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Thread: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

  1. #1
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    Is it just pure coincidence or what ?

    After years of states passing no-smoking laws affecting public places, a number of states are now seriously pushing for no-smoking laws affecting apartment buildings, condos etc. Latest example can be found at


    but, all of a sudden, mainstream media is starting to run stories like these ...



    " The Bogus Science of Second-Hand Smoke" ... which is essentially reminding Americans of what every European study has discovered


    'Passive Smoking doesn't cause cancer - Official"

    and my personal favorite, Dr. Michael Crighton on 'Concensus Science' alternately titled
    'Aliens cause Global Warming'


    (snip)"In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

    This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

    In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

    Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.

    As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed."(snip)


    Granted that the 'concensus science' crowd has taken some bad press lately on other fronts as well (i.e. the Weather Channel broadcast calling for the decertification of Meterorologists who don't agree with the global warming 'concensus'), but seeing the Washington Post publishing a story which claims that the second hand smoking studies upon which all US anti-smoking laws were based was 'rigged' to achieve the desired outcome ???

    ~
    Last edited by Melonie; 01-31-2007 at 05:09 AM.

  2. #2
    Yekhefah
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    Default Re: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    Well, sure. Big Tobacco is going on the offensive to stay in business; they're going to have to.

    I am a big fan of anti-smoking laws. Not in private residences, but definitely in public. I have asthma and there's no reason I should have to suffer just because some junkie is too weak to stop his suicide-by-installment.

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    Featured Member sophiemarie's Avatar
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    Default Re: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    I like to smoke when I hustle. In NYC you can only smoke in the rooms.



    I Love Life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. #4
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    well the key question with anti-smoking laws, global warming laws (see ), etc. is that, in the absence of 100% incontrovertible scientific proof of harm to others, passing such laws devolves into the opinion of the majority passing a law which restricts the freedoms of a minority strictly on the basis that it is 'good social policy'.

    That same sort of logic could be applied to future laws outlawing strip clubs, simply because the majority of neighborhood residents think that it would be 'good social policy' not to have strip clubs around - without them having to bear the burden of legal proof that strip clubs actually do harm to the surrounding community as the 'consensus' of neighbors, cops, city officials etc. already 'know' they do. In other words, just because the majority of local residents happens to feel that they don't like strippers, would never choose to spend time around strippers themselves, and believe that exposure to strippers only causes bad things to happen, that gives them the right to outlaw strip clubs and override the choice of a minority of residents who want to spend time around strippers for their own good and for the good of the community ?

    PS Big Tobacco absolutely is NOT on the list of the Washington Posts' friends / supporters / advertisers - if anything the Post has targeted hit pieces towards Big Tobacco in the past. This is what makes this recent article's publication somewhat of a mystery.

    ~
    Last edited by Melonie; 01-31-2007 at 11:52 AM.

  5. #5
    Yekhefah
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    Default Re: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    Bullshit it doesn't harm others! When I worked in Vegas, I was wheezing and sick from the smoke. In Phoenix, I was wheezing and sick from the smoke (and got a respiratory infection from it as well). When you take someone with asthma or other respiratory sensitivity, and put her in a room full of noxious smoke, she is going to get sick. I mean come on, it's INHALING SMOKE. No reasonable person could seriously believe it doesn't hurt you.

    Crackheads and other junkies have to get their fix at home. I see no reason that a community should have to suffer harm inflicted by nicotine junkies, just because Big Tobacco has better lobbyists. If they need a cigarette so badly, they can go the fuck outside. We the constituency have every right to push for local anti-smoking laws and I personally am thrilled whenever one goes through.

    I support drug decriminalization, and I wouldn't support a full-on ban of tobacco. But even if all drugs were legalized, cokeheads wouldn't have a right to shove coke up my nose, and nothing gives nicotine junkies the right to blow smoke up my nose either.

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    God/dess Paris's Avatar
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    Default Re: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    I just posted a reply in the July anti smoking thread in stripping general. So as to not repeat myself here is the link.


    Promote yourself and earn more money! This is a business that is owned by strippers for strippers. Let's make that money!


  7. #7
    God/dess doc-catfish's Avatar
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    Default Re: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    I'm not picking on Yekhefah or Melonie here or even taking sides on this (although I have one and I've given it before), but bear with me here in a frequent observation I see in any political discussion, particularly on hot button topics like this.

    It simply amazes me how some folks will instantly dismiss any commentary or findings, no matter how scientifically solid that are contrary to their entrenched beliefs as agenda driven propaganda, yet will herald any commentary or findings in support of those beliefs, no matter how scientifically flimsy as irrefutable Gospel. Is it any wonder that we have the kind of country that we have?

    And with that, I'll shut up now. Carry on.
    Former SCJ now in rehab.

  8. #8
    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: now that smoking laws are starting to really intrude ...

    My bit of empirical evidence is when I, a non-smoker, go home to visit my parents. I always have a cough, a dry stinging throat, and bad eyes when I spend more than three days there. It takes a day to clear all out.

    So while it might not cause cancer, it definitely causes better than "annoying" discomfort for those around them.

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