This is about improving and saving people's lives.
Unfortunately because of the secondhand smoke in the air,
I had an asthma attack within ten minutes
so I was forced to leave.
The cancer and how I got it was due to my exposure to
secondhand smoke in all those smoky clubs for all those years.
You're asking the employee to choose between their health
and making a living. That's just not fair.
Everybody has a dream.
They want to be able to support the family.
They want to be able to support themselves.
They want to be responsible.
The reality is, if these kinds of things
are going to be in the workplace, how can you
when you're exposed this way?
I'm grateful to be here today,
to be able to say unequivocally that the debate is over.
The science is clear. Secondhand smoke is not
a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard
that causes premature death and disease in children
and nonsmoking adults.
In the course of the past 20 years, the scientific community
has reached consensus on this point.
I've been a waitress for forty years
to earn a decent living for my daughter and myself.
My doctor told me I had a smoker's tumor
and therefore I'm dying.
I never smoked a day in my life.
I never smoked.
The air was blue where I worked.
I'm dying of lung cancer from secondhand smoke.
For myself I feel that I spent forty years
working in the industry and now I'm coming out to die
and so I want people to know that to me that there was
too much exposure to the known health hazard in the workplace.
Those kinds of atmospheres-bars, restaurants, casinos-
are the last vestiges of smoking.
I was a very successful, award-winning stand-up
comedian who in August 2001 had surgery for lung cancer
that was due to my exposure to secondhand smoke
in all those smoky clubs for all those eleven years.
She's decided that, you know, she needs to tell other people
what happened to her and she needs to use her story
to motivate people to change.
I don't want smokers to smoke.
I don't want you to die.
But if you choose to do so I support your personal choice,
but please support mine.
Don't take me with you.
An important new conclusion of this report is that
smoke-free environments are the ONLY approach-the
only approach-that protects nonsmokers from
the dangers of secondhand smoke.
The city of El Paso is about the 21st
largest city in the country.
We are as far west Texas as you can get
and we border with Juárez, Mexico.
In the very beginning, which was November of 2000,
I told a reporter that there was no way that we
were ever going to pass such a tough ordinance,
a smoking ordinance.
My gut instinct was that it would have negative impacts
on businesses and that people had the right to
determine their own future.
As I started really researching and going out
and starting asking questions, my opinion started to
gradually shift.
I learned that there's dozens of cancer-causing
chemicals in cigarette smoke.
I learned that no manufacturer of filtration systems
guaranteed the effectiveness of their system.
And I kept saying to all the other elected officials,
"How can you compromise somebody's life,
somebody's health, whether they're in a bar,
whether they're in a restaurant,
whether they're in a VFW hall?"
And the majority of the city council agreed with me
and we passed that ordinance by a 7-to-1 vote.
I don't think it's had a negative impact.
We still see the people who used to smoke in our restaurants,
and the people who didn't smoke seem to come
more often than they used to.
So we've had really robust sales in the past five years.
We've had more restaurants than we had before in spite of
El Paso having the toughest smoking ordinance
or nonsmoking ordinance in the state and
one of the toughest in the whole country still.
It's been a tremendously positive experience
and impact on the city.
Lexington is a community of 300,000 people
nestled in central Kentucky.
Lexington has always been an agricultural center.
The tobacco background is central to our DNA.
Smart business people like Mike Scanlon know that we can
be proud of our community's past but
we don't want to live in it.
And that's the case with the smoke-free initiative
we've had in this town.
As a businessman, I had been through many
communities in Phoenix going smoke-free,
and I knew it didn't hurt business.
I think part of it gets down to is the decision of
how are we going to make our money, and how do we
explain to ourselves when we drive home with our profits
that we're letting our employees get sick
and that we're looking at the employees and saying,
"Well, if you don't want to work here then don't."
We came to the conclusion that
it would be advantageous for us
to have that competitive advantage
where we're smoke-free where other restaurants aren't,
knowing that that's really the way it's going.
Secondhand smoke exposure causes heart disease and
lung cancer in adults and sudden infant death syndrome
and respiratory problems in children.
There is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure,
with even brief exposure adversely affecting the
cardiovascular and respiratory systems.
Only smoke-free environments effectively protect nonsmokers
from secondhand smoke exposure in indoor spaces.
Children are most exposed to secondhand smoke
in their homes and in their cars.
And what we're asking parents to do is to just become aware
of the fact that the home is the area where there's
the greatest exposure and it's going to have to be the place
where a personal commitment is made.
What impressed me about this young man,
because he was in fifth grade at the time,
was how knowledgeable he was.
That really encouraged me.
My parents were taking me bowling.
Unfortunately because of the secondhand smoke in the air
I had an asthma attack within ten minutes,
so I was forced to leave.
We're getting more and more reports that indicate
that children are just suffering disproportionately; that
asthmatic children are being triggered by people smoking
and their being around smokers.
I was really disappointed by this.
I came home and I was like, "How am I ever going to have
fun if my asthma is going to inhibit me
from participating in such activities?"
So my parents, you know, they suggested,
"Why don't you try to do something about it?"
Amit was there because he felt that children and
families needed to have places that
they could go that were smoke-free.
We wanted to be able to provide places in the community
where families could go and not have to be affected
by the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.
I made a presentation representing the children of
Lubbock-"We also need laws to make our air safer to
breathe..."-and we ended up winning 64 percent of the vote.
Finally we were going to get a smoking ban in Lubbock.
The 1986 Surgeon General's Report concluded that
simple separation of smokers and nonsmokers
within the same air space may reduce, but not
eliminate, secondhand smoke exposure among nonsmokers.
The current report expands on that finding by concluding
that even sophisticated ventilation approaches
cannot completely remove
secondhand smoke from an indoor space.
Because there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke
exposure, anything less cannot
ensure that nonsmokers are fully protected from the
dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke.
If I can stop others from having to go through an
experience what I had to, they may not have the
skills to come through it with laughter, so if I can
help do that, then yes, this is a happy ending
to a sad story.
It takes the business community,
it takes the medical community,
and it takes the elected official community to say,
"Stand up; that's not fair."
I can't say that I'll be the last one to die,
but I'm hoping that at least I'll make a difference.