By Jeff Stier, Esq.
Posted: Wednesday, August 16, 2006

ARTICLES
Publication Date: August 16, 2006

Just a year after Peter Jennings' death, a cloud of smoke hangs over ABC. Literally. Jennings passing away from lung cancer was tragic, and it is tragic that even that stark example of the dangers of smoking -- and the renaming of the stretch of the street in Manhattan where ABC News's headquarters resides after the late newsman -- is not enough to dissuade current smokers at ABC from continuing the addictive and deadly habit.

A lunchtime walk to Central Park for some fresh air takes me past the ABC headquarters. On my way, I get anything but fresh air. The space in front of ABC's building is as likely to be filled with smoke from cigarette smokers as the fronts of nearby Amsterdam Avenue bars.

While trying to document that fact for this column, I met twenty-eight-year-old ABC News mailroom clerk named Michael. I asked him whether ABC offered him any advice on quitting. With a lit cigarette at his side he shrugged and said, "I can't use the patch, I have a heart murmur." It would be tragic if people like Michael continued to think the patch was their only option -- for those unable to quit cigarettes by any other means, smokeless tobacco might be wiser option (and one far safer than continuing to smoke cigarettes).

While ABC is promoting a "Quit to Live" campaign, the ABC employees I spoke with while they were smoking in front of the ABC logo said they had no knowledge of a program to help them quit. A couple of middle-aged engineers who asked not to be photographed told me that they knew of no such program. They said there might have been a memo but didn't recall.

I don't know, if I were trying to get information to smokers at ABC, I wouldn't have any trouble finding them.

They might benefit from ACSH's report, Kicking Butts in the Twenty-First Century. Although some of the younger folks out there might have been more apt to visit our webpage for teens.

Immediately following Mr. Jennings' death last August, I spoke to CNN about the often inflated/misguided role celebrities can have on health issues. However, even where one might have hoped Jennings' celebrity would resonate most, on Peter Jennings Way, staffers young and old haven't gotten the message.

Ironically, I learned that ABC, which is built upon using cameras for news-gathering, has a policy against letting people photograph its building, and a security guard tried to get me to leave and even called in back-up, though the second guard relented when he saw my ACSH business card. They cited post-9/11 security concerns, but maybe they just didn't want photographs of ABC staffers smoking in front of the ABC logo on Peter Jennings Way. The unfazed smokers stayed outside, continuing to puff.


Jeff Stier is an associate director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com). He is scheduled to discuss unnecessary fears of electric and magnetic fields on radio station WIBA at 5:09pm Eastern time 8/16/06. And on Friday, 8/18/06, Joseph McMenamin, writer of the technical paper on which ACSH's report Foods Are Not Cigarettes is based, is likely to appear in a Dateline piece on NBC, opposing John Banzahf, who promotes lawsuits against the food industry.