[ OUR OPINION ]
Don’t prosecute
Stryker protestersDEMOCRACY can be messy and even unruly, a characteristic that escaped Army officials who scheduled a half-dozen public hearings on its proposed training ground for Stryker armored vehicles. The hearings were booked at halls tending toward the genteel -- country clubs and the like. It took two hearings for the Army to come to its senses and realize that First Amendment rights must prevail over any desire for sedate proceedings. Sign-bearing protesters barred from two hearings may attend the remainder, according to the Army's retreat.
THE ISSUE
The Army rescinded its ban on protest signs at hearings on the proposed Stryker brigade after seven arrests at the first two hearings.
The Army generally has held hearings in school cafeterias, but were "constrained by time" at those venues, according to one Army spokesman. Instead, hearings on the Stryker operation were booked at private meeting halls. In the first two hearings, sign-carrying protesters were barred from halls at Honolulu Country Club at Salt Lake and at the Helemano Plantation in Wahiawa.
Col. David Anderson, commander of the U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, said protesters with signs were barred from those hearings because managers of the halls were concerned about "potential damage to their facilities." Indeed, Paulette Lee, Helemano's operation manager, complained about "signs that are on sticks. People don't realize that that can be a weapon." (Actually, none of the signs were on sticks.)
Anderson said the Army warned the meeting halls' managers prior to the hearings that sign-carrying protesters could be disorderly. In any case, the barring of sign carriers from the hearings and the arrests of seven protesters who tried to enter the Salt Lake and Wahiawa halls were inexcusable. Criminal trespass charges against them should be dropped and apologies extended.
Anderson's explanation conflicts with earlier statements by Army officials that they barred signs to create a less intimidating environment for other people attending the hearings. Army spokesman Troy Griffin said the Army "didn't know the ground rules" for the private halls when they were booked, but he also complained that the protesters' "agenda is to break up the meeting, and we're here to gather testimony." The Army's explanations are both confounding and contradictory.
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Smoking foes, give
bars, cafes a breakSTATISTICS about Hawaii tobacco use and the resulting deaths at first are alarming and would cause many to call for a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars. However, a ban on smoking in enclosed areas of most restaurants already exists, and bars that permit smoking must show that food sales are incidental. The impetus of these county bans came not from cancer deaths but from complaints by nonsmokers about secondhand smoke drifting to their tables. Restaurateurs have every reason to complain that enough is enough.
THE ISSUE
A Department of Health survey found that 70 percent of Hawaii residents believe all bars and restaurants should be smoke-free.
A report released this week by the state Department of Health cites more than 1,100 tobacco-related deaths yearly in Hawaii and $525 million in medical costs, lost wages and other expenses. That seems frightening except when compared to figures cited by the federal government that 440,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer and other diseases related to tobacco use, costing $157 billion in medical treatment, lost wages and other expenses.
The low Hawaii figures reflect the state's relatively few smokers -- 20.6 percent of Hawaii's adults compared with the national average of 22.8 percent. Hawaii has a rate of lung cancer lower than all states except Utah, where the Mormon Church strongly persuades members not to smoke.
"The numbers tell us that overall we are doing well," Julian Lipsher, director of the Health Department's Tobacco Prevention and Education project, pointed out last month.
State efforts should focus on where they can do the most good: children who are most vulnerable. In recent years, the results from those efforts have been spectacular: A report released last month indicated that the percentage of Hawaii high school students who smoke fell from 29.2 percent in 1997 to 27.9 percent in 1999 to 15 percent in 2001, compared to the national youth average of 28.5 percent in 2001.
The Health Department's report this week also said that Hawaiians have the highest smoking rate of any ethnic group, starting at age 14 or 15. This in no way means that smoking has cultural significance. The vulnerability comes from low economic status, parental occupation and the mother's educational level, according to a medical journal report this week. It is well known that Hawaiians have the lowest economic status of all ethnic groups in the state.
Other studies nationally have shown that low socioeconomic status in childhood increases the risk that a person will take up smoking and progress to lifelong addiction. State officials should leave bars and restaurants alone and concentrate on keeping poor children of poor families away from cigarettes.
