2009-01-21 16:33:45 - The public seems to be increasingly hostile to smokers and the habit, and want to stop treating them differently from other drug users, polluters, and walking health hazards, says Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

For example, already more than one out of five U.S. voters (22%) say the federal government should completely outlaw tobacco smoking, according to a very recent national telephone survey. This is so far beyond what has been seriously proposed so far that many are wondering why these feelings are so strong.

Recently a study showed that more than half of those surveyed were in favor of banning smoking not only in all cars (something now in effect in one city, and being considered elsewhere) but actually of banning smoking in all homes.

Also, the very responsible and normally conservative BusinessWeek provided respectability to a suggestion that 'governments should make it illegal for people with children to smoke' by just publishing an argument

in favor of that view in its 'Debate Room.'

Just last week the House voted to boost the federal tax on cigarettes by a whopping 256%, even as states are raising their taxes to levels as high as $2.75 a pack.

All this comes on top of earlier moves by:
* many states to ban smoking in foster homes as well as cars when children are present,
* cities banning smoking on sidewalks and in private apartments,
* companies firing or refusing to hire people who smoke even off the job,
* insurance companies - and even Medicaid - charging smokers more for health care,
* courts which have taken children from the custody of smokers,
* adoption agencies which refuse to consider smokers as prospective parents, and
* hospitals and doctors which refuse to perform certain operations on smokers.

Smokers are screaming on the Internet about hostility and even hatred towards them - many say they are unfairly being treated as pariahs - but public interest law professor John Banzhaf of ASH sees it very differently.

Anyone who subjected a child to significant amounts of toxic substances - in the home, car, or elsewhere - would be stopped, and probably cited for child abuse, but smokers think it's somehow different and OK to smoke in their cars or homes when children are present.

People who discharged asbestos in public places or into the air in their apartments (e.g., by grinding down old brake drums) or added the aroma of benzene to the air in an apartment building would soon be forced to stop because each substance has been shown to cause cancer. But secondhand tobacco smoke causes far more cancers in nonsmokers than both of those chemicals combined.

Smokers routinely pay more for life insurance, just as those with easily-damaged cars or risky homes pay more for automobile or home insurance, but smokers think they should pay no more for health insurance, including Medicare or Medicaid, than those who are much safer because they don't smoke, even though their smoking adds thousands of dollars to health care costs which now must be paid by nonsmokers who are being charged the same rate.

Patients seeking a liver transplant may be denied one if they are going to continue drinking alcohol, so why should smokers expect to get all the operations they wish if they are going to continue to smoke and thereby endanger the success of the operation, asks Banzhaf.

"Smokers pollute the air the public and their children are forced to breathe with toxic carcinogenic fumes, inflate taxes and the costs of health insurance, start the blazes which are the major cause of residential fire deaths, kill thousands of their own children every year, and are a major contributor to litter on beaches, streets, and elsewhere. Isn't it time we stopped tolerating if not encouraging this outrageous behavior and harm to the public," suggests Banzhaf.

PROFESSOR JOHN F. BANZHAF III
Executive Director and Chief Counsel
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2013 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006, USA
(202) 659-4310 // ash.org