Federal rule change would make all U.S. public housing smoke-free

MARSHALL – Christine Moya quit smoking cold turkey in 1989. Today, she deals with asthma, allergies and, since 2011, COPD, so she’s got her fingers crossed that a proposed rule to eliminate smoking in public housing in the U.S. will go through.

“I’ve been trying to get this implemented for a couple of years,” said Moya, who lives in public housing in Marshall. She says she’s on this crusade to improve her ability to breathe “and not have to have four air purifiers in my apartment and fans blowing on my front door to keep the smoke out.”

ClearWay Minnesota, the state-funded anti-smoking program, has been working on eliminating smoking in Minnesota for years.

Just a few days before Thursday’s annual Great American Smokeout, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced this week, a proposed rule change that would prohibit all lit tobacco products (cigarettes, cigars and pipes) in all public housing living units and offices, commons areas and outdoor areas within 25 feet of buildings.

According to ClearWay, secondhand smoke related illnesses result in $94 million annually in healthcare costs around the country, with many of the costs covered by medical assistance or other government healthcare programs. ClearWay says prohibiting smoking in all public housing units nationwide would save nearly $60 million annually in property destroyed by fire and cleaning up smoking related damage to public housing units.

ClearWay Senior Communications Manager Mike Sheldon won’t go so far as to predict what will happen with the proposed rule change but said if it does go though it will be another major step in the effort to protect people from secondhand smoke.

“This is about protecting non-smokers from secondhand smoke, which is very important for the health of that population in public houses,” Sheldon said. “This is a key piece of doing that.”

Sheldon said it’s a combination of factors that make Minnesota one of the leading states in smoking cessation – things like strong smoke-free laws, anti-tobacco media campaigns, youth prevention activities, an increase in tobacco prices.

“And in Minnesota, we’re lucky, because about two-thirds of our public housing is already smoke-free,” Sheldon said. “It would be nice to see everybody have that same coverage.”

Sheldon isn’t sure how the no-smoking policy would be regulated in all of the public housing units across the state, but if the proposal goes through, there would need to be communication and information shared up front before the change happens to inform residents why this is happening and providing smokers with all the resources available if they want to quit smoking.

The proposed HUD rule on initiating smoke-free policies in public housing is scheduled to appear in the Federal Register and be posted to www.regulations.gov on Tuesday. This publication will start the 60-day comment period, which will end on Jan. 19, 2016. People are encouraged to submit their comments on this proposed rule.

You can find out more about smoke-free housing in our area and how it benefits residents and management at www.mnsmokefreehousing.org.

According to ClearWay, more than three-quarters of a million of the most vulnerable children in the U.S. are subjected to secondhand smoke in public housing facilities. Secondhand smoke is proven to cause more frequent and severe asthma attacks, a greater risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), respiratory and ear infections and other health problems in children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Moya has an active Twitter account (twitter.com/stoppingsmoke) and blogs about the smoking issue. She encourages anyone who wants to end smoking in public housing to go to stoppingsmoke.blogspot.com/