Ten years after local bars go smoke-free, activists keep up fight for well-being of all

It was the Goldilocks of beach spots, far away from the crowds and with the beautiful ocean surf framed by an azure sky.

Then, a metre or two of sand away, another beach-goer plunked down his chair.

He lit up a cigar the size of the Hindenburg and then, perfectly upwind of us, happily puffed away on his stinky stogie.

This recent holiday beach encounter reminded me how long it’s been since I’ve been forced to choke on another’s tobacco fumes.

Exactly 10 years ago this week, Calgarians were able to breathe a little easier thanks to a city bylaw that, for once and all, made it an offence to light up in public establishments and most workplaces.

I fondly remember that joyful first pub visit of January 2008, when I left with the taste of chicken wings on my tongue but not the usual cigarette-butt aroma that permeated my clothes and demanded a good hose-down in the shower.

On Tuesday, a group of Albertans gather in Calgary’s Hotel Arts to mark the milestone anniversary — and to put the provincial government on notice, that it still has a few more steps to take before all workers under its jurisdiction can put in an honest day’s labours without the fear of contracting a chronic disease from the air where they work.

The usual suspects are here, including longtime anti-smoking activist Les Hagen and Dr. Brent Friesen, who, back in the early 2000s as the city’s then-head doctor for the Calgary Health Region, was vilified by many in his crusade to protect Calgarians from the harmful, and often deadly, effects of second-hand smoke.

Hagen, with Action on Smoking and Health, introduces the roster of experts — all part of the Campaign for a SmokeFree Alberta — with a promise to “make some very important points,” some of them well understood by the general public, others perhaps not.

Kate Chidester of the Heart and Stroke Foundation brings up the now indisputable science on second-hand smoke, which has been found to include more than 4,000 chemical compounds and a number of cancer-causing emissions.

“Current exemptions cannot be justified any longer,” she says, noting that “loopholes” exist in the legislation, which allows smoking in group living facilities, hotel and motel guest rooms, and hookah bars. “Protection delayed is protection denied.”

James Hart, a vice-president with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, makes an impassioned plea for all workplaces to fall under the provincial legislation. “People should not be required to file individual complaints for such obvious health and safety violations,” he says.

“It is impossible to justify any form of smoking in the workplace in this day and age.”

While not allowing smoking in a hookah lounge would be the death knell for those establishments, Friesen, who today goes by the title public health physician, makes no apologies. “The second-hand smoke from water pipes is as harmful as the secondhand smoke from cigarettes,” he says.

Having these laws in place, says Angeline Webb, has played a big role in the decrease in smoking rates in adults, which she says “is at an all-time low,” as well as in youths, which has been cut in half in this province in the past decade.

“The progress that has been made on tobacco use has been hard won,” she says, calling tobacco use, with its 45,000 deaths nationally each year, the “most widespread, deadly form of substance abuse in Canada.”

These front-line activists — who suspect the provincial government is, as Hagen puts it, “turning a blind eye” in order to allow the establishment of “cannabis tourism” boutique hotels once recreational pot is legalized this summer — know full well that the battle is still far from won. It’s a reality that motivates them to keep up the fight.

I for one am extremely grateful they’re around to fight for the rights of all to clean air.

As for the beach boor who sent puffs of eye-tearing, coughinducing cigar smoke our way?

We simply picked up our chairs and moved along.

After all, he’s entitled to light up, when we have the freedom to escape from it.