OPEN COLUMN
Surgeon general details secondhand smoke risks

Editor, the Tribune: How strange that a letter to the editor claiming the hazards of secondhand smoke to be baseless and mythical is published in the Tribune (June 27) on the same day that a report is released by the surgeon general providing just the sort of evidence the writer requests. For the writer of that letter and anyone else interested, the report can be found at www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/.

Even without the comprehensive scientific evidence presented in the "The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke," how astonishing that the writer can suggest there is no harm from secondhand smoke. Perhaps the writer thinks there is also no harm to the smoker, either. If not, how can anyone suggest that smoke coming from one end of a cigarette somehow has different toxicity properties than that coming from the other end of the same cigarette?

The Board of Health might have punted on sensibility and practicality when it included a ban on smoking on outdoor patios, but the principal thrust of its proposed ordinance - to protect the public from known toxins in public indoor spaces - is sound.

If it were any other toxin being release on the public in such a wide scale, I’d hope the Board of Health and city council wouldn’t hesitate to act. But for some reason, there are those among them willing to subsidize through passivity what amounts to a drug addiction and a clear public health risk.

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Dan Wilson

17220 Hawkins Road

Ashland

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