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Puff, Puff, Bash - The smoking ban is based on an agenda of lies.
Philadelphia City Paper Net ^ | June 29, 2006 | Michael J. McFadden

Posted on 06/28/2006 10:39:04 PM PDT by SheLion

Psst! Hey kid! Come over here and jump off this bridge! All the cool kids've done it 'n you're the only one left! It won't hurt, it'll be fun. Anyhow, if ya don't do it, I'm gonna come back 'n bugya, 'n bugya, 'n bugya forever till ya do.

With that sort of reasoned discourse in the background, accompanied by taunts of "You smell like an ASHTRAY!", Philadelphia finally jumped on the bandwagon and banned smoking. Well, sorta. They banned it unless you're a bar that agrees not to feed its customers anything healthy, one that's well-off enough to have a sidewalk cafe or unless you're staying at home smoking around your kids.

Don't worry though, they'll come back to clean up those scraps once the rest of the rowdies have been pacified and you're all alone. Meanwhile, just shut up and don't make waves!

If the smoking ban was actually based upon a concern for the health of the workers, if the studies supporting it were actually carried out and cited honestly, I would not complain. I might be unhappy, but I wouldn't complain.

So why do I complain? Simply because the above conditions don't hold true. Most of the studies cited at the City Council hearings were paid for by anti-smoking-earmarked funds: studies guaranteed to turn out results that ensure the researchers' future grant streams. In those rare cases where a study's results did not support the predetermined agenda, they were simply reinterpreted and massaged so it would appear they did support a ban.

Am I exaggerating? Not at all.

One of the flagship studies used to promote the smoking ban involved Helena, Mont. "The Great Helena Heart Miracle" made headlines and newscasts around the world trumpeting the news that protecting nonsmokers from smoke brought about an immediate drastic decrease in heart attacks and that removing that protection resulted in an immediate "bounce back" to the old higher rates of coronary episodes. In reality, the study itself made no analysis of nonsmokers, and the main "bounce back" actually occurred during, not after, the ban. Unfortunately, these observations received virtually no media coverage; they are known only to those who bother digging through the dusty cyberpages of the online British Medical Journal. The "miracle" was more fraudulent than miraculous, but it's universally used as proof of the urgent need for smoking bans.

Of course, Helena is just one study, and they've got thousands that support the need for smoking bans, don't they? No. Helena and a few others are their best and their brightest but are all similarly and deeply flawed. And they are all repeatedly paraded before legislators who rarely have the knowledge, conviction or inclination to question them.

Would you raise the question if you were in their place? Would you do so knowing you'd be accused of being a "Big Tobacco Mouthpiece" and realizing you'd be standing alone in mean-spirited opposition to the phalanx of innocent and pink-lunged children with whom Councilman Michael Nutter packed the balcony? And would you do so aware that you'd be sharing the TV screen with dozens of fresh-faced idealistic little girls wearing signs proclaiming the dread diseases you're condemning them to? What politician in their right mind would have the courage to stand up for truth when confronted with such opposition? Unfortunately, very few.

Last week, Lady Elaine Murphy of the British House of Lords chided me in an e-mail, saying that I had "completely missed the point" about the English smoking ban in talking to her about the science. She wrote that "the aim is to reduce the public acceptability of smoking and the culture which surrounds it." Now, that's quite different than the public posturings about "saving the health of the workers" and the images of oppressed teenaged waitresses being slaughtered by deadly toxins as they work their way through school. And, it's quite different than the cheap shows of pleading children in front of City Council's TV cameras.

The smoking ban is based on lies, even if they are lies that are often truly believed by those supporting it.

Philadelphians value freedom. Philadelphia is known as the birthplace of liberty. For Philadelphia to blithely trade away pieces of that individual freedom to heavily funded lobbying groups pursuing social-engineering goals based on lies is nothing short of a crime—a crime that we can only hope will be stopped by Mayor Street.

Michael J. McFadden is the author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains (Aethna Press) and the Mid-Atlantic director of The Smokers Club, Inc


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: addictedlosers; addiction; alveolidamage; anti; antismokers; augusta; bans; budget; butts; camel; cancersticks; caribou; chicago; cigar; cigarettes; cigarettetax; commerce; drugskilledbelushi; earlygrave; emphysema; epa; fda; fools; governor; individual; interstate; ironlung; kool; lawmakers; lewiston; liberty; livingindenial; lungxrays; maine; mainesmokers; marlboro; msa; nanystate; niconazis; orallyfixated; osha; pallmall; pipe; portland; prosmoker; pufflist; quitsmoking; regulation; rico; rights; rinos; ryo; sales; senate; smokers; smoking; smokingbans; suicidebycigarette; taxes; tobacco; winston
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1 posted on 06/28/2006 10:39:16 PM PDT by SheLion
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To: Just another Joe; Madame Dufarge; Cantiloper; metesky; Judith Anne; lockjaw02; Mears; CSM; ...

2 posted on 06/28/2006 10:39:53 PM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: Gabz

ping


3 posted on 06/28/2006 10:40:25 PM PDT by freepatriot32 (Holding you head high & voting Libertarian is better then holding your nose and voting republican)
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To: SheLion

B U M P


4 posted on 06/28/2006 10:48:46 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (If you got Sowell, you got Soul !)
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To: Abram; albertp; AlexandriaDuke; Allosaurs_r_us; Americanwolf; Americanwolfsbrother; Annie03; ...
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
5 posted on 06/28/2006 10:51:53 PM PDT by freepatriot32 (Holding you head high & voting Libertarian is better then holding your nose and voting republican)
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To: SheLion
Anti-smokers engage in some pretty amazing statistical homeopathy. Using proper statistical methods, a person who gets lung cancer having been exposed to only a trivial amount of secondhand smoke should be regarded as a data point against the proposition that secondhand smoke is significantly harmful, in that it shows that not all cases of lung cancer are attributable to SHS. To a statistical homeopathist, however, any case of cancer by anyone with any exposure whatsoever to SHS proves that SHS is dangerous. The smaller the exposure (and thus, to a proper statistician, the more tenuous the causal relationship) the stronger the proof.
6 posted on 06/28/2006 11:00:29 PM PDT by supercat (Sony delenda est.)
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To: SheLion

Oh the injustice of it all! Yes, some of you laugh, but what about when "they" come for everyone with a urinary tract infection? (an urinary tract infection?) What then?


7 posted on 06/28/2006 11:02:14 PM PDT by at bay ("We actually did an evil....." Eric Scmidt, CEO Google)
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To: at bay

then cranberry juice will be mandatory!


8 posted on 06/28/2006 11:08:01 PM PDT by CAluvdubya (What's so hard to understand about the word illegal?)
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To: SheLion

9 posted on 06/28/2006 11:26:22 PM PDT by mugs99 (Don't take life too seriously, you won't get out alive.)
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To: SheLion

Smoking, drinking, drug abusing, it's all the same bad thing. A poison is a poison.

There is an old Jewish saying: "Your body is your Temple."

Keep it clean.


10 posted on 06/28/2006 11:32:04 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper (ETERNAL SHAME on the Treasonous and Immoral Democrats!)
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To: mugs99
Like this one as well:


11 posted on 06/28/2006 11:32:57 PM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: Berlin_Freeper
Smoking, drinking, drug abusing, it's all the same bad thing. A poison is a poison.

There is an old Jewish saying: "Your body is your Temple."

Keep it clean.

Sorry.  But as a Christian, my SOUL is my temple!  I keep THAT clean.

When I die, my body will turn to ashes.  Be it clean OR dirty.  No my friend.  My SOUL is my temple and that is what I keep clean for the Lord.

Thank you!

12 posted on 06/28/2006 11:35:43 PM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: SheLion

I'm torn on this one, I don't really care to be around smoking generally, but at the same time what people do to their body is their business. And of course depending on what you are looking for at the bar smoking can be a good sign. From everything I have seen and heard, "if she smokes she pokes" is a pretty hard and fast rule.


13 posted on 06/28/2006 11:41:36 PM PDT by Mr. Blonde (You know, Happy Time Harry, just being around you kinda makes me want to die.)
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To: Mr. Blonde
I'm torn on this one, I don't really care to be around smoking generally, but at the same time what people do to their body is their business. And of course depending on what you are looking for at the bar smoking can be a good sign. From everything I have seen and heard, "if she smokes she pokes" is a pretty hard and fast rule.

You are another nasty aze.  How dare you!

And like I have said:  if you don't to be around smoke, don't GO where smokers go!  Simple enough.

I smoke so you think I "poke?"  Well, keep dreaming bud.  This is ONE female smoker that you will NEVER poke!

14 posted on 06/28/2006 11:51:28 PM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: Mr. Blonde
You talk out of both sides of your mouth....

From your About me page:

I hate to advocate drugs or liquor, violence, insanity to anyone. But in my case it's worked. --Where the Buffalo Roam

15 posted on 06/28/2006 11:54:08 PM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: Mr. Blonde
And of course depending on what you are looking for at the bar smoking can be a good sign. From everything I have seen and heard, "if she smokes she pokes" is a pretty hard and fast rule.

WARNING, Mr. B...from loooong experience certain people have NOOOO sense of humor... ;)

16 posted on 06/28/2006 11:55:50 PM PDT by paulat
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To: Mr. Blonde

When NYC went smoke free, it was the best. You could go out for a drink and not come home smelling of smoke. And if you went out for a few drinks you felt much better the next morning.

The smell of stale beer and urine wasn't pleasent, but that went away after a week or two.

I think it's a long term positive for businesses, more non-smokers will go out and stay out longer.


17 posted on 06/28/2006 11:57:15 PM PDT by Hong Kong Expat
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To: Mr. Blonde
WARNING, Mr. B...from loooong experience certain people have NOOOO sense of humor... ;)

Case in point...#14 & #15....

BTW...I LOVE that quote...works for me!!!

18 posted on 06/28/2006 11:58:17 PM PDT by paulat
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To: SheLion
It is a quote I like that is from a movie that I even credited. Not something I have lived out. I thought it was funny and thought I would share. Clearly you don't feel the same way about said quote. That's fine.

I am by no means a militant anti-smoking person. As I said I prefer to not have it blown directly at me, but I would say most people feel that way.

The if she smokes she pokes was again more humorous than anything else. Whenever smoking does get brought up amongst guys, I can guarantee you that that statement will be made. Another one that will often be repeated is Chris Rocks line if a girl has a tongue ring she will probably suck your ****. Obviously not true of all girls with tongue rings and the other is not true of women who smoke. And if you look at the number of women who do both of those activities that don't smoke or have a tongue ring it is clear that smoking and tongue rings have nothing to do with it. But everyone likes sayings, especially vaguely funny ones right.
19 posted on 06/29/2006 12:09:51 AM PDT by Mr. Blonde (You know, Happy Time Harry, just being around you kinda makes me want to die.)
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To: Hong Kong Expat

Oklahoma recently enacted no smoking in restaurants affected one of the most popular bars in town because the law says only places where 60% of the revenue comes from alcohol sales are exempt. This bar is a restaurant during the day and so no smoking at night. The nice thing is after leaving there on 5 dollar drown nights, if you go to another bar you are probably too drunk to notice the smoke. :)


20 posted on 06/29/2006 12:12:18 AM PDT by Mr. Blonde (You know, Happy Time Harry, just being around you kinda makes me want to die.)
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