshit. The real liberty being restricted by NOT enacting anti-smoking laws are people who want (NEED) to breathe clean air and not have to make choices about where they go based on someone else’s choice to pick up a filthy habit. Yes it’s a choice; you have a choice not a need to smoke. If you’re dumb enough to pick it up, then you can deal with the consequences of having that behavior restricted anywhere you go. And finally the rest of us will have the LIBERTY to go wherever we want and NOT be forced to deal with the exhaust of your poor choices. Smokers are some of the biggest cry-babies in the world.
I’m a former smoker, and I find second hand smoking smelly and annoying. I am in full support of legislation prohibiting smoking in government offices, where people have no choice but to go. But to extend that to bars, restaurants, and other entertainment venues is absurd. There are thousands of bars and restaurants in St. Louis, and if bar #1 is too smoky for you, just go to a different one. Or better yet, do something more healthy than going to a bar.
Personally, I’m far more offended when I see parents smoking with their kids in the car. The kids have no choice. But we can’t pass laws about smoking in your car or your home.
It’s hard to say how effective a petition is but it’s a time-honored tradition so why not support it?
This is exclusively to do with public health and welfare as it affects individuals exposed to secondhand smoke and nothing to do with going around topless, as suggested by one opponent! [That’s a straw man argument.]
The estimates for avoidable premature death from exposure to secondhand smoke put it around third or fourth in the US, at least 30,000 deaths annually, after active smoking (440,000), alcohol abuse (100,000), and obesity/lack of exercise (
The purpose of this petition is to collect your contact information. You are merely guaranteeing yourself fundraising solicitations. You cannot change the minds of elected officials on an issue with signatures from people who are not registered voters and constituents of said elected officials. For city residents truly interested in securing a smoking ban, personally contacting your alderman and asking the smoking ban coalition to distance itself from MoPIRG would be better use of your time than this petition.
I’m the chair of our fundraising committee. I’m not planning on randomly pulling people’s names off the petition site and soliciting money. I do plan on distributing information concerning the Smoke Free St. Louis City Coalition to interested parties. That’s where things are right now.
To comeback at a couple points, we have diverse organizations backing the Coalition and not one over another has more leverage. We don’t “belong” to a certain organization.
We are for public health. As Steve pointed out in a follow-up comment, what about the waitress who becomes pregnant at a job with good benefits and good wages but is a smoke-filled environment? What about walking through clouds of smoke into your office building? As an asthma researcher, I personally find such scenarios unacceptable.
To answer the concern about pollution and fuel emission, I direct you to either http://www.asthma-stlouis.org or http://www.lungusa.org.
We are concerned with those workplaces, bars, and restaurants that fail to recognize the significance of secondhand smoke. We are interested in protecting the public’s health.
the petition has an active and large group on facebook, where people are working to get more people behind the ideas of the petition, not just the petition itself
The pregnant woman isn’t likely to be waitressing when she’s 6 months pregnant whether there’s smoke or not. And as far as walking through clouds of smoke in your office building … I worked in Met Square years ago, before it went “smoke free.” My employer had a fully enclosed, separately ventilated smoking lounge. When the building went smoke free, they closed it, and from that point on, everybody smoked outside one of the entrances. So everyone coming and going got to walk through the cloud of smoke that had previously been confined to the smoking area. In my 20 years of working, I’ve never worked in an office where smoking was permitted.
Although I’ve never smoked, I don’t support efforts to outlaw the practice piecemeal. Outlaw it or don’t. In the meantime: it’s a free market. Vote with your feet, whether as a worker or a consumer.
Why does the smoking ban have to be an all or nothing proposition? Should we wait for Mexico before we regulate dumping sewage into rivers? Where does the argument end? We should wait until Illinois bans smoking too to prevent a 200% increase in attendance at the Sauget Ballet at the expense of City bars. Come on!
George Carlin said it best: “Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool.”
We can all argue the merits of which social issue is most pressing and kills more people, but this is a simple step to cut unintentional exposure to cancer causing chemicals. The 75% of the population which is not deliberately paying $3 a pack to expose themselves to cancerous toxins shouldn’t be forced to enjoy those effects in public spaces. Smokers who claim it as a right must recognize that it is a fallacy. Freedom of speech and assembly is a right. If your right infringes upon mine (and many others) without great public benefit by granting your right, it is not guaranteed to you. That’s how it works even from a Libertarian point of view. Smoke all you want at home where you aren’t exposing others, just not in shared public spaces. Hell, smoke whatever you want at home as far as I’m concerned.
Let the free market decide. People who want smoke free will go to the ever increasing smoke free establishments in the City which include Atomic Cowboy and R-Bar. The more the demand for these places increase the more the supply of them will increase to meet that demand. If you don’t like smoking the market will provide you with solutions. What will happen if smoking is banned is that consumers will leave the City for bars in Illinois or St. Louis County that don’t ban smoking. This will affect St. Louis City establishments negatively. This is something that shouldn’t be regulated. If you don’t want to be around smokers, you already have choices. Chose them and let the smoker have their location. Besides, there are many more public health issues to address, like for example global warming. That is something that clearly the free market has not solved and requires regulation. This is not one of those.
It is no one’s “liberty” to blow smoke in my face, in my opinion. I’ll bet in some states, deliberate smoke blowing could be classified as “battery” if it were intended to harm.
I do not believe people sensitive to smoke should have to patronize other places. I believe that people who want to smoke should go outside or stay in a smoking section (AWAY from food being served). If a bar/restaurant were to put high tech smoke filters in place, it wouldn’t be so bad, but it still galls me that smokers think it’s their “right” to smell up clothes, cause asthma, and aggravate allergies whenever it’s a wholly avoidable process.
Why should I be forced to go to non-smoker prison camp (aka that bar with no smoke)? I’m not the one causing the harm.
It doesn’t make sense to me.
New Orleans (of all cities!) just enacted a smoking ban in establishments that derive 50% of their sales from food service. Bravo, I say.
I support this effort 100%. What really drove it home for me was going to the laundromat on Jefferson (next to the old Foodland), where they allowed smoking. A laundromat, where you CLEAN your clothes. Half the time, they smelled worse than when I brought them in there.
It’s not a choice to go to a laundromat. For many folks, myself included at that time, I had to go there. Perhaps I could have driven to another, farther away “smoke free” laundry, but what about the people in the neighborhood without the means to do so?
The worst part was it wasn’t just customers smoking — the employees were always puffing away.
My main problem with all of this “Non-smoking” legislation that is being passed all over the world, not just in the US, is this:
California is the perfect example since they have the strictest anti-smoking laws in effect – in some cities you can’t smoke in multi-unit homes/apartments or even in parks or other outdoor public spaces.
Why even sell cigarettes.
It’s really stupid to me that they are still selling something and making a killing on the taxes and then saying “you can’t smoke these anywhere”. Just take it off the shelves if you hate it that much.
I know the true reason that they don’t stop selling them is because it’s a huge revenue booster, and the taxes supposedly are going to pay for a number of things. It’s completely backwards in my mind to keep selling such a harmful thing that so many people hate and that “kills” so many people, just to tell the users that they can’t smoke it anywhere.
The point brought up about car pollution is something that runs through my mind everytime I hear someone cry about second-hand smoke, as well. Again, California is a good example – L.A. is one of the smoggiest cities in the US and people don’t seem to be all that bothered by breathing in their cigarette-free car exhaust.
To be clear, I am a smoker, and I have no problem with stepping outside to feed my habit, in fact many times prefer to do just that. I don’t like a smoky bar or restaurant any more than a non-smoker. I try to respect others space and choices and I’d expect the same from non-smokers.
If you don’t like the atmosphere go somewhere else, it’s not that hard to figure out, that goes for both sides of the argument.
As a smoker, a California resident and a former St Louis City resident, I wasn’t sure how I felt about living in a state that regulated, to some extent, my personal choice of freedom – such as public smoking. What I have discovered since I’ve been here is that I actually enjoy going to smoke-free restraurants, bars and other public venues that prohibit public smoking. And, yes, while it is a dirty, nasty and unsafe habit that is very difficult to break, changing lifestyles is making it easier to cut back my smoking habit. I do not smoke in my residence, not that I am prohibited from doing so, but because I found the stench unbearable. I have discovered lower dry cleaning bills, cleaner walls and a fresher smell. Someday, I will overcome the habit, but I’m quite pleased with baby steps. With that said, what I do oppose is the pending legislation which prohibits smoking inside one’s owned residence. New legislation passed in my City now prohibits smoking in parks and other outside venues. The problem, admitted by all, is enforcement – or the lack thereof. So, while I may continue to light up outside, I am always aware and ensure that no one else is close to me as I hunch behind a bush and smoke in hidden shame. AND, I always throw my butts in the proper receptacle as the fine for not doing so is $347 per offence.
Let’s keep St. Louis a free and tolerant city. What about a reasonable compromise concerning the public smoking policy in St. Louis? This possible public smoking law for St. Louis would keep secondhand smoke away from children yet not favor one type of business over another:
Warning signs shall be put up within and at the entrances of any building when smoking is allowed in that building.
No minor shall be allowed access to any building when smoking is allowed in that building.
15 air changes per hour of air filtration and air cleaning, or some equivalent air purification process, shall be ongoing in any building when smoking is allowed.
This law is modelled on the compromise Tennessee public smoking law recently passed:
http://www.state.tn.us/labor-wfd/non_smoker_protection_act.pdf
Air purification would not only remove tobacco smoke, but also viruses, bacteria, chemicals, pollen, dust, mold, fungi and, most importantly, radon decay products, which the EPA claims causes 21,000 lung cancer deaths per year, seven times more than secondhand smoke is reputed to cause. Commercial and industrial air filtration machines are affordable and readily available. Venues that
allow smoking could be retrofitted without expensive ductwork or other construction costs. Please click here to see two HEPA and two electronic air filtration machines. (These technologies can be combined into a single unit.) These are the same machines that currently protect Missouri welders from much more dangerous smoke to OSHA safety standards, they can also protect bartenders from stray tobacco smoke.
http://www.air-quality-eng.com/m68.php
http://www.air-quality-eng.com/cm-12.php
http://www.air-quality-eng.com/f62b.php
http://www.air-quality-eng.com/c-12.php
The CDC even recommends that such air filtration systems be installed in buildings as a way of protecting workers from airborne chemical, biological or chemical attacks:
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2003-136/
Furthermore, an air filtration solution to the secondhand smoke problem would not displace smokers to poorly ventilated private homes and cars. Research has shown that this displacement actually causes the secondhand smoke exposure levels of children to rise in communities in which a smoking ban has been imposed.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=341192007
http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications.php?publication_id=3523
I am very concerned for business owners who have sunk their life’s savings into their establishments. Smoking bans have hurt and killed many mom and pop businesses in other towns. But if St. Louis government brings truly clean air to smoking establishments thru contemporary air filtration technology, business in these establishments will not be hurt but would instead flourish as new patrons arrive who were kept away by the previous smoke.
Ventilation doesn’t work – the engineers who design the systems even say that! http://www.ashrae.org/content/ASHRAE/ASHRAE/ArticleAltFormat/20058211239_347.pdf
28 states and growing – smoke-free policy change is happening all over the country and business is fine. As far as I know there are still plenty of places to eat and drink in New York City, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Lexington, Seattle…the list goes on. This myth spreading about lost business and tobacco industry solutions is really out of date – get with the times.
I advocate the same air filtration machines that protect Missouri welders from far more dangerous smoke and fumes. St. Louisans have seen enough economic smoking ban damage in Ballwin, Arnold and Columbia to induce us to look for an alternative to a smoking ban. Remember Elsa Barth and the Seventh Inn?
Smoke-free St. Louis is such a phony front group for the ACS. They call for discussion. Well I am the main St. Louis citizen activist against a smoking ban. So I post some reasonable comments on their blog in response to posted articles. The comments were immediately deleted and further comments were blocked. Fine with me. We’ll skip the discussion and move straight to the politics.
We’re Number One! http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/01/tobacco-smoking-north-carolina-biz-cx_tvr_1101smoking_slide_2.html
Yup. We’re a low tax state. Anyone else who’s lived in a more popular, crowded metro knows how much more it costs.
C.O.P.D., once thought of as an old man’s disease, has become a major killer in women as well, the consequence of a smoking boom in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. The death rate in women nearly tripled from 1980 to 2000, and since 2000, more women than men have died or been hospitalized every year because of the disease. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/health/29lung.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Cycle for independence and your health!