No one should have to put up with secondhand smoke — because it’s not just annoying, it’s actually super harmful. Many cities lack policies that protect citizens from secondhand smoke, and it’s wayyy past time for us to change that.

It’s a fact: there’s no “safe” amount of secondhand smoke.

There are tons of chemicals in secondhand smoke — 7,000 to be (almost) exact. Hundreds of these chemicals are toxic, and many of them cause cancer. Which means that nonsmokers who are around secondhand smoke are actually inhaling many of the same harmful chemicals as smokers.

No one should have to worry about the health effects of secondhand smoke.

While being around secondhand smoke can create long-term issues, it can also affect you in the moment by increasing your chances of having a heart attack. And ultimately, secondhand smoke causes more than 41,000 deaths (including more than 3,000 lung cancer deaths) among nonsmoking adults every single year.

We get it, these facts are really grim.

But the reality is that smoking doesn’t just harm the smoker. And no one should have to risk getting sick just to go to work, or hang out at a park. Employees who work at casinos, restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainers and musicians are especially at risk.

Smoke-free policies are great, but we need to take it all the way.

Most cities have some smoke-free policies in place. But they’re more likely to cover white-collar employees than those working blue-collar jobs. So… they’re not really good enough for us. We need all cities to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke — 100%.