WHEREAS, smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 430,700 American lives each year, including those affected indirectly, such as babies born prematurely due to prenatal maternal smoking and some of the victims of "secondhand" exposure to tobacco's carcinogens; and

WHEREAS, smoking costs the United States approximately $97,200,000,000 each year in health care costs and lost productivity. It is directly responsible for eighty-seven per cent of lung cancer cases and causes most cases of emphysema and chronic bronchitis; and

WHEREAS, smoking is also a major factor in coronary heart disease and stroke. It may be causally related to malignancies in other parts of the body and has been linked to a variety of other conditions and disorders, including slowed healing of wounds, infertility, and peptic ulcer disease; and

WHEREAS, smoking during pregnancy accounts for an estimated twenty to thirty per cent of low-birth weight babies, up to fourteen per cent of pre-term deliveries, and some ten per cent of all infant deaths. Even apparently healthy, full-term babies of smokers have been found to be born with narrowed airways and curtailed lung function. In 1999, 12.9 per cent of women who gave birth smoked during pregnancy; and

WHEREAS, smoking by parents is also associated with a wide range of adverse effects in their children, including exacerbation of asthma, increased frequency of colds and ear infections, and sudden infant death syndrome. An estimated one hundred fifty thousand to three hundred thousand cases of lower respiratory tract infections in children less than eighteen months of age, resulting in seven thousand five hundred to fifteen thousand annual hospitalizations, are caused by secondhand smoke; and

WHEREAS, secondhand smoke involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers from other people's cigarettes is classified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a known human (Group A) carcinogen, responsible for approximately three thousand lung cancer deaths annually in American nonsmokers; and

WHEREAS, approximately 22.3 million American women are smokers. Current female smokers aged thirty-five years or older are twelve times more likely to die prematurely from lung cancer than nonsmoking females; and

WHEREAS, more American women die annually from lung cancer than any other type of cancer. For example, lung cancer has caused an estimated 67,600 female deaths in 2000, compared with 40,800 estimated female deaths caused by breast cancer; and

WHEREAS, tobacco advertising plays an important role in encouraging young people to begin a lifelong addiction to smoking before they are old enough to fully understand its long-term health risk. It is estimated that 4.5 million American teenagers are cigarette smokers and 22.4 per cent of high school seniors smoke on a daily basis. Approximately ninety per cent of smokers begin smoking before the age of twenty-one; and

WHEREAS, workplaces nationwide are going smoke-free to provide clean indoor air and protect employees from the life-threatening effects of secondhand smoke. According to a 1992 Gallup poll, ninety-four per cent of Americans now believe companies should either ban smoking totally in the workplace or restrict it to designated areas. Employers have a legal right to restrict smoking in the workplace or implement a totally smoke-free workplace policy; and

WHEREAS, it is important to send a strong message to the youth of our State that tobacco kills by setting an example of a smoke-free State Capitol building; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-second Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2003, that it shall be the policy of this body that smoking shall not be permitted in the portions of the State Capitol building that are occupied or used by members or employees of this body, including:

and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the Governor, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Clerk of the Senate, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and the Sergeants-at-Arms of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Report Title:

Smoke-Free Capitol Building