Time to Complete a Lifesaving Step : Following executive order, Legislature should approve bill to ban smoking in workplace

By the end of this year, under an executive order issued by Gov. Pete Wilson, smoking will be banned in virtually all state offices and facilities, the most notable exception being that part of the Capitol housing the Legislature. The governor’s order came just a few weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency, citing numerous studies, confirmed that the health of nonsmokers can be imperiled simply by regular exposure to tobacco smoke produced by others. Each year, to note only the most shocking example cited by the EPA, about 3,000 nonsmokers die of lung cancer.

But Wilson’s action, welcome though it is, represents only a half step toward an urgent goal. With secondhand tobacco smoke now officially recognized as a potential killer by federal authorities and medical associations, reason and equity demand that the remaining half step be taken. Smoking should be banned in all workplaces throughout the state, to protect the health of millions.

This year, as in years past, a bill by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood) requiring smoke-free workplaces is before the Legislature. This year, unlike past years, it may stand a chance of being enacted. Certainly logic, consistency and a decent regard for the health of Californians ought to compel our representatives to pass such a clearly needed public health measure. Certainly. Except that common sense and concern for the public good do not always prevail when pitted against the millions of dollars the tobacco lobby regularly commits to fight any measure that might cut into cigarette sales.

Last year, just in California, major tobacco companies along with the industry-supported Tobacco Institute spent more than $3.6 million on legislative races, lobbying and treats for legislators. (Assembly Speaker Willie Brown alone was the recipient of more than $72,000.) This investment produced benefit for the industry; Friedman’s smoke-ban bill, for example, never made it out of the Assembly Labor Committee. Will the bill fail again this year? Betting against the tobacco lobby’s high rollers might seem foolish. But this year there does seem to be more hope that the Legislature will in fact do the right thing; one good sign is that Friedman’s bill recently passed the Labor Committee by a vote of 7 to 1.

A smoke ban in the workplace does not aim at punishing that 20% of Californians who smoke--they can still go out of the workplace to do what they must do--but at protecting those 80% who don’t. There is no issue here of smokers’ “rights,” only of the rights of nonsmokers not to have their health impaired. In the end there is simply no defensible or forgivable reason for legislators to reject the workplace smoke ban.