Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 14, 1910

The Rights of Non-Smokers

JUDGED from the standards of modern custom, it could well be questioned if non-smokers had any rights or privileges free from the annoyance occasioned by the use of tobacco. One to-day can not walk the streets, ride in public conveyances, or hardly enter a place of public resort, without being forced to breathe air laden with tobacco smoke which has been exhaled from the lungs of its devotees. In the Outlook for April 2, 1910, Twyman O. Abbott makes some excellent and justifiable criticisms of this pernicious practise. As to means whereby the nuisance may in some measure be abated and the right of non-smokers be recognized, he says:—

So indiscriminate public smoking not only ought to be but is a legal nuisance. There is no vice which is more persistently annoying to a large part of the community. That it can be regulated and its evils removed without any interference with the smoker's real rights is beyond question. Where he persists in disregarding the welfare of the community and the rights of the non-smoker, he should be restrained by public sentiment, backed up by proper laws. Restaurateurs and hotel managers who permit smoking in their dining-rooms should be induced or required to provide accommodations

will not be subjected to the inconvenience and discomfort of inhaling tobacco. Reasonable restrictions for its use in elevators, street-cars, passenger-cars, sleeping-cars, public buildings, and other public and semipublic places should be rigidly enforced. In this manner the public smoker may be educated to a proper understanding of his relations to the rest of the community, and he will learn how to enjoy himself without involving so much suffering, inconvenience, and danger to others.