From CADCA's Coalition Online Newsletter :: April 28, 2011
Visitors to the nine-day State Fair of West Virginia can now breathe a little easier this summer thanks to the efforts of a CADCA Alliance in West Virginia who obtained designated outdoor smoking areas throughout the fairgrounds.
Greg Puckett, Executive Director of the Community Connections state-wide coalition, and CADCA Coalition Advisory Committee member, said the change is all about the power of community mobilization and cultivating relationships with the fairgrounds staff and board.
For the past two years, the coalition has staffed an interactive, educational booth with the West Virginia Blazers professional basketball team promoting a quit line.
Knowing that West Virginia’s inhaled and chewed tobacco use rates are high (24 percent) and that tobacco is, therefore, “ingrained” in their culture, Puckett says the coalition advocating for designated smoking areas is not a public health defeat.
“We are not making it a punitive thing,” Puckett said. “It’s about respect for each other.”
The coalition says having the nine smoking areas scattered throughout the fairgrounds will not only make the fair more pleasant for non-smokers who don’t want to breath second-hand smoke, but it will reduce litter.
Marlene Pierson-Jolliffe, Manager of the State Fair of West Virginia, said after Puckett and his coalition introduced the idea to her last year; she researched how other venues like hers handled smoking areas.
For the past decade, all indoor areas during the annual state fair have been smoke-free since hay and other materials are highly flammable, she said.
“We liked the designated smoking area idea because we’re not trying to go 100 percent smoke free yet—we think it would be very difficult,” Pierson-Jolliffe said. “This is a good compromise.”
Puckett and fairgrounds staff hopes that this move will encourage the other 200 events held at the fairgrounds and at outdoor venues throughout the state to limit smoking. Puckett would like to see smoking eliminated altogether.
People come to the fair for the livestock, amusement rides, entertainment, and, of course, the gluttonous food. They don’t come to be exposed to smoke, Pierson-Jolliffe said. She hopes that patrons who smoke continue to attend the state fair despite the policy change.
“The deep-fried doughnut you eat goes into your arteries, but the cigarette smoke affects the person who is standing behind you or adjacent to you,” Pierson-Jolliffe said.
The fairgrounds staff will display signage and start promoting the new policy in the summer before the mid-August fair.
“I’m very proud that we’re doing this; I also know we’re better off messaging it closer to the event,” Pierson-Jolliffe said.
There are also 125 county fairs and festivals throughout West Virginia and both Pierson-Jolliffe and Puckett hope their idea spreads.
“This is a huge step forward in our state and was made possible through the partnerships we’ve been able to work with,” Puckett said.
Despite increased adoption of state and local smoke-free laws, approximately 88 million nonsmoking Americans aged 3 and older are still exposed to secondhand smoke each year.
The West Virginia state fair smoking policy comes at a time when a report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, states that the nation is half-way there when it comes to banning indoor smoking in public places.
25 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws banning comprehensive smoking in workplaces, restaurants and bars during the past 10 years. By 2020 or sooner, the entire nation could have laws banning smoking in all indoor areas of private sector worksites, restaurants and bars. In addition to listing the states with comprehensive and less-restrictive smoke-free laws and years they went into effect, the study details the seven states that have no statewide smoking restrictions in place for private worksites, restaurants or bars with West Virginia being one of them.
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