Is smoking ban in parks about health or power?

Up until now, smoking bans have focused on provable threats to public health and safety, at least the safety of nearby nonsmokers.

We now seem to be moving in a new direction, a troubling direction if carried to the extreme. Not only do we not want to smell smoke or sense the carcinogens it contains, we don’t want to see the smokers themselves.

To that end, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department is asking the Tacoma City Council to ban all smoking in parks. (Puyallup and Gig Harbor already have.)

Smoking is bad for us. I get it. And nonsmokers have a right to a smoke-free environment. I’m all for that.

But so far, at least, smoking bans have been based on science. Second-hand smoke is dangerous, so we ban smoking at work and in public indoor places like restaurants, bars, malls and office buildings. We don’t allow smoking in the seats at the ballpark.

We soon will start to see bans in multi-family housing where nonsmokers share walls, windows, ceilings and vents with smokers. Belmont, Calif., already has such a ban.

I’m just not sure, however, that my health is at risk if some guy smokes a cigarette while standing against the chain-link fence at a youth soccer game or on a trail at Point Defiance.

Proponents of the park ban begin by claiming there is, in fact, a health issue involved.

“I don’t think people should have to put their health at risk to come to our parks,” Metro Parks Commissioner Ryan Mello said last week.

But there is no scientific evidence that outdoor smoking a decent distance away from others presents a sidestream smoke hazard. And anyone who claims this is about reducing litter from cigarette butts should worry a lot more about the dog crap that mars playing fields throughout the county. I’d rather kids fall on a cigarette butt than the leavings of your treasured terrier.

(And just in case anyone wants to dismiss all dissent, I’ve never smoked – unless you count the two packs a day in sidestream smoke most of us inhaled before bans became the norm.)

Nope, this isn’t about sidestream smoke or direct threats to the health of nonsmokers. It is about furthering the societal assault on smokers, about banishing them not only from the office and the restaurant but from sight and mind.

Documents supporting the ban claim it would reduce children’s exposure to the image of an adult smoking. It’s part of an effort to “set new norms in the community” by reducing the chances that kids will view smoking as normal.

At least this is more honest than asserting that smoking outdoors is a health threat. But where does it lead? If simply seeing someone smoke is now a threat to our children, do we further exile the smokers who huddle in butt huts and in front of offices and restaurants? (“Daddy. Why are those grown ups standing out in the rain?”)

Do we make it a crime to depict smokers in art, film or on TV?

We already shame smokers. We already attempt to bankrupt them with taxes and provide relatively little to help them quit. We make it more and more troublesome to find a legal place to indulge.

But unless the state and the nation want to make it illegal, we really should base our laws on something tangible like public health threats backed up by legitimate science.

Want to ban smoking in bleachers at a sports field? Within 50 feet of anyone else? Anywhere near the Big Toy? Fabulous. Because that would be based on an actual health threat.

But banning smoking anywhere in any park is simply majority rule run amok.

Call the quit line at 1-800-784-8669. The state will give you help quitting and figure out if your insurance covers the drugs and patches many people need. If you don’t have insurance, the state now uses a sliver of the tobacco taxes it collects to cover the costs.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657

peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com

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