Clearing the air: challenges to introducing smoking restrictions in West Virginia

One of the most fundamental rights, the right to breathe air free of unhealthy carcinogens, is continuously threatened by powerful corporate tobacco interests, which spend enormous amounts of money not only to promote smoking, but also to stifle local, state, and national efforts to control smoking in the United States. From the perspective of a "committed participant" this paper discusses recent difficulties encountered in attempting to introduce West Virginia's first comprehensive smoking control legislation, and the strategies used to overcome them. The primary message reported here is that, given the overwhelming financial, emotional, and human-potential costs involved in ongoing tobacco abuse in the United States, it is essential that citizens unite to protect the health of all children and the vast majority of adults who do not smoke, and to discourage the consumption of cigarettes, the single biggest cause of disease and death in our society. The example reported here from West Virginia demonstrates that persistent citizen activism can make a critical difference in promoting laws that protect human health from unhealthy environmental tobacco smoke.