Ban smoking in homes: Group

It may be National Non-Smoking Week but activists say that when it comes to smoke-free housing, most government bodies are just blowing smoke.

The dangers of smoking and the damage done by drifting secondhand smoke to innocent bystanders have been indisputable for decades and have fuelled dozens of government-sponsored, tobacco-cessation and health-awareness campaigns.

Yet advocates of the right to live at home without having their health undermined by smoking neighbours have been fighting a long, lonely battle in the trenches.

"The evidence is clear, secondhand smoke kills. Yet our hair, saliva, blood, urine, even newborn babies born to non-smoking mothers, show nicotine," says Rose Marie Borutski of People United for Smoke-free Housing (PUSH).

Borutski says the most pervasive source of metabolized nicotine in the bodies of non-smokers is the place most people spend the most time -- at home.

"We've had vague promises from politicians about rewarding builders who offer smoke-free initiatives but, despite all the headlines and the money spent, no government is doing anything to keep our homes safe from cigarette smoke.

"No one is protecting the most vulnerable people from smoking neighbours."

National Non-Smoking Week (Jan. 16 to 22) was founded in 1977 to bolster new year's resolutions. Yet no laws have been passed to get any private or public smoke-free housing.

Borutski, who speaks at a community forum at St. Paul's Hospital at 6:30 tonight, notes that the vast majority, 85 per cent, of B.C. residents are non-smokers, yet no legislation upholds their rights to escape nicotine.

Borutski, who has a neuromusculo-skeletal disorder, says she is surrounded by suites of smokers since moving into Kiwanis Place housing in Surrey in 2007.

She has filed her own human rights complaint, yet to be heard, but her health has gotten worse and she has developed asthma.