Posted on 11/02/2001 9:58:26 AM PST by Max McGarrity
November 2001 (Newstream) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a national Smoke-Free Home Pledge Initiative that asks parents to make their homes smoke-free to protect their children from the serious health effects of secondhand tobacco smoke. In order to maintain a smoke-free home, parents must ensure that friends, relatives, and babysitters also do not smoke inside the family home, according to EPA.
EPA Administrator Gov. Christie Todd Whitman launched the new campaign at the Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC, on October 16. EPA's Smoke-Free Home Pledge Initiative focuses on encouraging parents to "go out for their kids", until they can quit smoking. Governor Whitman urged parents to call EPA's toll-free hotline to make the Smoke-Free Home Pledge.
Nine to 12 million children are exposed to secondhand smoke at home every day in the United States. According to EPA and several other national studies, health effects include bronchitis and pneumonia, wheezing and coughing spells, ear infections, low birth weight, SIDS, and asthma. In fact, secondhand smoke causes approximately one million children a year to suffer from more frequent and severe asthma attacks. Asthma is the leading chronic illness in children and accounts for ten million missed school days each year.
Parents can make the commitment by calling the Smoke-Free Home Pledge Hotline at 800-513-1157. In return, EPA will send a Smoke-Free Home Kit that includes a pledge certificate and educational materials.
EPA is conducting this campaign with a range of national partner organizations. For example, community, health, and local government groups have started distributing 200,000 pledge brochures across the country. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology is strongly encouraging its 6,000 member physicians to educate their patients on the health effects of secondhand smoke. The National Association of Counties is launching a County to County Pledge Challenge, an effort that will culminate in national recognition for those that produce the most pledges.
Michael Marshall
913-551-7604
Whitman isn't a Klintoon holdover. She's a "compassionate conservative".
I'm sure that my kids ALREADY thank me for STANDING UP for their freedoms.
Neither one smokes nor does my wife but they know that if you allow the goverment to run your life in the small things the government will want to run your life in the BIG ways also.
BTW, none of us, including myself, has a hacking cough.
the environmentalcases should all be committed!!!
Note to self: send memo to EPA: message, "BITE ME". You would think the frigging EPA would have enough to do what with cleaning up anthrax and cleaning up the Pentagon and the WTC and figuring out how to clean up whatever future terrorist attacks bring. Don't we really have more important things to deal than junk science pumping up our neurotic health fears?
I'm calling my congresscritters as well, for all the good that will do.
Final Thought - Government Types.....
Either Destroy every Tobacco Plant/Seed - or - Leave it completely alone.......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(and...no...I don't smoke
...except when I get this mad and the smoke comes outa me ears....)
I'm just completely p'd off at the government interfering in the lives of smokers.
For instance:
At Disney World they have secluded smoking to the most secluded places in the park, I mean way for away from anything else.
I asked a worker why this was.
His response: "Well a little girl got burnt by a cigarette and they sued Disney. Part of the settlement was that smoking was to be banned in the park"
Really? I said
"Well and it's bad because of second hand smoke"
I said, OK you have a park as wide open and huge as Disney and you want to tell me that someone a hundred feet away from me is going to get poisoned from second hand smoke?
"Well that's what I heard, Sir"
I couldn't believe it. Well we all knew that Disney was a front for the radical left, but banning smoking just proves how ridiculous they are. They are using common leftist tactics to support their decisions.
The next time I spank my child I will make sure to have a cigarette in my mouth.
You know, we got the EPA because of emotions. The people who encouraged politicians to vote for this obscenity allowed hippies and the ignorant media to scare them.
Here is Florida, we used to have many reasonably priced seafood restaurants. We had fresh fish markets. Then, the emotional ones told us that were were out of fish because of the netters. They used no scientific process, just anecdotal evidence to demonstrate we had a shortage of fish. So, the people emotionally passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting nets. We lost lots of good, reasonalbly priced seafood restaurants, fresh fish markets and fisherman jobs. Now they tell us the fish are back, but we don't have the multitude of restaurants, fresh fish stores or fisherman jobs.
I have come to believe that any time an environmentalist opens his mouth, he is crying, "WOLF."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.