Farrell’s Vote on Smoking Ban in Restaurants

Bill Boyarsky’s column (Oct. 19) explaining Councilman Bob Farrell’s courageous vote to ban cigarette smoking in Los Angeles restaurants was excellent journalism, a much-deserved plaudit to the City Council member.

If national polls and some local surveys are an indication, a majority of smokers favor increased regulation of smoking in public settings. More than two-thirds of smokers now acknowledge that smoking can harm nonsmokers.

A review of nine risk analysis studies of the health effects of environmental tobacco smoke showed a remarkable consensus that in the U.S. 5,000 lung cancer deaths a year are attributable to environmental tobacco smoke. This is 25% higher than indoor radon and is 57 times greater than the combined estimated cancer risk from all the hazardous outdoor air pollutants currently regulated by the EPA: radionuclides, asbestosis, arsenic, benzene, coke oven emissions and vinyl chloride.

We have established beyond a reasonable doubt that the risk of lung cancer increases with increased exposure to all sources of environmental tobacco smoke, including smoking spouses, smoking co-workers and, most recently, smoking parents.

As Farrell had the courage to acknowledge, the devastation to health caused by smoking has tended to fall the hardest on inner-city, ethnic minority residents. They are, indeed, besieged by the ill-health consequences of cigarette smoking, including low-birth-weight babies, heart disease, emphysema and decreased immune response to such diseases as cystic fibrosis and AIDS. If Farrell’s vote to ban smoking from restaurants had been successful, that vote would have done more to improve his constituents’ overall health and expected longevity than any amount of money appropriated for health. He exhibited genuine leadership on this important health issue.

WILLIAM J. McCARTHY

Vice President, Public Issues, American

Cancer Society Coastal Cities Unit

Culver City