Colorado Breath: Healthy Links

Boulder CO: GASP of Colorado (Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution) announced today that it is joining a national campaign to educate the hospitality industry about how the tobacco industry has manipulated them for two decades, causing them to work against its own and its customers' best interests.

Starting this month, GASP is running a series of ads in the Restaurant News of the Rockies, in conjunction with a national campaign. This month's ad features restaurant server Diane Kassner who has suffered from working in a smoke-filled atmosphere. She says that "no tip is worth dying for" in the ad headline. The ad is also running in the Nation's Restaurant News and Restaurant Business, two of the leading trade national publications serving the hospitality industry and is part of a national TobaccoScam campaign.

Bialick said, " Big Tobacco wants members of the hospitality industry to believe that they will be forced out of business unless they help kill laws regulating smoking; that secondhand smoke is not dangerous; and that ventilation systems exist which can safely accommodate everyone under the same roof."

Bialick points out that, "The truth is that where smoke-free laws have been established; restaurants and bars have done as well or better than before the smoking bans went into effect. Every reliable health authority agrees that secondhand smoke is dangerous and deadly. In addition, no ventilation system exists which removes the liability hospitality owners and operators face when clients and employees alike are exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke."

"We cannot stand by and permit Big Tobacco to continue to endanger the health of Coloradans", said Bialick. "Common sense, to say nothing of common decency, requires us to eliminate this danger to the public health. People should have the right to breathe and work in a smoke-free atmosphere."

The campaign is part of is continuing a counter-advertising campaign GASP of Colorado started in 1988 which is designed to counter Big Tobacco's misinformation campaign about secondhand smoke and smoke-free policies. The campaign is supported solely by donations. GASP received a tiny settlement grant that ended June 2002 and was used to educate thousands of restaurant owners about the positive value of smoke-free policies, and increase their awareness about the hazards of secondhand smoke.

The Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution (GASP of Colorado) is a statewide nonprofit organization founded in 1977 that promotes smoke-free policies, educates the public about the dangers of secondhand smoke, and provides assistance for people having problems with tobacco smoke pollution.