Suffolk Closeup: A tobacco-free world

The Suffolk County Legislature last month passed a bill that, with exceptions, would ban smoking at county-owned parks and beaches. The measure was authored by a freshman legislator, William Spencer, a Centerport physician.

Suffolk has been a pioneer in banning or limiting smoking. Indeed, the New York Times has reported that Suffolk “has led the nation in enacting tough anti-smoking legislation, beginning with a ban on smoking in supermarkets, then including malls, offices, theaters and other public places.”

It has not been easy. Decades ago, representatives of the tobacco industry — led by the industry’s then lobbying and public relations arm, the Tobacco Institute — paraded before the Suffolk Legislature, demanding the bills be defeated. They claimed there was no definitive proof of a link between smoking and cancer, especially when it came to the impacts of “second-hand” smoking. This has long been shown to be baloney.

These days the attack by pro-smoking forces often centers on what they call “smoker’s rights.”  Dr. Spencer, faced with charges that his resolution infringed on them, amended it to exempt smoking in parking lots and campgrounds at county parks and beaches. Too bad. He also removed a proposed ban on smoking at county golf courses.

“It’s a start,” said Dr. Spencer of his final resolution. “It’s a matter of people being entitled to breathe clean air.”

His bill passed narrowly, 10 to 7. County Executive Steve Bellone “is inclined to sign it” pending a public hearing, said his spokeswoman, Vanessa Baird-Streeter.

Some believe that victory is in sight in the battle against smoking. “Today, we are in the midst of an irreversible process that will lead to the termination of organized tobacco,” said Amos Hausner, head of the Israel Council for the Prevention of Smoking, at the first Israel Conference on Tobacco and Health last month. “The environment will be completely tobacco-free. This is what people all over the world want.”    Mr. Hausner is the son of Gideon Hausner, who as Israeli attorney general prosecuted Adolph Eichmann. He linked the tobacco industry to “the banality of evil,” the words used by Hannah Arendt in the title of her book on Eichmann. The tobacco companies, he said, knew their products would kill but continued not only to market them but to make them deadlier. An attorney, he spoke about future lawsuits against the industry going beyond damages claims and based instead on “crimes against humanity, of homicide.”

Much of the world today is aware of the lethality of tobacco products. Laws have been enacted all over to limit their sale and use; there has been litigation to make the tobacco industry pay for the illnesses and deaths it has caused.
Still, the tobacco industry aggressively fights back. For example, a California proposition to add a $1 tax on a pack of cigarettes to discourage smoking was narrowly defeated last month after a $47.7-million advertising blitz led by tobacco giants Phillip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.

The industry has been focusing on peddling in developing countries in Southeast Asia, according to The Economist. In an article last year, “The Last Gasp,” the magazine noted: “Tobacco firms see growth potential in the region’s low rate of women smokers. Across Southeast Asia, fewer than one in 10 women smoke, compared with 40-70 percent of men.”

Children remain a target of the tobacco industry, says the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (tobaccofreekids.org). It tells of billions of dollars spent by tobacco companies annually “to promote their products and many of their marketing efforts directly reach kids.” As to the “Toll of Tobacco Around the World,” the group’s website declares there has been “a global tobacco epidemic of preventable death, disease and economic harm to countries and families,” and, “If current trends continue, tobacco will kill one billion people in the 21st century.”

As physician Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director general of the World Health Organization, has said: “A cigarette is the only consumer product which, when used as directed, kills its consumer.”
Suffolk has played a big part in battling smoking but far more needs to be done here and around the world.