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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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Lung Cancer Stricken Flight Attendant Pleas for Smoking Bans to Save Lives [04/02-4]
Excerpts from: Smoking ban can be a lifesaver
By
KATHIE CHENEY Atlanta Journal-Constitution [04/02/04]
The members of the Georgia Legislature have a unique opportunity to take action to protect the health of the residents of Georgia by voting for the Smokefree Air Act. The Georgia Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the legislation that would restrict smoking indoors in publicly accessible places. It is now up to the Georgia House -- and time is running out.
What our elected officials need to realize is that time is running out for those of us who know they have been adversely affected by secondhand smoke -- and for those who have yet to discover that they have been affected.
I have firsthand knowledge of the importance of protecting ourselves from secondhand smoke. I have lived for 16 years with the consequences of exposure. I have never been a smoker or had my first cigarette, and I never will -- but that is not enough.
Today our airlines no longer allow smoking, and no one who flies has to breathe in other passengers' secondhand smoke. But that change came too late to help me.
Sixteen years ago, just before we began to limit smoking on short flights, I discovered that I had cancer. Not just any cancer -- a smoker's cancer, even though I never smoked. I had a kind of throat cancer that doctors usually saw only in women who had been heavy smokers over long periods of time.
As a flight attendant based in Boston, I knew that two other female flight attendants I had flown with had themselves discovered their cancer shortly after the birth of their babies. They had suffered from the same lethal combination that now threatened me: too much exposure to tobacco smoke combined with a pregnancy, which triggered the cancer. Neither of them lived long enough to see her child's second birthday, and I knew it.
I am the only one of the three of us still alive to warn others, and that is why I have to speak out. I owe it to them, to their children and to my family to do what I can.
People say they cannot see the problem with secondhand smoke. They can't see the danger. There are people who smoke their whole lives without a problem. Why should businesses be kept from accommodating smokers just because some people don't like a little smoke? Where's the harm in it?
But that is exactly the problem. We can't see the damage from tobacco smoke. We can't feel it or know about it until, too often, it is too late. I never saw it because it was inside my body, and it may be inside yours.
It took us years and the hard work of Mothers Against Drunk Driving to persuade our legislators to stop giving the people who caused deaths by driving drunk only a slap on the wrists.
I remember people saying, "That accident wasn't his fault, he was drunk!" We don't accept that today. Today you can drink, just don't drive. It is one thing to endanger your own life, but you don't have the right to needlessly endanger others.
My passengers never meant to put me at needless risk when they smoked on our planes, but they did. Smokers mean no harm to others when they smoke in places where others must inhale their dangerous wastes -- but they do.
Smokers want to avoid thinking about that, and they want no one to remind them of it. They don't want to think about the danger to others because they don't want to be reminded of the danger to themselves.
I might have my health today if we had adopted a smokefree air law in time to help me. But we can save lives and protect our families by passing a smokefree air law now to help all of us.
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