Though it may seem like just yesterday that your night out was dampened by thick clouds of tobacco smoke and the scent of stale cigarettes came home with you on your clothes and in your hair, this month marks 10 years since the law declaring New York's bars and restaurants smoke-free was passed ("Smoke gets out of your eyes," March 17). This landmark legislation has played an important role in the dramatic decline of New York's smoking rate, resulting in more lives saved.
While we have made major progress in reducing New York's smoking rates, our work is far from complete. Some 25,000 New Yorkers still lose their lives each year from tobacco-caused disease. At the same time, Big Tobacco spends more than $500,000 a day here marketing their deadly products to our kids.
If we continue to move forward with innovative public health policies, we can begin to tackle tobacco use head-on. We will persist in advocating for legislation to make more areas of New York smoke-free and work to ensure a high tax on not only cigarettes but all tobacco products. We support funding the state tobacco control program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-recommended level to best protect the public from the dangers of tobacco use. Only when the right policies are in place, when smokers have access to the resources they need to quit and youth are prevented from starting to smoke, can we be successful in combating tobacco's burden.
Jeff Seyler
Northeast president and CEO
American Lung Association,
Albany