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1 - Introduction: mapping the terrain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Davina Cooper
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
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Summary

Nonsmokers living in condominiums and apartment buildings who are bothered or made ill by drifting tobacco smoke can now fight back … These dangerous chemicals can … seep in above or below an apartment door, through poorly sealed walls, and in many other ways … More and more tenants are filing effective complaints – often with information provided by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the nation's oldest and largest antismoking organization.

Are you involved in a dispute over custody, and your spouse smokes in the presence of the child … If so, you should read ASH's preliminary report on custody and smoking. In it you will learn that, in more than a dozen states, courts have ruled that whether or not a child is subjected to tobacco smoke is a factor which should be considered in deciding custody.

In the 1990s, across several continents, battles over cigarette smoking took on a new momentum, as pro- and anti-smokers fought over institutional policy-making, local, state and federal laws, and the ethics of intervention and restraint. Tobacco advocates declared that smokers had become the new oppressed, smoking the new apartheid. Discriminated against in job interviews and healthcare, banished from particular spaces and disproportionately taxed, smokers were on the receiving end of an intensifying attack and stigmatisation. As one tobacco advocate declared, ‘We are at a crossroads. We as a people are beginning to see what is produced by state-sponsored intolerance of “target groups”.’

Type
Chapter
Information
Challenging Diversity
Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference
, pp. 1 - 14
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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