EDITORIAL: The time has come

Publication Date: 2009-02-15

• Author:EDITORIAL
• Publication:Winston-Salem (NC) Journal

For generations, the Winston-Salem Journal has been tied to tobacco, just as have so many other organizations and people in the city that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. helped build. The tobacco industry has put food on our tables; it built our hospitals, colleges and churches and supported our charities. Tobacco has been a proud, hard-working way of life for everyone from farmers to factory workers, a way of life we have long supported on this page.

But starting today, with the full gravity of overwhelming medical evidence against second-hand smoke weighing on our judgment, we must break with the past and support further restrictions against smokers, in the interest of public health.

Rep. Hugh Holliman of Davidson County has filed a bill in the state House that would ban smoking in virtually all enclosed workplaces and buildings open to the public in North Carolina to protect nonsmokers from second-hand smoke. The N.C. General Assembly should pass this bill.