THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507210239
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Since smoking has become taboo at more and more public places, a new, equally unpleasant, phenomenon has developed: smokers congregating at exits.
As grateful as I am that grocery stores, hospitals and other public facilities have acted to see that consumers breathe clean air, this new nuisance is outright choking.
Since nonsmokers have made it clear that they don't want to breathe the smoke of even occasional puffers in the work place, shopping mall, hotel lobby or restaurant, what possibly could drive them to think we want to pass through a honor guard of smokers to get to work, shop or dine?
Yet, that's exactly what workers and consumers are exposed to daily. After visiting a hospital the other day, I came out the front door to foul air created by smokers who'd lit up the moment they escaped the marked no-smoking territory.
A hospital, for Pete's sake! Gratefully, I don't have asthma or some other breathing disorder, but it would have been no different - except to complicate the problem - if I did.
If people who work in hospitals - and workers were among this group - ignore all the warnings about tobacco's direct harm to them and its second-hand effects on others, what hope have we that people with less instruction will give any consideration to people repulsed - and sickened - by smoke?
Think about the last time you visited a shopping mall or, locally, a department store. Did you simply enter, or were you challenged to navigate a hopeless course around people who just had to have that last puff before undertaking a few-minutes task?
Worse, think about the last time you entered the mall or store during wet or very cold weather. Was the air clear, or was it as if you'd suddenly been put in a jar of air polluted by dozens of smoldering cigarettes?
I have friends who are smokers, and they're very mindful of my sensitivity to tobacco. I've made it clear that smoke bothers me, and they're kind enough not to want to either offend or make misery.
These entrance blockers are something else, though. It's as if they believe outdoors is big enough that their smoke will just dissipate into odorless nothingness.
I've got news for them. Opening doors often creates a chimney effect, so that I breathe, in one miserable breath, more smoke than I ever want to take in. If the wind's to the east, and the entrance is in the same direction, where do they expect the acrid mess to go?
With all the health studies supporting that it would be a grand idea, I'd love to believe that smoking will become a thing of the past. One thing is perfectly clear: it will be a thing of the past for some smokers, for it will lead them to early deaths.
That's their unfortunate choice, but I have no real choice in the matter of second-hand smoke. Some places, you just have to go.
What's difficult to understand is why some smokers, by congregating at entrances of places where nonsmokers also go, deprive us of the choice of whether to breathe second-hand smoke.
I don't know how much more business can do beyond banning smoking inside. If someone wants to endure the heat, the cold and the icy stares of nonsmokers for that desperate puff, there's little anyone else can do.
The obligation falls on the smoker to consider that there just might be people who don't want smoke in their eyes or their lungs. That's as true as we leave the hospital as it is as we sit in the hospital waiting room. MEMO: Comment? CALL 934-7553.
by CNB