Dermatologist-councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs just won’t give up on her grand plans to ban smoking in Houston.
Today, she chooses to ignore any scientific evidence she might deploy for her cause in favor of pure emotionalism:
My fight against secondhand smoking started more than 20 years ago during my family practice residency at a Jacksonville, Fla., charity hospital. There, I met 7-year-old Charlie, a beautiful little boy with a frail body and big eyes. Charlie suffered from severe asthma. His medical chart was thick, and he visited the emergency room so frequently that we all grew attached. Charlie knew he needed help and didn’t like to leave the hospital. He constantly worried about breathing and preferred the emergency room to his home, where nearly all of his family members smoked. When you are out of breath, you are so frightened, and Charlie always seemed so innocent and vulnerable.
One day, I noticed Charlie had stopped coming to the emergency room. When I asked around, one of the nurses told me that paramedics had found him dead, clutching his inhaler. Charlie’s death filled my heart with sorrow and strengthened my resolve that no one should have to breathe secondhand smoke.
At the time, doctors and nurses still smoked in the emergency room. The first step was to eliminate smoke in hospitals. Next, we needed to clean up the air in other workplace environments.
We’ve come a long way in 20 years, but more work needs to be done.
It’s time for a smoke-free Houston.
Since the dermatologist-councilwoman is not proposing to ban smoking in private homes (we don’t think), poor Charlie would still have suffered from secondhand smoke, even if he had lived to enjoy dermatologist-councilwoman Gibbs’ proposed ban on smoking in all of Houston’s public places.
But seriously, do we actually believe that emergency room professionals actually smoked in treatment areas in the hospital? I can’t help but think dermatologist-councilwoman Gibbs is exaggerating.
In any case, City Council should have many higher priorities than banning smoking citywide. We encourage dermatologist-councilwoman Gibbs to read these pages more frequently if she can’t figure them out on her own.
