Activism

Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the public health advocacy group Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights have posted a YouTube video about the plight of casino workers, some of the last employees in the country forced to breathe secondhand cigarette smoke at work. The powerful eight-minute video shows non-smoking casino workers who are ill and dying from prolonged on-the-job exposure to secondhand smoke. An attractive, young non-smoking former casino dealer with an obvious scar on her neck, Sheryl Wilkens, in a hoarse voice describes how she stuck with her job to pay bills while she raised her family. She tearfully tells how in 2006 she developed a lump on her neck, and a subsequent biopsy revealed she had cancer, even though she never smoked. Another worker, a former marathon runner, describes the decline in her health, and how she is now permanently on medication for a number of respiratory diseases caused by her chronic smoke exposure at work. Workers in the multi-billion-dollar gambling industry suffer the highest occupational exposure to secondhand smoke of any workers in the country, and have consistently been left behind as the rest of the country has gone smoke-free as the gambling industry fights to preserve smoking in casinos.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has enlisted Andrew Card, former White House Chief of Staff under President Bush, and Democratic former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh for a national "road show" to rally businesses to oppose government regulations. Communications for the road show are being handled by Chamber employee Thomas Collamore, who formerly was vice president of Philip Morris Corporate Affairs -- the department that was responsible for thwarting local, state and national policies to reduce tobacco use. The Chamber plans to formally announce the Bayh and Card road show on June 22, 2011, and then will start flying the two around the country to gather support for rolling back regulations designed to protect the environment, consumers and workers. A June 2 memo to the Chamber's Board of Directors says the two will give speeches, and attend events and media appearances at local venues across the country. The Chamber's effort is aimed at fighting the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, minimizing the power of the recently-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, blocking OSHA workplace safety and health programs, hampering employees' ability to join unions and other pro-business reforms. The Chamber has spent months soliciting millions of dollars in funding from Wall Street financial firms, insurance and energy companies for this anti-regulatory effort.