Kicking the wrong butts

If you had to choose one person to bully, who would it be? Wouldn't you pick someone who was relatively comfortable, someone with a lot going for him or her?

Maybe you'd tease the millionaire who drives the Hummer with the personalized license plate that tactfully reads XRATED. Or perhaps you'd make fun of the trust-fund princess who's never worked a day in her life but never bothers to say a thank-you or leave a tip? Wouldn't you pick someone who was relatively comfortable, someone with a lot going for them, or, at the very least, someone who isn't already suffering?

If you're an official for King County Public Health (KCPH) -- who has chosen to bully homeless people -- you'd answer, "No."

Recently recognized by the National Association of County and City Health Officials for their "preparedness to respond to bioterrorism, infectious disease outbreaks and other public health threats," KCPH is still busy cutting their "congratulations!" cake. Yet some officials have found the time to further address one of those public health threats: the smoking room in the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC).

As one of Seattle's greatest assets to the almost 2,000 homeless people living on the wet streets of Rain City, DESC functions as a shelter and provides an enclosed smoking room in which its inhabitants may smoke. Anywhere from half to three-fourths of the homeless population smokes tobacco, said DESC's executive director, Bill Hobson, in a Seattle Weekly interview.

But Roger Valdez, director of tobacco prevention for KCPH, desperately wants this smoking room put out, having sent the DESC little love notes threatening the shelter with daily fines of $100 should it not immediately prohibit smoking in its facility, on the basis of the new statewide smoking ban. Three days after the initial warnings, the smoking room was still in operation.

"Americans think they have a lot of rights they really don't have," said Valdez to Seattle Weekly. "You have no right to smoke. It's an addiction. It's something you should see a doctor about."

Swell -- the problem's solved, then. All of Seattle's homeless residents simply need to consult their doctors about kicking the habit.

Oh, wait. They don't have doctors.

But then why can't these homeless men and women just stand 25 feet away from the DESC, as the new legislation permits? Maybe, because under normal circumstances, urban shelters collect the city's most distraught residents and, as such, things can get unmanageable quickly. Forcing DESC's inhabitants outside to smoke puts them back on the street and unsupervised by shelter workers -- a situation DESC prefers to avoid, instead sheltering clients indoors because of safety concerns.

Seattle's ban on smoking isn't necessarily wrong, but it seems obvious that blanket enforcement without any exceptions is not what voters had in mind. This ban doesn't just apply in bars to urbanites and their Cointreau cocktails -- it also applies to the homeless, who are quite often chemically dependent, mentally disabled or both.

But Valdez and KCPH want to keep their national gold star, so they'll continue to pester the shelter, which (hopefully) the shelter will continue to ignore. Should DESC be pressed with the looming fines, KCPH should ensure other locales with their own smoking violations -- such as Seattle's swanky El Gaucho restaurant -- to fork over some dough.

If KCPH really cares to keep the people of Seattle safe, they had better reconsider what safety means for all of Seattle's citizens -- those with homes and those without.