Madison has an important public-health decision to make. We have an opportunity to set a new public-health standard for restaurants, essentially holding them accountable to a higher standard of public-health protection by making them completely smoke-free.

At present, smoking is permitted without restriction in establishments where more than half of the business comes from alcohol sales. The air can be blue with smoke. If alcohol sales dip below that 50-percent level, the establishment is regarded as a restaurant and is required to be generally smoke-free. However, generous exceptions were included in the ordinance, which allow smoking in a restaurant’s bar area, or separately ventilated rooms. As a result, you may be seated at a table in the restaurant, where smoking is prohibited, only to find that people in the same room at the bar area are puffing away.

Under the proposed smoking ordinance, that would change. The smoking option would be removed from restaurants that derive less than half their business from alcohol sales. Quite simply, the proposed change would clear the air.

Many smokers criticize the move as another infringement on smoker rights. Basically, this argument would be equivalent to drinkers advocating their right to drive while intoxicated. The public-health benefits to be gained far outweigh the modest inconvenience to smokers who have to go outside to light up.

The fundamental public-health question is, don’t we have a right to eat and drink in a poison-free environment? Don’t restaurant workers have that right, too? The Madison Public Health Commission certainly agrees. At its Sept. 9 meeting, the Commission unanimously urged the City Council to adopt the proposed change to the smoking ordinance to make Madison restaurants genuinely smoke-free. The proposed change puts public health above other considerations.

Today, much is known about the serious health risks associated with smoking, and few people would deny that smoking is bad for your health. Most everyone realizes that smoking-related illnesses are a substantial public-health problem. In Wisconsin, over 7,300 people die from smoking-related illnesses each year. The problem is not isolated to smokers. Secondhand smoke is estimated to cause as many as 1,200 additional lung cancer and heart disease deaths in Wisconsin annually.

The evidence that secondhand smoke is dangerous to those exposed to it has been mounting and is compelling. A 2001 study of the effects of secondhand smoke exposure among Hong Kong food-service workers estimated that secondhand smoke kills about 150 food-service workers annually in Hong Kong.

Disturbingly, food-service workers appear to be 50 percent more likely than the general population to develop lung cancer, largely because many of them are exposed to secondhand smoke on the job.

In June of this year, a World Health Organization report concluded that secondhand smoke should be classified as carcinogenic to humans. This report is very significant because it places a prestigious international organization officially on record as finding secondhand smoke to be a substance that causes cancer in humans.

Madison, which prides itself as a leader in many regards, has fallen behind in protecting public health by not requiring totally smoke-free restaurants. California adopted smoke-free workplace legislation in the mid-1990s. Madison did so only last year. No worker should have to breathe someone else’s smoke in order to hold a job. The health of hospitality workers is just as important as the health of every restaurant patron.

Tuesday night, when the Common Council considers the proposal to make Madison restaurants smoke-free, I hope the alders will realize the great significance of this issue and seize the opportunity to protect the public health of our community.

Susan J.M. Bauman
Mayor