Can I Buy You a Drink and Light Your Cigarette? (Cathryn Crawford)

The Washington Dispatch ^ | January 2, 2004 | Cathryn Crawford

[Scenic Sounds]

It seems that everyone has an opinion on the smoking bans that have been put into place in the last year. From Dallas to New York City to California, smokers are no longer allowed to smoke inside bars and restaurants. These bans have been met with great resistance, not only from smokers, but from the owners of the bars and restaurants, who say that the restriction is harming their business and causing profit loss. The opponents of such a ban also say that the bans are unconstitutional, because they prohibit legal behavior in privately owned places of business.

Most people rightly characterize this issue as having two sides - those on the side of property rights and liberty, and those who are on the side of public health. (I am without the scientific qualifications to resolve that issue, but I am comfortable assuming that cigarette smoke doesn't become safer just because one person has inhaled it before it gets to me.) Granting that assumption, which deserves priority – the right of a proprietor to control what legal activities happen in his bar, or the right of a member of the public to live and work in the safest environment possible?

Those who endorse the public health side of this issue contend that health issues outweigh every argument. They believe that people have the right to always be in the safest environment possible (whether they want to be or not), and that legislation is the proper vehicle by which to ensure public health. Their basic belief is that nothing is more important than health and safety for everyone, not even the idea of personal choice. They are willing to have their personal liberties curbed because they believe that it will improve the quality of their lives.

However, I believe that it really comes down to personal choice and responsibility. When someone makes a decision (any decision), they must decide for themselves what risks are involved, and weigh them rationally against the benefits. This applies to the decision to eat, drink, or work in a certain bar or restaurant, just as it does when someone makes the decision to drive a car, eat junky foods, or drink alcohol – all activities which are potentially dangerous but very legal. A ban on smoking takes away the choices of all three parties involved – smokers, nonsmokers, and owners. It also assumes that people are not sufficiently reasonable or rational enough to make their own decisions regarding their health.

Are there are ways to allow both sides to have a say in public smoking? Of course there are. Why not just require restaurants and bars that permit smoking to post a notice advising prospective customers of the hazard?

Until smoking is banned altogether, the decisions regarding the right to smoke in privately owned businesses should be left up to the individual discretion of the owner. Otherwise, choice is removed and replaced with full control by the government, which invalidates the entire idea of private ownership.

Cathryn Crawford is a student at the University of Texas. She can be reached at CathrynCrawford@WashingtonDispatch.com.

[patton]

There have been a nuber of studies, and more than a few metastudies, done on the topic.

Most are neutral. One (by the WHO, actually), found Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) to have a beneficial effect.

One, just completed, found that traces (very small traces) of smoke by products could be found in the blood of non-smokers, after hanging out for three hours in a smoking establishment.

None of it is conclusive.

[Gabz]

what justification was there for the ban on smoking in hospitals?

Second hand smoke can aggravate some pre-existing conditions and as hospitals being "health care" facilities it is understandable for them to impose restrictions - but still does not justify government mandated bans.

[longtermmemmory]

The peole who make these smoke units should have been calling the news networks to demonstrate their products.

Heck, NY should just mandate the units like fire sprinklers in restaurants in order to get rid of these stupid laws.

The sales people at these machine companies were asleep at the switch.

[patton]

Maybe you better ask the author, first.

[Gabz]

I'm hoping to hear more on the question of whether second-hand smoke really is safe.

Never said it was "safe," just that it is no where the deadly poison the smoke ban proponents try to lead the sheeple to believe.

[longtermmemmory]

not to mention burning cigaretts and oxygen use don't mix.

[arasina]

It's stinky and dirty, maybe? The "second hand smoke is not harmful" scientific research could still be accurate while at the same time the residuals of smoking (butts and dust) are damaging in their own ways. Hospitals need to be as clean and germ-free as possible.

[Gabz]

That too.

[Senormechanico]

I quit smoking in 1970, but I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK !!
We are slowly losing all our freedoms.
What's next? Jogging without a helmet?

SM

[Scenic Sounds]

Fascinating - one study showing a beneficial effect! I would not have predicted that.

Thank you.

[longtermmemmory]

next?

heterosexual sex.

[patton]

You would not believe how deep the WHO buried that one.

[SheLion]

Good point, but aren't there lots of patients who are not in rooms with heavy concentrations of oxygen? I'm hoping to hear more on the question of whether second-hand smoke really is safe.

Second Hand Smoke is NOT The Killer The Anti's Want You To Believe.  Check out all the studies that have been and are being done on this issue:

Second Hand Smoke Studies

Second Hand Smoke Scam

Second Hand Smoke is Harmful To Science

Smoke Claim Disputed

Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official

Second Hand Smoke - The Evidence

(I think any anti who tries to dismiss the findings of the U.S. Department of Energy labs at Oak Ridge, should be confronted with the question: "Are you saying that DOE researchers committed scientific fraud and that their findings on ETS exposure are untrue? "I'd like to see what any anti would say in response to that question. )

Environmental Tobacco Smoke Study by Oak Ridge Labs

You read all the lies about second hand smoke and passive smoke.

Now read the TRUTH!

EPA - What was said vs. What is true.

click here

Smokers’ rights cloud ASHRAE IAQ debate

Dozens of bar owners and representatives from casinos, restaurant industry trade groups and tobacco companies spoke during the two-hour open forum. Many of the speakers came to the forum from Canada, where several cities have passed or are considering totally banning smoking in restaurants, bars and bingo parlors. Most of the restaurant owners said they have lost or will lose up to 25% of their business if a smoking ban in enacted in their communities.

  of Indoor Air Contaminants/unhealthy living

we link to NYC Clash click here

Source: OSHA

You don't smoke? Guess your safe?  Think again.  Then stop worrying.

Health Alerts

NYC Clash click here

"S S econdhand smoke stinks - but is it killing people? There was a study of the wives of the smokers - they have crummy health habits. They eat terrible diets of meat and fat, they don't get any exercise, but when they show up with worse health statistics, it's blamed on secondhand smoke, not on all the other factors. 

American Cancer Society Admits "Mistake" in Ad

53,000 deaths from second hand smoke?  They made a "typo!"

click here

The list goes on and on and on.....................

[Scenic Sounds]

Second hand smoke can aggravate some pre-existing conditions and as hospitals being "health care" facilities it is understandable for them to impose restrictions - but still does not justify government mandated bans.

I see. So, the restrictions on liberty here need to be weighed against the health issues (aggravation of some pre-existing conditions) that would be faced by some hospital patients.

I take it, though, that you don't see it as a legitimate function of government to weigh these factors, am I right? Are you saying that these decisions should be left to private hospitals and doctors' offices to decide for themselves?

[Scenic Sounds]

Wow, you have done your homework!!

Good for you, SheLion!

[Gabz]

I take it, though, that you don't see it as a legitimate function of government to weigh these factors, am I right? Are you saying that these decisions should be left to private hospitals and doctors' offices to decide for themselves?

If it is a government run hospital, it is the government's job. In private facilities it should be left up to the facilities. Just like any other business.

[SheLion]

Where is the support for these prohibition laws coming from and what do you understand their interests to be?

When the war on the smoker didn't work, the antis at the state house started a war to the general public that smokers second hand smoke is killing them!  Well, over 55 million across the US smoke, but in each state, that only boils down to about 2-30 percent.  So, by being out numbered, we are going to lose every time.  Unless the non-smoking public can be made to understand the truth that we are NOT killing them with our SHS.  And that if they do not want more government intervention, they have to agree that a business owner should have the right to make his establishment smoking or not.  But to let the government go in an take control?  What does this tell you?

Where door next will the Gestapo government be knocking on next?  It's rather frightening.  If the states allow our Health Coalitions to run the state, we are ALL in a heap of trouble.

[Scenic Sounds]

next?

heterosexual sex.

Now, that would doom the bars, wouldn't it? ;-)

[Cathryn Crawford]

Now, that would doom the bars, wouldn't it?

Except for the gay bars!

[SheLion]

but still does not justify government mandated bans.

Gabz! The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation working with the AMA started all of this. The more states they have in their pockets who ban smoking on hospital grounds, the more grant money the hospitals receive.

We all know how most hospitals are hurting for money, but this doesn't make it right for the medical community to take away even the outside cigarette recepticals. It just isn't right what they have done to us.

My one Doctor is a surgeon. When he comes to talk to you, (even in the hospital), he reeks of smoke. So.....that tells ME that the DOCTORS have a little hide-away to grab a break, but heaven help the rest of us.

This is a map from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The states in blue are the ones in the pocket of the RWJ.

This is an old map, and some more states have been added to their blood money list.

There are 48 states to date that "belong to the RWJ Foundation."