North Myrtle Beach to talk smokes

A visit to the dentist more than 50 years ago is what made Howard “Bud” Wales quit smoking.

“You have such lovely teeth. It’s a shame cigarettes are doing a job on them,” Wales said his dentist told him.

That was enough for Wales to stop smoking that day – a time before it was a bad thing to smoke, said Wales who went cold turkey.

Now Wales is hoping the city where he lives will do the same.

Wales said he has lost loved ones to the effects of smoking.

His younger sister, who was a smoker and nurse, died from lung cancer at 47. And his first wife, who also was a smoker, was diagnosed with breast cancer some time after she gave up smoking.

Wales’ current wife, Karin, never smoked in her life but she has severe emphysema from living in a household with a mate who smoked, Wales said.

Losing their mates to the effects of smoking is why the couple is passionate about the issue of secondhand smoke and wants to live in a smoke-free environment.

“We are very dedicated to this cause,” Wales said. He and Karin are a part of the Smoke Free North Myrtle Beach Grassroots Coalition. “I think the right to breathe clean air should be granted to nonsmokers.”

The North Myrtle Beach group is a part of the organization Smoke Free Horry -- which has been looking for support in its drive to educate Horry County residents about the dangers of secondhand smoke. Smoke Free Horry wants to get all of the county’s municipalities and governments to pass no-smoking ordinances similar to one in place in Surfside Beach. Atlantic Beach passed a smoking ban in May.

The ordinances typically affect workplaces, restaurants, and other public buildings.

The North Myrtle Beach City Council will be taking up the issue of a smoking ban at a workshop 2 p.m. Monday at City Hall.

“It’s clear that secondhand smoke is bad,” said Neal Benowitz, MD, professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Biopharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. “Secondhand smoke increases the risk of infections in children and adults, tuberculosis is much greater if you’re exposed to it on a regular basis, there’s the risk of allergies, wheezing in children, lung cancer, and most recently, of heart attacks. A person with heart disease should not be at a place where there’s smoking.”

Benowitz and Stephen Fienberg were part of the Institute of Medicine panel in 2009 that looked at the relationship between secondhand smoke and heart disease and the research examining the impact of smoking bans on cardiovascular risk.

“We realized quite surprisingly when the results appeared that the effect of a smoking ban is not just on chronic diseases, but on acute diseases,” said Fienberg, a Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Study after study showed that when a smoking ban is implemented there’s a reduction in heart attacks.”

North Myrtle Beach Mayor Marilyn Hatley and Councilmen Bob Cavanaugh and Jay Baldwin said during a forum in October that a smoking ban should be left up to the state and not a municipality’s decision.

“If it becomes a state issue like in North Carolina that’s fine because it’s very confusing when one little area bans it and another doesn’t,” Hatley has said. “I don’t allow smoking in my business. That should be the choice of a business owner and a customer not to go there. There don’t need to be more government laws and rules.”

North Myrtle Beach resident Connie Bridges also has said in the past that he thinks it should be up to the individual businesses to decide whether they want to be smoke free.

“I think the laws are crazy,” Bridges told The Sun News in February. “It’s about ruined North Carolina.”

Some North Myrtle Beach businesses have decided to be smoke free.

“We are 100 percent smoke free,” said Peter Dombrowski, director of operations for Greg Norman’s Australian Grille.

The restaurant went 100 percent smoke free a year and a half ago, Dombrowski said.

“We always had a smoke free restaurant, but people could smoke in the pub and on the waterway deck,” he said.

From a liability standpoint, Dombrowski said the restaurant felt it would be better to be 100 percent smoke free because of the possible health risks involved for their employees as they served customers who smoked.

Wild Wing Café also decided a year and a half ago to be smoke free until 10 p.m.

The restaurant’s upstairs used to be reserved for smokers while the downstairs was for nonsmokers, but the restaurant found itself having customers waiting for non-smoking tables, general manager Ryan Dunn said. Instead of having people wait for a table, the restaurant decided to make it non-smoking until 10 p.m.

That’s when there’s more of the bar crowd, Dunn said.