No smoking at work: Let's broaden effort

Workplace smoking bans are needed, and some existing city laws could be stronger.

Editorial. Jan. 23, 2006.

For decades, Americans have known the health risks associated with smoking and secondhand smoke. A generation of children who grew up with posters and buttons featuring a frog with the slogan "If you smoke, I'll croak" have grown up, and their children now need help to steer clear of direct and indirect exposure.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of tobacco's danger, and all that's been done to communicate those risks, there's plenty more to be done to prevent needless deaths. Taking on smoking in the workplace is a sensible strategy that protects nonsmokers while providing a powerful tool to help motivate current smokers to kick the habit.

In December 2005, Chicago took a step in the right direction when it joined a dozen states and a number of cities that ban smoking in the workplace. (Some of those laws include restaurants and bars, as is the case in Chicago; others do not.) But Chicago's ordinance doesn't go as far as it could in helping stop preventable deaths.

The American Medical Association has two concerns.

While the new law requires most workplaces to go smoke-free this month, bars and restaurants have more than two years phase-in period to comply with the law.

Those who work in restaurants and bars will, in the short run, continue to be exposed to the more than 4,000 chemicals that have been identified in secondhand smoke, including at least 60 carcinogens and six substances that interfere with normal cell development.

The Chicago law also exempts all public places and work sites that install air ventilation systems that meet a clean indoor air standard that the city had not defined as of press time.