A few weeks ago, our federal government gave official recognition to something that has been obvious for decades to scientists who have studied the issue and to non-scientists who have approached it with clear instincts, sensitive lungs and nasal capacities, and functioning brains: Second-hand smoke from cigarettes is dangerous to the health of non-smokers.
"The debate is over. The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard," said U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. Emphasize the word "serious." That is, the argument of smokers that they are only hurting themselves and have the right to do that if they choose is specious. People who smoke in the presence of others, even (maybe especially) in the privacy of their own homes, are dangerous to the health of those other people.
The debate is over. The science is clear.
Smokers who deny, ignore, are ignorant of or don't care about this information are irresponsible and a threat to their communities. Smokers who are aware that the debate is over, the science clear, and who continue to smoke in the presence of others are, in the deepest meaning of the word, sociopaths. Children and infants are especially vulnerable to the risk of sudden-infant-death syndrome(SIDS), bronchitis, pneumonia, worsening asthma attacks, poor lung growth and ear infections from the effects of second-hand smoke. The effects of second-hand smoke on the developing systems of children impact the health of those children for the rest of their lives. Those people who are aware of this information and continue to smoke in the presence of children and infants, particularly their own children, are monsters.
Strong words.
But no words are as strong as the experience of a person dying from heart disease or lung cancer or of the loved ones who survive that person. Carmona found that regular exposure to second-hand smoke increases a non-smoker's chances of contracting heart disease or lung cancer by 30 percent. Each year in the U.S., 35,000 non-smoking people die from heart disease brought on by second-hand smoke, and 3,000 non-smoking people die from lung cancer caused from second-hand smoke. These are small numbers compared to the more than 400,000 Americans smokers who die prematurely each year from the effects of their addiction to smoking, but that is no consolation to the 38,000 people who die horrible deaths each year because of someone else's addictive pleasure. One in five deaths in the U.S. is smoking related, and every one of them is preventable.
Americans who smoke are killing themselves by the hundreds of thousands each year, and they arguably have the right to do that. In the process, they are also killing tens of thousands of bystanders, and they unarguably do not have the right to do that.
The numbers cited are for just one year. Each year, year after year after year, they add up.
It may be time to look at smoking in the presence of children as an act of criminal negligence. It kills them. After all, the debate is over. The science is clear.
The term "moral imperative" has been much bandied about of late in the media and elsewhere, most notably by Al Gore, former vice president of the U.S. and the man who received the most votes for president of the U.S. in the 2000 presidential election. In his many speeches, his writings and in his recent movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," made of the slide show he has given all over the world about the reality and growing problem of global warming, Gore speaks of the moral imperative of each person to do something about global warming. That is, he says, global warming transcends political, scientific, economic, social and health issues. It is a moral matter.
In "An Inconvenient Truth" Gore discusses his older sister to whom he was very close and who died at an early age of lung cancer caused by her heavy smoking. He mentions with bleak understatement that lung cancer is not a good way to die. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one to the long, agonizing, degrading process of a smoker's death knows the truth of Gore's words. (My mother died before her time after spending the last 10 years of her life hooked to an oxygen bottle and mostly in bed because of emphysema brought on by a lifetime of smoking.) Gore's family had long been tobacco farmers and proud of it, but after his sister died his father knew that he could no longer contribute to the cigarette industry. He could not bring back his daughter, but he had a moral imperative not to contribute any longer to that which had killed her. And he did not. He quit growing tobacco. He acted.
The moral imperative requires action, in this case to reduce or eliminate second-hand smoke in the bodies of people who do not want it there.
The debate is over. The science is clear. The imperative is moral.
Dick Dorworth
