[ OUR OPINION ]
Use smoking ban to
learn about effectsAMID disagreement about the health effects of secondhand smoke, Honolulu's restaurants are required beginning today to be smoke-free. One of the areas of disagreement on the issue, along with health effects, has been whether businesses will be harmed. Bar and restaurant owners could add to the knowledge by recording both financial and anecdotal information about how their businesses change -- for the better or worse.
THE ISSUE An ordinance that bans smoking in Honolulu restaurants takes effect today.
The new ordinance bans smoking in all inside restaurant areas except in bar areas that are separated by floor-to-ceiling walls from dining areas with separate ventilation systems. Smoking is allowed only in bars with less than one-third of gross sales coming from food.
A 1999 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that laws banning smoking in restaurants have little effect on the tourist business. The authors wrote that international tourism increased in California (from Japan) and New York (from Germany) following implementation of smoke-free ordinances.
"This study debunks the tobacco industry allegation that smoke-free restaurant laws adversely affect tourism, including international tourism," the authors wrote. They suggested that more smoking bans in restaurants could be enacted without fear of harming tourism.
However, studies supporting either side of the debate over secondhand smoke are discredited by adversaries for being funded by interest groups. While the JAMA study was supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute, studies scoffing at health hazards of passive smoke and raising fears about the economic dangers of smoking bans are criticized for being funded by the tobacco industry.
Perhaps through their trade association, Honolulu's restaurant businesses could perform a service to those in other counties and elsewhere by keeping records and objectively examining the effects of the smoking ban in the weeks and months ahead. No other area in the country receives such a large proportion of business by visitors from Asia, where smoking remains socially acceptable. This is a fertile area for a neutral and factual study.
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School drug tests
are not the solutionAN Oklahoma school's policy of conducting random drug tests on students participating in extracurricular activities may be misguided, but the U.S. Supreme Court has given its stamp of approval. Proponents of drug tests would do better to extend them to all students. Other school-based drug prevention programs remain preferable to intrusive searches.
THE ISSUE Schools have been allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to subject public school students participating in extracurricular activities to random drug tests.
Drug abuse, especially the increased use of crystal methamphetamine and the amphetamine-based hallucinogen Ecstasy, is a problem in Hawaii's high schools. However, it has not reached the "epidemic" level that Justice Clarence Thomas described in allowing schools to resort to random testing of students.
Public school students acquired their rights to be free from random searches in 1985, when the Supreme Court rejected the previously prevailing idea that principals and teachers were surrogate parents who could open any student's locker or backpack. The court ruled then that school officials were government officials bound by constitutional restrictions on searches.
Ten years later, the court held that students participating in sports could be randomly tested for drugs. Last week's ruling widens the random testing to include students participating in any extracurricular activity from the French Club to the Future Farmers of America. Legal scholars and even some of the justices say the ruling logically extends the subject of random searches to the entire student body.
Drug testing has become common in college and professional sports. The military conducts random tests of service personnel, and companies occasionally test their employees to assure a drug-free workplace. However, Hawaii high school students, even athletes, have not yet been subjected to random drug tests. Keith Amemiya, executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, has cited studies showing that students who participate in sports are less likely to use drugs than is the general student population.
Sports, along with other extracurricular activities, can influence student participants to refrain from using illegal drugs. Random tests focused on such groups could result only in drug users walking away from such groups, increasing their susceptibility to further drug abuse.
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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, Editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, Assistant Editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, Assistant Editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.comMary Poole, Editorial Page Editor, 529-4790; mpoole@starbulletin.com
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