It has been 12 years since California banned smoking in restaurants and bars, so it was surprising that voters rejected Proposition 86, which would have added a $2.60 tax to a pack of cigarettes. Supporters believed it would have brought in an estimated $2.1 billion a year to fund anti-smoking campaigns and health care costs of smokers and would deter new smokers.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Sacramento are proposing a bill that would make smoking in a car with a child under 6 years old a primary offense, meaning the police can pull the car over and issue a $100 ticket. But what about the 7-year-old riding in the car or a child exposed to smoking at home?
In Oceanside, the City Council is considering a proposed ban on smoking at public parks, beaches and the municipal pier, joining Solana Beach, Del Mar and San Diego County with similar bans.
Even the majority of students at Palomar College want their campus to be smoke-free and are lobbying the administration to send smokers out to the parking lots.
Smokers advocacy groups cite discrimination and the intrusion of government on personal choices with each of these legislative proposals.
But perhaps it's time to acknowledge the elephant, or rather the Camel, sitting in the living room. Any other product that kills 440,000 Americans every year definitely would have been taken off the shelves by now.
That's a 9/11 about every other day. That's almost five fully loaded 747s falling out of the sky per day. With only three deaths, the humble spinach has got nothing on the tobacco leaf.
It gets worse. Three thousand U.S. nonsmokers die annually from second-hand smoke.
According to the American Lung Association, second-hand smoke contains more than 250 chemicals known to be toxic or cancer-causing, including benzene, vinyl chloride, formaldehyde, arsenic, ammonia and hydrogen cyanide. Ick.
More children die of second-hand smoke exposure than all other accidental causes of injury with death combined according to a recent study by Pediatrics Journal, prompting State Sen. Deborah Ortiz of the Senate Health Committee to consider smoking in the presence of children "akin to child abuse."
The anti-smoking group cleverly called ASH, Action on Smoking and Health, agrees and wants parents who do so to be investigated. They also would like teachers and doctors to inform authorities if there is suspected "smoke abuse."
So there you have it. Smoking kills. Second-hand smoke kills. It costs the U.S. about $97.2 billion annually in health care costs and lost productivity. And smoking doesn't seem to be too popular right now.
But smoking is an individual's right, according to smokers' advocacy groups. The five major tobacco companies spend a reported $15.5 billion a year in advertising and promotion to encourage this right. That's the cost of about eight weeks of war in Iraq.
Tobacco. We tax it, legislate it, promote it and die from it. Will we ever be bold enough to eradicate it?
