Average indoor air pollution in Eugene and Corvallis is 622 percent less than other Oregon cities that don’t have complete bans on smoking indoors, according to a recent air-monitoring study.
The study by the American Cancer Society reiterates common knowledge that second-hand smoke also affects nonsmokers and supports the growing effort to pass state wide bans on smoking in bars like those of Eugene and Corvallis.
Eugene City Councilor David Kelly, who currently represents the University district, was part of the majority that passed Eugene’s ban in 2000.
Kelly said resistance to the smoking ban came from some bar owners who felt it would hurt business and from people who felt it restricted their freedom.
The ban doesn’t restrict a person’s freedom to smoke, he said.
“We were only restricting smoking where one person’s smoke impacted another,” Kelly said.
Oregon passed a smoke-free workplace law in 2002 that banned indoor smoking except in bars, taverns, bingo halls, tobacco shops and certain hotel and motel rooms. Eugene and Corvallis’ local ordinances were passed before the state’s.
Lane County Public Health has a tobacco prevention program in its Eugene office, and the program is aimed at increasing awareness about tobacco-use risks, enforcing local laws regarding smoking and decreasing youth smoking, said Laura Hammond, who works in the program.
“I think the argument often is it will negatively affect business,” Hammond said. “All the research I’ve seen says creating a smoke-free environment actually improves business.”
“Eighty percent of Oregonians don’t smoke. It’s a small minority who do smoke,” Hammond said. “Most people would like to be in places where they aren’t exposed to smoking or second-hand smoke.”
Smokers who want to smoke indoors while drinking need only cross the river to Springfield, which doesn’t have an indoor smoking ban in bars and taverns.
Springfield doesn’t have a ban because there was never a concentrated interest from citizens to pass one, Springfield city spokesman Neil Laudati said.
Chris Caraveo, a bartender at Main Street Bar and Grill in Springfield, quit smoking three months ago but isn’t bothered by the second-hand smoke at the bar.
Caraveo said she hears a lot of complaints from customers about Eugene’s smoking ban.
“We get people who come over from Eugene and say, ‘Yeah! You can smoke over here. We don’t have to go outside in the cold and rain,’” Caraveo said.
Nonsmokers have more options than smokers do because there are more places than not where smoking is banned, Caraveo said.
“If they know they’re going to a bar where people smoke, they have a choice because there’s so many places they can go that don’t have smoking,” Caraveo said.
“There’s not that many choices for smokers.”
Bill Perry, director of government relations for the Oregon Restaurant Association, agreed with Caraveo that smokers should be allowed to smoke indoors in certain places.
“Nobody’s being led astray, thinking ‘I’m shocked there is smoking in bars,’” he said. “There is a customer base out there that wants a place to go and smoke and drink. They should be afforded that opportunity.”
Second-hand cigarette smoke is responsible for an estimated 38,000 deaths annually in the U.S., according to the study. It causes respiratory infections, asthma and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in children, among other diseases and cancers, according to the study.