Smoke-free apartment choices increasing

Victory Village on Lakeview is under construction, and is the latest apartment complex in North Platte to have smokefree indoor policies. Smoke-free is becoming the norm for apartments here and around the country.

Smoke-free policies help to protect the health of apartment dwellers. They also reduce fire risks and cut down substantially on the cost of maintaining and renovating apartment units.

Think of the damage that smoke does to carpeting, walls, furniture, cabinets and ceilings, then imagine the damage it does to people. There is no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure.

When someone smokes in one apartment, the smoke can move into apartments throughout the building: around doors, through cracks in walls and ceilings, around cutaways for pipes and wires and, especially, through ventilation systems.

The only answer is to prohibit smoking inside the building, including balcony areas.

Congratulations to Victory Village on Lakeview, and thank you to the many apartment owners and managers in Lincoln County who have, and enforce, smoke-free policies for their buildings.