Letters

The years of brainwashing and rhetoric from the tobacco companies still have some people thinking that secondhand smoke is no more than a nuisance — it’s not. It’s a deadly poison.

As soon as it’s inhaled, secondhand smoke causes immediate body chemistry changes. It causes change in the blood flow to your heart in just 30 minutes. It’s responsible for cancers throughout the body. It causes lung disease. Since smoke is a gas, it spreads completely through the air. Unless completely isolated, “separate sections” and smoking “only at the bar” offer essentially no protection. To protect health, secondhand smoke needs to be avoided.

Workplaces and public places like restaurants that are not 100 percent smoke-free are not safe. If the proprietors won’t protect your health, why give them your business? A smoke-free dining directory — available from New Jersey Group Against Smoking Pollution (GASP), www.njgasp.org — will help readers in the nonsmoking majority find restaurants with clean air.

But the need for protection from secondhand smoke is obvious. It’s time New Jersey had a smoke-free air law. Other states are protecting their residents now, including all the Northeast Coast states from Delaware to Maine, plus Florida, North Dakota, Montana and California.

New Jersey shouldn’t be one of the last states to do the same. I urge everyone to contact their legislators in Trenton and ask them to pass the Smoke-Free Air Act — S1926 and A3424.

Douglas Chester, D.D.S.

president, New Jersey GASP

Summit