The city of Bellevue received honors and praise from an alliance of Northern Kentucky health organizations for passage of a smoking ban ordinance this year.
At the city’s Dec. 13 council meeting, members of the Breathe Easy Coalition awarded city officials with a placard and gift bags for their foresight and support for community health. On hand to honor the city were representatives from the OneNKY Alliance, St. Elizabeth Hospital and the Northern Kentucky Agency for Alcohol Substance Abuse Prevention (known as NKY ASAP).
Praise for leadership
“Thank you for your political courage by passing a smoke-free ordinance. We came to you earlier this year and spoke with all of you to ask you to take this on. And we wanted to end out the year by coming back and saying thank you. You have set a great tone for Northern Kentucky,” said OneNKY CEO Karen Finan.
Finan thanked the city for passing the ban, saying the topic was a “very important discussion at the community level.”
Making progress
Finan then introduced Dr. Michael Gieske, a St. Elizabeth primary care physician known for advocating for early lung cancer screening.
“I’ve been in medical practice as a family practitioner for 36 years plus now. And I’ve seen a lot of lung cancer and smoking-related disease in our community,” Gieske said. “We know that cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke causes the majority of lung cancer. They cause not only lung cancer and many other cancers, cardiovascular disease, strokes, emphysema. But we also have some good news. We know that in the state of Kentucky now we’re number two in the country for lung cancer screening. We’re starting to change the paradigm.”
Gieske noted that smoking rates and deaths from lung cancer have been in steep decline over the past 20 to 30 years.
“There’s been no miracles and modern science involved here,” he said. ”It’s been strictly policy and behavioral changes…These changes don’t happen in a vacuum. They don’t happen by themselves. They happen because individuals or groups of individuals had the courage to stand up against political, against fiscal and against cultural headwinds. We really appreciate the leadership you have shown and the ability that you demonstrated to put actions into words.”
Breathe Easy NKY
Gieske was followed by Courtney New, director of NKY ASAP. She presented the placard to Mayor Charlie Cleves and council.
“If you’re not familiar with ASAP, we are a state mandated board that is tasked with working with the Northern Kentucky region to further efforts in substance abuse prevention, treatment and enforcement,” New said. “We just want to thank you for your leadership and your care and making sure that your community stays safe against the harmful effects of smoking.”
The organizations are part of an initiative known as Breathe Easy NKY, which connects health, education and business leaders, as well as elected officials, to work to combat the ongoing public health crisis related to tobacco use and vaping in the region.
Bellevue voted in February to adopt a smoking ban ordinance prohibiting smoking in most indoor places of employment, government and city facilities, hotels and short-term residences, and healthcare facilities within the municipality. Private clubs and residencies are excluded from the ban, unless they are used as daycare or healthcare facilities. Restaurants and bars were permitted to provide outdoor smoking spaces as long as they were a minimum of 10 feet from non-smokers.
Bellevue is only one of three Northern Kentucky cities with a smoking ban. Dayton passed a ban in September 2022, and Highland Heights passed its ban in August of this year.
