To the editor:

Public smoking ban policy should protect young workers.

Public policy, not business decisions, should determine whether poisonous materials should be permitted in a workplace. Business owners should not be the ones to make health decisions on whether their customers and employees should be exposed to second-hand smoke.

As a mother of four young adults, all of whom have worked in restaurants, including some in Lawrence, I object to the Lawrence Journal-World’s editorial conclusion that “voluntary action is preferable to a legal edict” on smoking in public, when we know that tobacco use is the third-most preventable cause of death in this country and in our state.

Most Kansans work in smoke-free places. But unhealthy practices by restaurant and bar owners often force high school- and college-age servers to breathe in contaminated air, literally as a condition of employment.

Even state-of-the art ventilation systems cannot clean all the contaminants from air polluted by tobacco smoke. Employees working in restaurants where smoking is permitted are automatically assaulted by second-hand smoke contaminants that can cause sinus and ear infections, eye irritation, exacerbation of asthma, as well as possible heart and lung damage or cancer.

Remember that young restaurant and bar workers in Lawrence and in other cities in Kansas deserve to work in an environment where the air is clean. Smoke-free public policies provide these workers, and customers also, that protection.

Mary Jayne Hellebust,

Kansas SmokeLess Kids Initiative Inc.,

Topeka