Thanks due City Council on anniversary of no-smoking ordinance
Last January, Atlanta musicians let out a collective round of applause when the city passed its comprehensive smoke-free ordinance. Before the legislation, entertainers suffered from constant exposure to secondhand smoke in their workplaces – the bars and venues where they performed. The impact on their health was tremendous; secondhand smoke not only ruined careers but cut lives short. At least two local performers who never smoked died as a result of diseases caused by secondhand smoke exposure. That’s why on Jan. 5, three days after the ordinance passed, Atlanta blues musicians were all smiles celebrating the implementation at a concert hosted by Entertainers Speak Out, the Atlanta Blues Society and the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. As we begin 2021, we celebrate the anniversary of this lifesaving policy and thank the City Council, including Councilman Westmoreland who introduced the legislation, for its leadership in helping Atlanta join the ranks of more than 1,000 other U.S. smoke-free cities.
LEWIS MCTUSH, FOUNDER, ENTERTAINERS SPEAK OUT
Can’t allow win of long-running campaign to destroy U.S. values
In our natural love for our children, we try to protect them from harm, by teaching them to avoid harmful things and situations. We try to influence them toward having good, rewarding lives. Thoughts and actions opposing this are presented to them for nefarious purposes, typically for some gain by the opposing person(s). Our nation was founded by persons escaping the tyrannies experienced in other places. Tyrants today are trying to pull our population (and the world) back under their greedy control. They sent people to infiltrate our country, to seduce and subvert our population with ideas that oppose our freedom from tyranny — beginning with college instructors and increasingly through other information sources; seducing us with lies about moral values and political objective. Their eventual goal of worldwide communism would end individual rights, and would end most worthy individual opportunities.
TOM STREETS, ATLANTA
