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Return to 2006 SGR

June 27, 2006

Modified version of video shown at release of the 2006 Surgeon General\u2019s Report

Length : 11 Min 59 Sec

\n $\"Triumphs$ \n

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Transcript

[Gloomy, Mysterious Music]

This is about improving and saving people\u2019s lives.

Unfortunately because of the secondhand smoke in the air, I had an asthma attack within 10 minutes so I was forced to leave.

The cancer and how I got it is due to my exposure to secondhand smoke in all those smoky clubs for all those years.

You\u2019re asking the employee to choose between their health and making a living. That\u2019s just not fair.

Everybody has a dream. They want to be able to support the family. They want to be able to support themselves. They want to be responsible. The reality is if these kinds of things are going to be in the workplace, how can you when you\u2019re exposed this way?

I\u2019m grateful to be here today to be able to say unequivocally that the debate is over. The science is clear: secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance but a serious health hazard that causes premature death and disease in children and nonsmoking adults. In the course of the past 20 years, the scientific community has reached consensus on this point.

I\u2019ve been a waitress for 40 years to earn a decent living for my daughter and myself. My doctor told me I had a smoker\u2019s tumor and therefore I\u2019m dying. I never smoked a day in my life. I never smoked. The air was blue where I worked and I\u2019m dying of lung cancer from secondhand smoke.

For myself, I feel that I spent 40 years working in the industry and now I\u2019m coming out to die, and so I want people to know that to me there was too much exposure to the known health hazard in the workplace.

Those kinds of atmospheres\u2014bars, restaurants, casinos\u2014are the last vestiges of smoking. I was a very successful, award-winning stand-up comedienne who in August 2001 had surgery for lung cancer that was due to my exposure to secondhand smoke in all those smoky clubs for all those 11 years.

She\u2019s decided that she needs to tell other people what happened to her and she needs to use her story to motivate people to change.

If you want to catch up with Rene, she\u2019s going to be at that meeting tonight.

And everybody should come out. It\u2019s civic.

I don\u2019t want smokers to smoke. I don\u2019t want you to die. But if you choose to do so I support your personal choice, but please support mine. Don\u2019t take me with you. Don\u2019t take me with you. Don\u2019t take me with you. Don\u2019t take me with you!

An important new conclusion of this report is that smoke-free environments are the only approach\u2014the only approach\u2014that protects nonsmokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke.

[Light Guitar Music]

[Latin-Flavored Music]

The city of El Paso is about the 21st largest city in the country. We are as far west Texas as you can get and we border with what is Mexico.

In the very beginning, which was in November of 2000, I told a reporter that there was no way that we were ever going to pass such a tough ordinance, a smoking ordinance.

My gut instinct was that it would have negative impacts on businesses and that people had the right to determine their own future. As I started really researching and going out and starting asking questions, my opinion started to gradually shift.

I learned that there are dozens of cancer-causing chemicals in cigarette smoke. I learned that no manufacturer of filtration systems guaranteed the effectiveness of their system. And I kept saying to all the other elected officials, \u201cHow can you compromise somebody\u2019s life, somebody\u2019s health, whether they\u2019re in a bar, whether they\u2019re in a restaurant, whether they\u2019re in a VFW home?\u201d And the majority of the city council agreed with me and we passed that ordinance by a 7 to 1 vote.

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s had a negative impact. We still see the people who used to smoke in our restaurants, and the people who didn\u2019t smoke seem to come more often than they used to. So we\u2019ve had really robust sales in the past 5 years.

We have more restaurants than we had before in spite of El Paso having the toughest smoking ordinance or nonsmoking ordinance in the State and one of the toughest in the whole country still. It\u2019s been a tremendously positive experience and impact on the city.

[Light Guitar Music]

Lexington is a community of 300,000 people nestled in central Kentucky. Lexington has always been an agricultural center. The tobacco background is central to our DNA. Smart business people like Mike Scanlon know that we can be proud of our community\u2019s past but we don\u2019t want to live in it. That\u2019s the case with the smoke-free initiative we\u2019ve had in this town.

Really, what I\u2019m trying to do is show everybody what the future looks like.

Mike Scanlon waded in. He said, \u201cI\u2019m one of the largest restaurant employers in this community. I\u2019m going to take this community smoke-free, and I\u2019m going to set an example.\u201d And it was an example that spoke loudly.

As a businessman, I had been through many communities in Phoenix going smoke-free, and I knew it didn\u2019t hurt business.

I think part of it gets down to the decision of how are we going to make our money, and how do we explain to ourselves when we drive home with our profits that we\u2019re letting our employees get sick and that we\u2019re looking at the employees and saying, \u201cWell, if you don\u2019t want to work here then don\u2019t.\u201d

We came to the conclusion that it would be advantageous for us to have that competitive advantage where we\u2019re smoke-free where other restaurants aren\u2019t, knowing that that\u2019s really the way it\u2019s going.

The biggest single beneficiary from our decision to go smoke-free as a company was our employees. It was our belief that if you value your employees as much as we do that you have to take care of them.

In the middle of the tobacco bill, we had common sense enough to make smoke-free environments. I know there\u2019ll be a lot more healthy, happy families as a result of this, and I think at the end of the day that\u2019s what people sit in the office to do.

Secondhand smoke exposure causes heart disease and lung cancer in adults and sudden infant death syndrome and respiratory problems in children.

There is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure, with even brief exposure adversely affecting the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

Only smoke-free environments effectively protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke exposure in indoor spaces.

Children are most exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes and in their cars. What we\u2019re asking parents to do is to just become aware of the fact that the home is the area where there\u2019s the greatest exposure and it\u2019s going to have to be the place where personal commitment is made.

[Light Guitar Music]

What impressed me about this young man, because he was in fifth grade at the time, was how knowledgeable he was. That really encouraged me.

My parents were taking me bowling. Unfortunately because of the secondhand smoke in the air, I had an asthma attack within 10 minutes so I was forced to leave.

We\u2019re getting more and more reports that indicate that children are just suffering disproportionately, that asthmatic children are being triggered by people smoking and their being around smokers.

I was really disappointed by this. I came home and I was like, \u201cHow am I ever going to have fun if my asthma is going to inhibit me from participating in such activities?\u201d So my parents, you know, they suggested, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you try and do something about it.\u201d

Amit was there because he felt that children and families need to have places that they could go that were smoke-free.

We wanted to be able to provide places in the community where families could go and not have to be affected by the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.

I made a presentation representing the children of Lubbock\u2014\u201dWe also need laws to make our air safer to breathe\u201d\u2014and we ended up winning 64 percent of the vote. Finally we were going to get a smoking ban in Lubbock.

The 1986 Surgeon General\u2019s report concluded that simple separation of smokers and nonsmokers within the same air space may reduce, but not eliminate, secondhand smoke exposure among nonsmokers.

The current report expands on that finding by concluding that even sophisticated ventilation approaches cannot completely remove secondhand smoke from an indoor space.

Because there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure, anything less cannot ensure that nonsmokers are fully protected from the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke.

[Soft Piano Music]

If I can stop others from having to go through and experience what I had to\u2014they may not have the skills to come through it with laughter\u2014so if I can help do that, then yes, this is a happy ending to a sad story.

It takes the business community, it takes the medical community, and it takes the elected official community to say, \u201cStand up; that\u2019s not fair.\u201d

And when you can stand up for the good of society, you can die the next day and feel like you have mattered on this earth.

I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ll be the last one to die, but I\u2019m hoping that at least I\u2019ll make a difference.

[Sad Orchestral Music]

[Light Music]

Closed Captioned

2006 Surgeon General's Report Triumphs and Tragedies

June 27, 2006

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Transcript