Please remedy issue of second-hand smoke

To the editor:

Below is a letter I wrote to all Alaska state lawmakers with great hope that a solution to this public health problem will be remedied in all public housing throughout the state of Alaska in the very near future.

I am writing you to ask for your help on an issue that effects thousands of Alaskans and millions worldwide. I am asking you to take the time and read this letter in its entirety because it concerns you as an Alaskan as well.

Just for a moment, image you are sitting in your home and your eyes begin to burn and water — your nose starts to sting and run as well. Image that you are sitting at home, at your desk and your chest begins to tighten and you begin to cough. What would you do?

Now you are wondering “what’s going on with me, what’s happening” and then you realize that you smell smoke and it is not coming from inside your apartment, it’s coming from your neighbor’s apartment who you have known for quite some time — and its cigarette smoke. And to make matters more complex, you really like your neighbors and you don’t want to complain because you don’t want anyone telling you how to live in your home and besides you use to smoke yourself.

Than you begin to think, “But I don’t want to breathe his smoke or anybody’s smoke. I am healthy now, because I stopped. Don’t I have a right to breathe smoke-free air in my own home? But doesn’t he have the right to smoke in his own home? But look what the cigarette smoke is doing to me, look at what I am going through — experiencing — it took me so very long to quit the habit and now this — what am I going to do now?”

I could have moved and found a smoke-free apartment complex, but those are rare and I live on a fix income from the Veterans Administration. I have lived at this address for more than 15 years. My second choice was to ask those who own and manage the Public Housing complex to revert back to a non-smoking complex (though they say it never was a non-smoking complex), but I guess the non-smoking sign and the ashtray outside the main entrance was for “show” and not legitimate.

My last choice was to become an advocate for those men, women and children of Alaska, who don’t have a choice on where they could live due to limited income.

I truly feel that smokers have the right to smoke. I truly feel that I have a right to be able to feel safe, secure and happy in my own home — free from worry about contracting a health problem due to others who have chosen to be self-destructive — and I say “self-destructive” due to the research and present day science that is available for us.

Lastly, I am asking for your help — a U.S. Veteran of the USA is asking you to not allow people like me who endure these unhealthy conditions due to no choice of the own — to remedy this issue of second-hand smoke. No human being should have to experience the insanity that second-hand smoke represents to our society. Tell me, if it were you enduring such health conditions, what would you do?

Derrick Coates

Palmer