In our view, July 3: Take It Outside

Smoking-ban debates often drift quickly toward arguments about tobacco or civil liberties. Instead, the debate should remain centered on the issue of public health.

Secondhand smoke is dangerous to the public. That means public agencies are correct to enforce indoor smoking bans at public facilities. For one reason, more than three dozen states have implemented smoking bans of varying forms — mostly absolute — in state prisons.

As Michael Andersen reported in Sunday’s Columbian, the Vancouver Housing Authority recently implemented an indoor smoking ban at Esther Short Commons downtown. A second smoking ban began Wednesday at another VHA site, Columbia House in the Hough neighborhood.

Predictably, smokers who reside at Esther Short Commons are putting up an awful stink over the new smoking ban. But VHA deserves praise for a common-sense policy that not only follows a growing national trend but protects the public investment.

That investment, however, as stated earlier, is a secondary issue. The top priority remains public health, not to be confused with private, individual rights. Smokers who reside in public housing units remain free to pursue their deadly habit as often as they like … as long as they’re 25 feet from the apartment buildings.

Back to public health: Cancer-causing secondhand smoke often spreads or is circulated by ventilation systems into other apartments. Those residents have a right to be protected from that invasion of the unwelcome carcinogen. Their awareness of that right explains why an overwhelming majority of residents in public housing units support smoking bans.

Supreme though it ranks, however, public health is not the only issue. Taxpayers have a right to have their investment in public housing protected in reasonable ways. Smoking causes fires. And when a smoker moves out of a unit, the cleanup and painting of the apartment that’s necessary to remove lingering effects of the smoke is costly. According to Andersen’s story, that cost is $1,900 per two-bedroom apartment, but similar costs are reported to be much higher in other cities.

Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, a pediatrician at Mass General Hospital for Children and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Tobacco Consortium, wrote an interesting essay in the June 27 Newsweek magazine about smoking in public housing units. Secondhand smoke wields a disproportionate threat to children in low-income areas.

"Children in densely populated public housing suffer the worst," Dr. Winickoff wrote. "That’s ironic, since these smoke-filled environments are subsidized by the same government that spends billions of dollars on (treating) secondhand-smoke-related disease."

Private apartment owners increasingly are enforcing smoking bans because, as Dr. Winickoff wrote, such bans mean "higher property values, and lower fire risk, insurance and cleanup costs. But most important, it means a healthier life for children."

One argument that some smoking-ban supporters are proffering should be avoided. They like to criticize low-income residents of public housing units for spending hundreds of dollars a year on smoking. But that’s not the point. People have a right to spend their money the way they want.

The more productive perspective values smoking bans in public housing units as rational and proper protections of public health. VHA should implement smoking bans in all public housing units, offering plenty of advance notice and making sure residents know about the many publicly subsidized smoking-cessation programs that are available.