Chapter 4

Looking at the Impact of Smoking on Families and Communities

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Spreading smoke to others

Bullet Understanding the environmental impact of smoking

Bullet Changing the rules of the game

Smoking is not an individual sport. Even if you’re completely alone every time you light up, you add a bit of contamination to your environment. Trivial? Maybe. But the truth is, small amounts of pollutants release into the air but the poisonous debris left from smoking is much more noticeable. It adds up if you consider the billions of butts discarded every year. Animals and sea life ingest this toxic material indiscriminately.

And that’s just a small amount of the environmental pollution that occurs directly from smoking. When others are around a smoker, second- and thirdhand smoke also can cause problems. Secondhand smoke is what’s emitted from the end of lit cigarettes and the smoke that’s exhaled. Thirdhand smoke comes from the tobacco pollutants — the dust and smell that permeates clothes, hair, carpets, and eventually, all the people who encounter it. Surprisingly, even thirdhand smoke is not benign.

In this chapter, we describe the effects of smoking on the family, the community, and the environment. We also look at the role of legislation in preventing people from starting smoking and decreasing the rate of smoking overall.

Smoking at Home

If you smoke, even if you don’t smoke in your house, you’re exposing your family to cancer-causing toxins. That’s because thirdhand smoke on clothes and hair lingers long after you’ve blown smoke into the air.

We don’t want to shame you or make you feel even more guilty by talking about the effects of second- and thirdhand smoke. We know how difficult it is to quit smoking. But it’s important to be aware of the impact you’re having. Sometimes it’s easier to do something hard when you’re doing it for someone else. If you don’t quit for yourself, consider quitting for those you care about.

Whether you have kids or not, if you smoke around children, you’re harming them. Not a pleasant thought we know. Babies exposed to smoke are at greater risk for dying of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Furthermore, children exposed to secondhand smoke have more severe and frequent ear infections, asthma attacks, and respiratory infections. And kids who grow up around smokers are at higher risk of becoming smokers themselves.

There is an absence of studies to date that have followed the kids of smokers into their adult years to see whether they’re at increased risk for cancer and heart disease. But studies have shown that spouses of smokers are at increased risk for cancer and heart disease. Bottom line: Roommates, family members, partners, and spouses who live with smokers run a high risk for a host of serious health problems.

Many people believe that by not smoking in front of family members, they’re protecting them from harm. Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Thirdhand smoke builds up over time on all your furniture, clothes, and belongings — and it lingers for months and months. Studies document that even thirdhand smoke exposure produces many of the same health risks as secondhand smoke. Infants and toddlers are at the greatest risk when it comes to thirdhand smoke exposure, because they have less-developed immune systems, put things in their mouths, crawl on the floors, and even breathe at a faster rate than adults do. Madison’s story (see the nearby sidebar) illuminates how thirdhand smoke exerts its insidious effects outside of a smoker’s awareness.

Here are a few things you can do to protect your family from second- or thirdhand smoke:

Don’t allow people to smoke in your house.
Don’t allow people to smoke in your car.

THIRDHAND SMOKE AND KIDS

Madison, age two and a half, whimpers in her mother’s arms. The pediatrician remarks that this is her fourth visit in the last six weeks. He explains that she has chronic ear infections and she’s been having respiratory problems as well. He asks, “Is Madison exposed to smoking by anyone in the family?”

Her mother responds that neither she nor Madison’s father smokes. The pediatrician then asks if any of Madison’s caregivers smoke. Her mom replies, “Well, her grandmother smokes like a chimney, but she says she doesn’t do it around Madison, and we believe her.”

The pediatrician tells Madison about the dangers of thirdhand smoke. He explains that toxins are transferred from the grandmother’s clothing, her car, her furniture, and carpet directly into Madison’s system. He concludes, “This could explain Madison’s sicknesses this year. We need to have a talk with Grandma.”
If one of your childcare providers (even a relative) is a smoker, consider getting someone else because thirdhand smoke cannot be eliminated from a smoker.
Be supportive of any family member who tries to quit smoking. (See Chapter 23 for ways to help someone you care about quit.)

Looking at the Environmental Impact of Smoking

Most people know that smoking negatively impacts both smokers and those around them. But did you know that tobacco also inflicts a great cost on the environment? You may look at a cigarette and think, “Just how bad can this little thing be?” Here are a few of the costs that accumulate over trillions of cigarettes consumed every year:

Pollution: Many of the roughly six trillion cigarette butts thrown away each year end up on beaches and waterfronts. In fact, the number-one waste product found on international beaches is not plastic, but cigarette butts. Butts are not biodegradable, and they’re deadly to fish and sea life. Plus, who wants to spend time on a beach, at a park, or in any outdoor area when it’s littered with thousands of cigarette butts?

In terms of air pollution, it is estimated that putting the tobacco industry out of business would be like taking 16 million cars off the roads and highways. It’s amazing how those small cigarettes can add up, isn’t it?
Depletion: Cigarette smoking doesn’t just add to pollution, it takes away from the environment. Deforestation increases greenhouse gases and, most scientists believe, contributes to climate change. One tree is required to make approximately 300 cigarettes. That comes to about 20 billion trees cut down in order to manufacture a worldwide supply of cigarettes for one year — trees that won’t be there to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, thus exacerbating climate change. In addition, because tobacco is often grown on the same soil, season after season, soils become depleted of important nutrients that must be replaced with chemical fertilizers.

Tobacco cultivation also depletes available land that could be used for traditional food crops. Because tobacco is often grown in poor, developing countries, this leads to more worldwide hunger.
Pesticides: Profitable tobacco production requires the use of copious amounts of pesticides. These pesticides are among the most toxic used on crops. Workers exposed to pesticides have higher rates of cancer, nervous system damage, and birth defects.
Poison: Poison control centers across the United States report thousands of calls each year regarding small children and animals that have consumed cigarettes or cigarette butts. Serious problems are rare but can occur due to nicotine’s high toxicity. However, concerns have been raised due to the trend toward flavoring tobacco products, which could appeal more to infants and kids.

Combatting Smoking through Legislation

Maybe you’re old enough to remember that as recently as the early ’90s you could smoke almost anywhere — restaurants, bars, even the cancer ward in most hospitals. Airline crews were particularly besieged by secondhand smoke. Imagine working for hours in a tin can where dozens of people smoked. In those days, you could have a drink or a meal at a bar or restaurant and leave smelling like you smoked a pack of cigarettes, even if you didn’t smoke.

Times have changed. Now more than half of all states ban cigarette smoking in public places. Restrictions at work, at shopping centers, and at most eating establishments make it more difficult for smokers to fit in as many cigarettes as they once could. Airlines universally prohibit smoking, and American airports do the same.

These restrictions and the changing perceptions of smoking have certainly led to the lowest smoking rates to date in the United States. Just changing rules governing where smoking is allowed delivered a powerful, implicit message: Smoking is unacceptable and not welcome here.

California is an example of a state that has put money and effort into dissuading people from smoking. Its model directly challenges the acceptability of tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke. the California Tobacco Control Program (CTCP) initiative includes the following efforts:

Supporting smoke-free outdoor patios for dining
Keeping parks and beaches free of smoke
Campaigning against e-cigarettes
Trying to prevent tobacco advertising from targeting vulnerable populations
Providing educational materials to assist in quit efforts

TOBACCO 21: A PROPOSAL WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Legislation designed to raise the age for tobacco sales to 21 is being proposed at multiple levels of government. Most adult smokers begin as adolescents, which is a time of particular vulnerability to acquiring a nicotine addiction. The proposed laws (a few have already passed) hope to decrease teen tobacco use by making it more difficult for teens to buy tobacco and other related products.

Interestingly, many of the supporters of this legislation come from states that traditionally support Big Tobacco interests (think Virginia and Kentucky, both huge tobacco growers). Even more surprising, many of these proposals are supported by some of the largest tobacco and e-cigarette companies. What’s going on here?

Some pundits cynically suggest that these laws will also prohibit future restrictions on tobacco marketing and sales that have also been proposed. In other words, the law will simply state that no one under the age of 21 can buy tobacco. But many of those laws will not include significant fines for store owners who break the law. Nor will they restrict tobacco flavorings that appeal to youth. Health advocates worry that the proposed laws will be meaningless and give tobacco companies exactly what they want.

This strategy has reduced smoking, helped people quit, and discouraged young people from starting. California reports that more than one million lives have been saved by the CTCP.

Australia has taken an additional approach to public health policy on cigarettes. In 2011, the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act required cigarette manufacturers to use plain packages for their cigarettes. Well, plain may not be an entirely accurate term. The companies are allowed a small company logo on the packages, but the rest of the package delivers a brief, powerful message (like “Smoking causes blindness,” “Smoking kills,” “Don’t let your child breathe smoke,” or “Quitting will improve your health”), often accompanied by a dramatic picture.

The proponents of the act hoped to reduce the appeal of cigarettes and other tobacco products using this simple, inexpensive strategy. Early studies are suggestive of the value of this approach. Given the low cost, it may ultimately hold promise for worldwide implementation with an excellent return on investment.