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Ban smoking in city buildings
Comments 0 | Recommend 0When it comes to following rules, laws and guidelines, consistency in enforcement should be the order of the day.
Ask anyone who has ever participated in a sporting event and they will confirm that all they desire from game officials is to “call it the same for both sides.”
Which brings us to the disparity of smoking regulations in Sedalia city buildings. As reported by The Democrat’s Sarah Nail, City Administrator Keith Riesberg on Monday asked the City Council to consider whether to ban smoking in city buildings or property. While smoking is not allowed in City Hall, “a lot of our employee break rooms still allow smoking, which is unusual in this day and age,” Riesberg told the council, also noting that smoking is allowed in the Public Works Department building, the city garage and fire stations.
A couple of years ago, the World Health Organization recommended bans on smoking in public buildings. Dr. Armando Peruga, a WHO official, said: “This is not about shaming the smoker. This is not even about banning smoking. This is about society taking decisions about where to smoke and where not to smoke.”
According to the American Lung Association (lungusa.org), “Secondhand smoke causes almost 50,000 deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year, including approximately 3,400 from lung cancer and 22,700-69,600 from heart disease.” It also notes that 23 states “have passed laws prohibiting smoking in almost all public places and workplaces.”
It is incongruous for some city workers to be able to smoke in their workplace while others cannot, with the difference based solely on what building they work in. When council members asked Riesberg how city employees would react to a possible smoking ban, he told them, “Some would like to see all city campuses go smoke-free; some would like to smoke while they are sitting at their desks.”
The City Council will have the final say in this matter. We encourage them to enact smoking bans inside all city government buildings. It provides consistency for city workers, and a healthier environment for everyone who frequents the places where our tax dollars are put to use.
