Smoke free workplaces protect working Alaskans

To the editor:

If passed, SB 1, promoting smoke free workplaces, will protect working Alaskans and their families against the well established, well documented, costly and seriously adverse health effects of secondhand smoke. Close quarters tobacco smoke has a chokehold on a health care system that is already suffocating. Non-smokers are carrying a disproportionately large and unfair share of the health care burden created by smokers. The cost of protecting the unlimited right of smokers to expose themselves and unwilling others to the risk of disease and even death, has become too high.

There is of course, the legitimate question of smokers’ rights. But the bill does not make smoking unlawful. Under SB 1, people will retain the right to smoke. However, they will not have the right to do so if, in exercising their rights, smokers expose others to an unreasonable risk of harm, or where the rights of a smoker, when exercised, eviscerate mine. The rights of smokers do not outweigh the rights of non-smokers to be protected against involuntary exposure to the health risks created by close quarters smoking.

Proponents of SB 1 already have made clear the enormous annual economic cost to Alaskans attributable to secondhand smoke. This should not be a partisan issue. Secondhand smoke kills adult non-smokers of all political persuasions. I do not want to be one of them. My sister was a lifelong chain smoker who lived with my parents for 25+ smoking years. My father, who never smoked a day in his life, died from esophageal cancer. We all grieved, my sister especially.

I support SB 1 not because I seek increased governmental regulation of private rights. To the contrary. But, I do expect my government to protect me against known, manageable risks to my health and safety. I empathize; I can see how smokers might feel stigmatized. I regret that. But, smoking in enclosed public places is not a private right that should be exempt from regulation. It does not only affect the individual exercising it. When I am in an enclosed space with someone who drinks alcohol, my chances of getting liver disease are not aggravated. There are personal choices people can make without exposing those merely in the same room with them to a potentially lethal disease. Smoking is not one. Choose, if you must, your own poison. But please, do not make it mine.

Helene M. Antel

Palmer