Assemblywoman Tanner and No-Smoking Rules

Assembly Toxic Materials Committee Chairwoman Sally Tanner (D-El Monte), said guards would “have to arrest me every day” because she would not obey a proposed Assembly chamber smoking ban (Part I, Sept. 3).

Does Tanner believe her cigarette smoke does not injure others? If so, she ignores a huge and growing body of scientific and medical opinion. Last December’s report of the surgeon general blames passive smoking for thousands of nonsmoker lung cancer deaths in the U.S. each year. A recent California Air Resources Board report on indoor air quality lists tobacco smoke high among indoor pollutants. Legislators who ignore the facts cannot protect the public.

Fortunately, Tanner is not typical. In poll after poll, most smokers join nonsmokers in favoring restrictions on smoking at work and in public places.

And most Southland legislators who smoke nevertheless vote for such restrictions. Simi Valley Councilman Glen McAdoo, a smoker and that body’s strongest advocate of workplace smoking restrictions, is only one of many who have laid aside their personal preferences in order to discharge their responsibility to protect the health of those who elected them.

Smokers like Tanner, who claim a right to poison those about them, should be prohibited by law from doing so in workplaces, restaurants and indoor public places. And legislators like Tanner, who threaten to disobey those laws which displease them, should not be in the business of making laws for the rest of us to obey.

WALT BILOFSKY

President

Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights

Berkeley