Posted on 08/23/2002 5:39:18 PM PDT by SheLion
NEW YORK, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- If you were to be strapped down on a surgical table while four guys exhaled smoke directly into your mouth and nostrils for 30 years, you MIGHT get lung cancer 40 years after they stopped -- but it's not likely.
I'm using this absurd example, because ALL of the other examples in the available scientific literature are equally absurd.
The second-hand smoke scare is a political farce. It was invented in the mid-1990s by the Clinton administration -- it has Hillary's hands all over it -- because anti-smoking radicals, who tend to be like anti-abortion radicals in their zealous devotion to the cause, actually convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to change its "conventional standard for statistical significance" so that second-hand smoke could be proven to be a killer.
Normally nobody but specialists would care -- substandard scientific reports get released all the time -- except that it's now being used to justify anti-smoking legislation that, in the case of New York City, could result in smokers not even being able to light up in their own clubs, their own bars, and, in one case, their own apartment buildings -- even if the place is clearly marked as a smoking establishment.
If Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his way, they won't even be able to smoke in smoking lounges, cigar bars or tobacco shops.
Wouldn't the American way be to put a big sign on the front of your restaurant? "People Smoke In Here -- Don't Come In If It Bugs You." And then let everyone act like grownups?
The simple fact of the matter is that by about 1990 everyone had reached a compromise on this issue. Smokers would sit in smoking sections.
Ventilation systems would be installed in public buildings. Everyone would live and let live.
Not good enough for the smoke-haters. They knew that arguing against a legal substance on the basis that it was hurting the people who LIKED IT was a losing battle, and un-American besides. But if they could somehow prove that innocent people were dying ...
And so they proved it with "junk science." The Bush administration recently rejected a scientific report, 30 years in the making, signed by some of the top researchers in the world that said fossil fuels were the principle cause of global warming in the form of air pollution. The reason Bush rejected the findings: it was "junk science" from "the bureaucracy."
If that was junk science, then the second-hand smoke research comes from a junkyard infested with giant rats and scavenging stray dogs. Most of the available studies have "confidence intervals" right around 1.0 -- which means no confidence at all. And almost all of them fail to take into account the other sources of air pollution. It's as though our polluted air were made up of 140 parts car exhaust, 70 parts smoke from fossil-fuel-burning factories, 40 parts methane, and .0000001 parts smoke from that guy on the corner sneaking a cigarette on his lunch hour. So what do we do?
KILL THE SMOKER. HE'S DESTROYING THE AIR.
The fact is, there have been 40 epidemiological studies of second-hand smoke, almost all of them based on the experience of non-smokers married to smokers. Thirty-two of them found no evidence of second-hand smoke causing any disease at all. The other eight showed "weak association" -- but in some of the studies there was actually a NEGATIVE result, indicating that non-smoking spouses of smokers are LESS likely to get a serious disease.
Of course, the ones that showed a negative result were thrown out as wacky, but the others are equally wacky. For one thing, they're all infected with what science calls "recall bias." People interviewed are asked to reconstruct smoking patterns over their entire lifetimes, and it's been shown time and again that their memories are faulty, and in many cases, designed to mislead. The non-smoker frequently turns out to be a smoker for a portion of those years; he changes his story for insurance reasons or because of pending litigation. And the non-smoker with lung cancer tends to seek external causes and fasten on the most convenient one, even when we know that a person living in an urban area is subject to multiple possible causes of lung cancer, most of them far more potent than cigarette smoke.
Complicating the issue is the media treatment of second-hand smoke. If you say something often enough, it acquires the patina of truth even if the original basis for it is phony. I could use dozens of examples, but I'll just use the most recent one that I know of. Here's the lead paragraph from a July 12 article in the Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper:
"People who are routinely exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke, such as workers in bars and restaurants, can see their risk of lung cancer triple, a new study says. The Canadian study provides some of the most compelling scientific evidence yet for a total ban on workplace smoking, including bars and restaurants."
Okay, now let's look at the study the article was based on. It was published in the International Journal of Cancer and signed by a lead researcher for Health Canada -- a government agency with a vested interest. (Public health agency research tends to be uniformly alarmist.) Even so, the Globe and Mail's report leaves out the most important conclusion in the study:
"Although more years of and more intense residential passive smoke exposure tended to be associated with higher risk estimates, no clear dose-response relationship was evident."
Any particular reason this would be left out? Other than that it's inconvenient? Of course, to report the data without any agency spin on it, you would need to study the tables, evaluate the "confidence intervals," allow for "recall bias," and do all the other things scientists normally do, and journalists SHOULD do.
Apparently Australian journalists are a little more diligent. When the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council released a second-hand smoke report in 1997, the authors decided to omit the statistical tables entirely because they feared the press might study them.
An outraged judge eventually censured the government agency for what he called lying by omission -- the same thing that happened in a North Carolina court case, when a judge said the Environmental Protection Agency's report was rife with "cherry picking" of statistics, and had excluded half the available studies for no good reason. Later the Congressional Research Service issued a blistering report of its own, essentially calling the EPA study irresponsible and alarmist.
The reason the issue of second-hand smoke is such a raging issue right now is that it's being used as the rationale for additional anti-smoking laws. Waiters, bartenders and cooks need to be protected. This is what Bloomberg is basing his whole campaign on.
People might not LIKE smoke. They might find it unpleasant. But it's a huge jump to say it's actually harming their bodies, as though they were coal miners, soon to be diagnosed with Black Lung Disease. In fact, we have two studies that measured Environmental Tobacco Smoke -- the scientific name for it -- and came to the conclusion that, first of all, the smoke inhaled from the air is chemically and physically different from the smoke inhaled from the end of the cigarette, and, secondly, people who work eight hours a day in heavy-smoking environments had the following CE's (Cigarette Equivalents):
Sydney: 0.2
Prague: 1.4
Barcelona: 4.3
That's cigarettes PER YEAR. The worst case they could find had the bartender adding to his cancer risk at the rate of 4.3 cigarettes per year, which is, of course, like saying somebody who eats six Lifesavers is a candidate for heart disease.
Even more to the point, scientists computed what would happen if a 20-by-20-foot room with a 9-foot ceiling were filled with smoke, and then compared that exposure to the EPA's lowest published "danger" doses. Here are the results:
For the lowest level of danger for benzopyrene, you would need to have 222,000 cigarettes burning in the room. For the lowest level of acetone, you would need to burn 118,000 cigarettes. For the lowest level of hydrazine, you would need 14,000 cigarettes. And for toluene, you would need a cool million smokes, all burning at the same time. Unless, of course, you opened the door or window -- then you would need more.
John C. Bailar, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, said that, if you sum up all the available evidence, the MOST alarming case you can make for second-hand smoke being related to disease is "We don't know." (He was primarily writing about heart disease, but the conclusions on lung cancer are similar.)
Bailar was being polite. We know. Get a ventilation fan. Put up a sign. Go to separate rooms. But let's not start a whole new era of Prohibition in which people have to open speakeasies and private clubs just to enjoy a meal or a drink. We can't all afford to go to Paris to smoke.
--
(John Bloom, a smoker, writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)
I wonder if the main causes of fires are different with different regions? Caused by different behaviours? All I know is Leo drove us nuts with the coffee pot thing. He'd send us back in to make sure it was turned off if we were leaving. We were adults too but he acted like we were 10 and we'd never heard him worry about coffee pots before. It was a true paranoia for him.
Do you really have that attitude about others? What about mom's smoking pot at home with the kids around? Live & let live? What about people that leave their kids in the car while they run into a store? What about people that slap, but not too hard, their child in the face? I've intervened in all of the above.
For stuff like that I can't 'live & let live'. I feel morally obligated to defend the defenseless. I think it's immoral to watch an irresponsible person carry out destructive actions on innocents, helpless or weaker marks and do nothing about it. Smoking around children is such an act.
I really don't have a complaint against people that smoke in their cars & homes etc. as long as they are not exposing their children. My complaint is with situations like when I'm with a smoker on a cruise and 2 of us couples are at a table, sitting under a no smoking sign & the smoker decides he's gonna smoke, screw the sign, screw me. Gee, what do I do? Grab a chair and beat the nicotine out of him? His addiction is not my problem I don't have to be tolerant. We will travel together no more.
I can remember over the years dozens of other rude situations and inconviences that smokers have generated with me. I don't go into bars & smoking sections expecting there to be no smoking. It's the gauntlet of smoke & smokers I have to run to get in or out of a business I resent. It's the smoker in the passenger seat that trys to light up before asking me if they may smoke in my car I resent. It's the smoker that moves into an area I'm already in and then lights up and refuses a polite request to 'Please don't smoke.' with a "I gotta have a cigarette." comeback that I resent. It's the smoker that (before it was banned by force of law) would light up in our break area and claim it as soley their own I resent. It's the smoker that just insists they can move in on me and mine and service their nicotine craving I resent.
Smoker insensitivity has persuaded me. The force of law is needed here to help nonsmokers reclaim their right to not have to breath cigarrette smoke! Nicotine addicts, on the whole, are not near as polite and considerate as they like to imagine themselves. I think smoking areas should be designated by law and smoking should be banned in most public areas. You see it coming at ya. Blame the rude smokers that a nonsmoking majority has had to 'tolerate' for too long for the anti-smoking backlash.
By golly, you sure did, and here you are still up and while it's only 10 pm or so around here, it's in the weeeee hours of the ayem for you. Good nite, my friend. Rest well.
They already have. Mine shuts itself off after 2 hours and I always leave about 1/4 in the pot incase I forget to shut it off myself.
Well, I would but I can't. He died last spring.....never retired....still the city fire marshall.
I have the link, but thank you. Can you look at the figures you posted with an open mind and realize that those people who were intoxicated (87%) and fell asleep with a cigarette or cigar or pipe or whatever were less likely to wake up with the smell of smoke or the shrilling of a smoke detector and were, therefore more likely to die? Cooking causes a whole lot MORE fires, but people are generally awake and alert and get out before they perish. Same with candles and other sources. Alcohol is just as much to blame as smoking materials for these fatal fires. Why is that so hard to admit?
(Still think "magic" is a more likely explanation for the guy on the couch, but so be it.)
I was born in Toledo. The only fire I was ever near was at a neighbors and my brother and I put it out. It was a grease fire! LOL!!!!
As I get older, I forget a lot of things and it's kinda of scarey.
Geeze.....tell me about it! At 52, I look at people I know and think, "What's her name?!" My "thing" is the tea kettle. Hubby got me a whistler and you can't ignore it.
I agree--not that it will make the slightest bit of difference. I quit paying attention to "scientific studies" years ago when it became obvious that they were mostly engineered to permit a predetermined conclusion. In fact, I have very little use for groups like the CDC, the Red Cross, the AMA, and the American Heart Association. Even things like advanced life support protocols are routinely changed every 2 years, most likely on the basis of which drug companies provide the best payoffs or phoney studies.
The only real factor that is likely to help in taking off the oppressive tax is the realization that the economy is unlikely to really recover as long as governments are siphoning off the "discretionary" spending power of 20% of the population. Many of those who thought they were being so clever by shoving the tax bill off onto smokers will find themselves out of a job. Kind of neat how they'll reap what the sow :)
But did you ever think that maybe YOUR attitude has something to do with smokers being rude to YOU???
Calling people "nictotine addicts" is not exactly a way of making friends or influencing people.
I can think of very few times where I was ever intentionally rude to an anti-smoker. One sticks out in my mind.
I was sitting in my own office, in a privately rented building that sat between the court house and the AG's office. I got lots of folks coming in thinking they had the AG's office.
One morning a woman came in looking for someone next door and started screaming at me about the cigarette in my ashtray and how it was illegal to smoke in a state office building, etc., etc., etc. I tried very calmly to explain it was a private office and the office she was looking for was next door. She refused to let up on me and I ordered her from the premises.
She returned about 15 minutes later with a Police Officer and she insisted he fine me for smoking in a public office building.
The patience of the officer was unreal - she absolutely refused to acknowlege it was not a state building. I finally had enough and asked the officer to remove her from my premises or I would press charges for tresspassing.
He finally convinced her the only citation he could issue would be one on my behalf if she didn't leave and leave me alone.
I guess the moral of this is - smokers should not enter the space of non-smokers and think they are permitted to light up with impunity. But non-smokers and especially anti-smokers should not enter the space of smokers and DEMAND there be no-smoking.
Your mindset is very dangerous to a free society. MY children are not harmed in any way by my smoking IN MY HOME and CAR with them present. Never have been, never will be. So what do you propose? Snatching them away because you perceive a RISK? That's scary and very, very bad precedent.
It's the gauntlet of smoke & smokers I have to run to get in or out of a business I resent.
YOU and your ilk created that situation. It's called unintended consequences of total disregard for the advisability of accommodating everyone but demanding it all your way.
It's the smoker in the passenger seat that trys to light up before asking me if they may smoke in my car I resent.
I cannot even imagine any smoker being dumb enough to ever be around you, much less in your car! Do they not know what you are? Maybe you could wear something like...an armband...maybe with a brown shirt or sumpin, to warn them off.
Smoker insensitivity has persuaded me. The force of law is needed here to help nonsmokers reclaim their right to not have to breath cigarrette smoke!
You know, I'm not sure you're fully aware of where you are...this is FREE Republic. Maybe you'd be happier over at one of those more "progressive" places.
Blame the rude smokers that a nonsmoking majority has had to 'tolerate' for too long for the anti-smoking backlash.
Well, now see? You've just blown whatever credibility you might have had by stating this piece of tripe as if it were true. The "nonsmoking majority" doesn't give a flip if people smoke, and the anti-smokers are not the majority. They're just loud and unpleasant so they seem to be more numerous than they are.
What about mom's smoking pot at home with the kids around?
You give an analogy, but use an illegal substance as a substitute for tobacco smokers. Apples and oranges, my friend. How about substituting, "Had a beer" for "smoking pot"? That frames it a little better, don't you think?
What about people that leave their kids in the car while they run into a store?
Again, not a seamless analogy. Leaving kids in a car can kill in less then an hour. Even the most agitated of the anti's don't claim that secondhand smoke can kill that swiftly or surely. Do you think we are smoking pure cyanide? I would think that that was the definition of, "totally over the top." Once again, not a worthy tactic here on FreeRepublic, where facts do matter.
What about people that slap, but not too hard, their child in the face?
If you think that breathing smoke is the same a a blow to the head, than I'm afraid you have some trouble descerning reality on this planet.
I've intervened in all of the above.
In the first two situations, as you describe them, I would probably agree with your actions. (Did you call the police, or just speak to the people involved?) I would need to know more about the third. (N)ot too hard, means...not too hard, so why would you feel compelled to intervene?
Do you have some expertice in this area?
Do you know the total situation better than the parent?
Or do you just like to throw your weight around?
From the tone of your posts, I would guess the latter.
stick your nose in my business on my property and i will bust it for you.
and you f*****g morons put them out there !
at the point of a gun
That may be, but there is a whole lot more fires started by hot grease, candles and faulty wires.
Don't think so, nicotine is out of your system in 36 hours, I have friends who quit 17 years ago, and still want a smoke now and then, my neighbor quit over 20 years ago, are fervent anti smoking now, but still want a smoke when seeing someone else smoking.
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