J U L Y 2 0 0 9 / C E N T R A L C I T Y E X T R A 5
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C E N T R A L C I T Y E X T R A / J U L Y 2 0 0 9
Health education unit spearheads city’s tobacco-free movement
“Actually, there’s no better role for city
government than to protect people,” countered
Steven Fugaro, former president of the S.F.
Medical Society. “Data show that 50% of peo-
ple in the United States show evidence of
[exposure to] secondhand smoke.”
And, according to UCSF Professor Stanton
Glantz, among the nation’s leading experts on
tobacco’s effects, who spoke later in the hear-
ing, no level of secondhand smoke is safe and
it’s no respecter of barriers.
“It can diffuse throughout a building,
through pipes and heating vents, out windows
and up into other windows,” he said. Worse,
its effects — damage to the cells that line
blood vessels, for example — are still obvious
24 hours after exposure. The EPA has classified
secondhand smoke as a known cause of can-
cer in humans, he added.
Ordinance 80438 is in a holding pattern.
Except for a provision to ban smoking in taxi-
cabs that was passed separately in December,
all the other provisions were put on hold at
Daly’s request.
“The supervisor was approached last year
and agreed to carry the ordinance,” says his
aide Tom Jackson. “He won’t move it forward
to the Rules Committee until he’s sure it has
the support to pass it.”
‘NOT A CIVIL LIBERTY’
The facts about smoking’s dangers are
undeniable, yet tobacco control remains con-
troversial because it pits nonsmokers’ safety
against smokers’ rights.
Karen Licavoli, a vice president of Breathe
California, which works to mitigate the effects
of lung disease, came down hard on the side
of protection at the hearing.
“Smoking is not a civil liberty,” she said.
Breathe California is a member of the city’s
Tobacco Free Coalition, a group of organiza-
tions that, since 1990, has spearheaded 17 pub-
lic policy changes to control tobacco use in San
Francisco (see sidebar). The proposed second-
hand smoke ordinance is the most sweeping.
Lighting