No reason to carve exceptions in state smoking ban

When Washington voters were asked to approve one of the nation’s strictest smoking bans in 2005, protecting workers’ health was one of the most prominent arguments initiative supporters used.

Voters agreed that the people who worked in restaurants, taverns, bowling alleys, nontribal casinos and clubs shouldn’t have to breathe smoke for hours on end and risk a host of illnesses associated with secondhand smoke – which kills thousands of Americans every year. And so Washingtonians voted yes, and for five years workers’ health has been protected.

Now some legislators – including state Reps. Chris Hurst, D-Enumclaw; Steve Kirby, D-Tacoma; and Hans Zeiger, R-Puyallup – want to take that protection away for some workers.

They’re co-sponsoring legislation that would allow up to 100 cigar lounges and 500 retail tobacco shops to pay for licenses to permit smoking cigars or pipes on their premises.

One condition of obtaining the licenses is that employees would have to sign an “acknowledgement” that “environmental tobacco smoke may be present in their potential work area.” In other words, they accept that part of their job is to be exposed to a harmful substance.

According to the National Institutes of Health, “There is no safe amount of secondhand smoke.” It contains more than 50 carcinogens, and health effects of exposure to it include lung cancer, nasal sinus cancer, respiratory tract infections and heart disease, states the NIH.

The legislation includes language forbidding business owners from firing or otherwise disciplining employees solely for not signing the acknowledgement.

But it’s foolish to believe that an employer who badly wanted the license would allow a worker’s objection to inhaling harmful tobacco smoke to stand in the way. The wording of the legislation appears to give employers enough wiggle room to find other reasons to get rid of workers who don’t go along with the program.

Putting workers in that position – of having to sign their health away to keep or get a job – is reason enough to oppose this legislation.

source: www.thenewstribune.com