Dear Mayor and Council Members:

As the time for the annual UBCM meeting approaches, we once again urge you to vote against resolutions that would endorse, or pave the way toward, a province-wide blanket smoking ban for publicly-accessible areas such as restaurants and pubs.

Instead, we urge the adoption of reasonable ventilation measures, according to international ASHRAE or other appropriate standards. This will ensure generally improved air quality with respect to a number of indoor air pollutants, of which cigarette smoke is only a small one. Such standards might help to mitigate and perhaps preempt other concerns about indoor air pollution as they arise in the context of worker protection. For example, particulates from the frying of food contain powerful carcinogens.

Having said that, it is important to note the real controversy that exists over whether secondhand smoke normally presents any appreciable health risk to the non-smoker at all. Scientific reservations about the quality of the evidence are routinely ignored, and concerns have been repeatedly raised about the "politicization" of science to serve particular public policy ends desired by some public health officials and lobbyists when it comes to the smoking issue (see, for example, the work of Steven Milloy alluded to in the accompanying bibliographical page).

There is ample evidence to indicate the negative economic impact of smoking bans on the hospitality industry. An influential U.S. study often mentioned in Canada (and authored by leading anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz) concluded that bans do not hurt the restaurant trade. In recent months, the Glantz study has come under fire as the result of a detailed review by economist Dr. Michael Evans of the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. A Canadian perspective is available in the economic impact analysis of smoking bans done for the Ontario hospitality industry. This Canadian study concluded that the impact of bans is very negative indeed. The Ontario Restaurant Association can provide copies of the complete document.

The accompanying bibliography also includes a reference to a "literary review" that the well-known antismoking organization ASH has chosen to publish on its website, to which we draw your attention in order to indicate the atmosphere of hostility against smokers that is being generated by the present antismoking hysteria.

Those who want smoking quickly and altogether eliminated from society have "latched on" to the notion of secondhand smoke as a political expedient. If smokers risk hurting themselves, then draconian bans and prohibitions seem unwarranted. If, however, people can be convinced that their smoking neighbours are hurting them, then actions directed against such "irresponsible" people can be justified. We believe this sort of political strategy is dishonourable and socially dangerous.

Those seeking to compel "a smoke-free society by the Year 2000" cannot hope to achieve this goal without measures that are normally unacceptable in a democratic society. The first wave of "remedies" they have suggested will only create social division within communities, economic distress for honest business people, and economic opportunities for the criminal elements that always take advantage of prohibitionist drives. The people of British Columbia deserve more balanced and moderate policies.

Please do not empower the provincial government to deprive the one-quarter of the population who are smokers from places to legally congregate over a meal, a coffee or a drink. Please do not hand Victoria a mandate for the micro-management of the workplaces and hospitality businesses of your community.

Yours truly,

Gian Turci,
President
FORCES Canada