By Matt Williamson
Enterprise-Journal
It wouldn’t be out of the norm to see someone puffing away on an electronic cigarette in buildings where smoking is banned, but according to most municipal anti-smoking ordinances written not that long ago, that wouldn’t be illegal, either.
Tabitha Wilson, director of the Tobacco Free Coalition of Southwest Mississippi, which includes Pike, Amite, Walthall and Wilkinson counties, told the McComb Exchange Club Thursday that one of her goals is to change that either by getting counties and municipalities to update anti-smoking ordinances or to enact ordinances to include electronic cigarettes.
“We’re asking them if you don’t have it in your ordinance to include it in your ordinance,” she said.
E-cigs involve the consumption of a nicotine- and flavor-infused water vapor. While there’s no smoke or the smell of tobacco-burning cigarettes, “it has the same thing a regular cigarette has in it,” she said.
“It has the nicotine, and that’s what keeps you going back to the cigarettes,” Wilson said.
She said the verdict is still out about the health effects of breathing in secondhand vapor, but she believes e-cigarettes aren’t the safe alternative to regular cigarettes that some people think they are.
Wilson said she knows people who use them in places where most smokers wouldn’t dare light up.
“I’ve seen them pull it out in the workplace and he’ll just pull on it,” Wilson said of one friend of hers.
She said the fact that teenagers seem to be taking to them also is troubling.
“They say it’s not dangerous because it tastes just like Kool-Aid,” she said.
Wilson said the coalition’s job is to sound the warning about tobacco in all forms through various outreach programs.
“My job is not to tell you not to smoke. My job is to tell you the danger of using tobacco,” she said.
The Reject All Tobacco program — RAT, for short — is geared toward kindergarteners through sixth- graders. Older kids, in grades 7 through 12, hear messages from the coalition’s Generation Free program. Wilson said this program uses more graphic information to show the effects of longterm tobacco use on the body.
For even younger kids, the Care for Their Air program is geared toward daycare centers, preschools and parents and relatives of young children, warning about the dangers of secondhand smoke little ones might breathe in.
“I educate the parents on the dangers of secondhand smoke so they know not to smoke around their babies, their little children,” Wilson said.
The coalition also has a hotline for smokers who need help kicking the habit — (800) QUIT NOW.
And there’s a broader initiative, Smokefree Air Mississippi, a statewide effort targeted to all demographics warning about the dangers of secondhand smokes.
“I also get with the mayors and selectmen in each of those counties to get smoke-free ordinances,” Wilson said. “I only have one county that’s a total smoke-free county, and that’s Wilkinson County.”
She said McComb and Summit have partial smoke-free ordinances, which cover government buildings and restaurants but not all public spaces, while Magnolia has no smoke-free ordinance.
“I’ll be meeting with the mayor of Magnolia on Monday,” Wilson said.
While taking questions from the audience, some asked why businesses shouldn’t be able to decide whether smoking is allowed in their establishments, rather than having the government decide such matters.
Wilson said the issue is more of a matter of public health than personal freedom, adding that non-smokers shouldn’t have to breathe in secondhand smoke when they go out to eat.
“I don’t think I should have to be able to go there and join my friends and family for dinner or lunch and sit there and I’m smoking just as much as you’re smoking because it’s all blowing down my way,” she said.
