A minority of City Council members has repeatedly tried to enact a ban on smoking in restaurants. They have not given up. The logical next step following their latest defeat would be to address the issue in next year's political contests. However, proponents of the measure appear desperate to capitalize on a taxpayer-financed media campaign against smoking in restaurants before the campaign ends. Smoking ban backers
should admit defeatThe issue: Advocates of a smoking ban
in restaurants are offering a compromise
that would allow smoking in outdoor areas.Their strategy combines unethical conduct and junk science.
Use of tax dollars to finance a media campaign advocating a change in public policy was improper to begin with. Any timely attempt to capitalize on that campaign through legislation compounds that impropriety. Council members should more properly drop the proposal and, if they wish, make restaurant smoking a campaign issue in the seven Council seats up for election next year.
The Council last week defeated, by a 5-4 vote, a bill that would have banned smoking, marking the third time in three years that proponents of the ban have failed. They now propose what they call a compromise, allowing restaurant smoking outdoors, and Council Chairman Jon Yoshimura, one of the opponents of the ban, says he may shift sides.
Why the desperation? "I think it's very appropriate to do it now that there is a heightened awareness on the part of the public," says Councilman John Henry Felix. In June, the state Department of Health, in partnership with Local 5 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union and the Coalition of Tobacco Free Hawaii, an advocacy group, launched a media campaign focusing on the health consequences of secondhand smoke in restaurants. The campaign, which includes television advertisements, is costing taxpayers $850,000.
The campaign is aimed at convincing people that secondhand smoke creates a significant health risk for nonsmokers. However, while smoke certainly is an irritant to many restaurant employees and patrons, its health consequences are a matter of controversy. Proponents of a restaurant smoking ban refuse to accept the existence of scientific disagreement about the health risks of secondhand smoke.
Studies cited as proving such a health hazard have been criticized for ignoring standards for what constitutes a significant increase in risk. For example, a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report determined that a nonsmoker's risk of getting lung cancer increases by 1.19 times by living with a smoker. Epidemiologists consider an increased risk of less than 1.3 percent as weak. A 1998 World Health Organization study also found no significant increased risk of lung cancer for nonsmokers exposed to environmental smoke.
The American Red Cross has sensibly reversed its plan to withhold some of the money raised to help victims of the September 11 terrorist attack. If the organization had not come to this decision, it would have hurt those the fund was intended to serve, damaged the agency's reputation, misled donors and jeopardized fund-raising efforts of other charities. Red Cross drops
plan to divert donationsThe issue: The agency changes
its mind about using September 11
funds for other programs.The Red Cross had wanted to set aside about $264 million of the $542 million collected in the Liberty Disaster Fund drive to use in the event of future terrorist attacks and for administrative expenses. The idea was sharply criticized by Congress as deceptive to the millions who made donations believing their money would be directly channeled to the 25,000 people who were injured or displaced by the attacks and to the families of those killed.
The fund diversion intensified the turmoil already brewing in the Red Cross with the resignation of its chief executive, Bernadine Healy, who was forced out last month in a dispute about her support for an Israeli group seeking to join the International Committee of the Red Cross. She was also faulted for her zealous appeal for blood donations, which resulted in a surplus that had to be thrown out because of spoilage.
Healy contended that the Red Cross never meant for all the money in the Liberty fund to go to terrorist victims, pointing to the small print in ads soliciting donations that said the money was "for this tragedy and the emerging needs from this event." She said she could not understand why donors "didn't get it." That may be because the overall thrust of the ads appeared to be aimed specifically at collecting money for September 11 victims. Small print is an unseemly technique for charities to employ no matter how innocent it may be.
Healy and the Red Cross had been criticized for being uncooperative in providing the names of the victims and their families for a database other charities were creating to coordinate distribution of benefits. Those seeking aid were frustrated because of the considerable red tape they had encountered. Red Cross has wisely decided to provide the information.
Because the terrorists attacks were unprecedented, many agencies have stumbled as they sorted out what needed to be done. However, missteps by an organization like the Red Cross, which has had to deal with disaster in many forms in years past, was unexpected and untenable.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
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