Las Vegas Sun

November 14, 2009

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Letter: Children especially at risk from smokers

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

Gail Rattigan's Dec. 29 letter in the Las Vegas Sun, "Protect Kids? Ban smoking in homes," was right on target. I am a volunteer teacher and drug awareness instructor in the Clark County School District.

The main complaint I get from high school and middle school children is on secondhand smoke in the home. I give the kids who have a secondhand smoke problem at home a paper to give to whomever is smoking in front of them. Sometimes it helps and sometimes they are punished for bringing the paper home.

Parents, please stop smoking in front of your children. Secondhand smoke does a lot of damage to developing respiratory systems. According to an Associated Press story from 2005, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, a California agency, found that research on secondhand smoke tells us that women who have been subject to secondhand smoke over an extended period of time have up to a 90 percent greater risk of developing breast cancer than women who were not exposed to secondhand smoke.

Marty Gruber, Las Vegas

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