After lurking about and reading this blog for awhile now, I saw something on Bill's homepage that I found very interesting, and completely at odds with his earlier statements.
http://www.smokefree.net/bg-anno...ges/
247288.html
Has a paragraph that states ""You shouldn't have to choose between your health and your job," said Greg
Hartley, Assistant Director of Smokefree Pennsylvania"
And yet, doesn't Bill, in his statements about firing smokers, say that it is an acceptable practice to force these workers to choose between what Bill views as a healthy lifestyle and their employment?
Which is it Bill?
Jerry
Sir--
I'm afraid you're trying to shut the stall door forty years after the gelding bolted.
They lost credibility with me when they claimed ventilation wouldn't remove second hand smoke and set tobacco users outside in industrial and automobile pollution, saying; this would reduce health care costs. But, to each his own; I guess.
Mike,
In my view, you are the one with a crisis of credibility, not the tobacco control movement.
ASH has advocated the same position on smokefree employment policies for at least the past 20 years. In contrast, I never read anything written by you in opposition to smokefree employement policies until this past year.
The same goes for your recent writings opposing cigarette tax hikes, smokefree workplace laws that protect nearly all workers, the MSA, outdoor smokefree policies, and lawsuits against junk food marketing.
Regarding Jerry Thomas' inquiry, there is nothing inconsistent about advocating smokefree workplace policies and defending smokefree employment policies.
Smokefree employment policies give cigarette addicts an opportunity to choose both their job and their health, and they are probably the most effective financial incentive to help people quit smoking.
In my opinion, the post above is an intentional attempt in deceiving the public.
See how Bill's define the thing: "smokefree employment policies", "smokefree workplace policies"
Now what's the "thing" ?!? A distract reader is likely to believe that the "thing" in question is something like banning smoking in workplaces.
Instead, Bill is defending social discrimination against smokers, i.e. firing people because, IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR HOMES, they enjoy some tobacco.
Talking about credibility, Bill? Where's yours? Oops... this part is the personal attack against the Doc, so it's up to him to reply.
Interesting - Bill is criticizing me for not having written anything about the MSA 20 years ago. I suppose I should have foreseen that the Attorneys General were going to cave in to political desire to bring back huge sums of money to their states way back in 1986, before the lawsuits were even filed that were settled by the MSA!
Mike,
I did not criticize you "for not having written anything about the MSA 20 years ago," as you claim.
Rather, I merely pointed out that I haven't read anything written by you
(until this past year) in opposition to smokefree employement policies, cigarette tax hikes, smokefree workplace laws that protect nearly all workers, the MSA, outdoor smokefree policies, and lawsuits against junk food marketing.
What is your point Bill? It seems to me you are leading up to an accusation... I wonder what that would be? Do you have documentation? Oh, I forgot; you no longer need it according to this article;
New Article Encourages Obesity Lawsuits Without Documenting Any Legal Wrongdoing by Fast Food Companies
Bill--
Mr. Siegel (sorry, Doc, I don't defer to the professions' insistence on titles, like the aristocrats of old) is trying to preserve a modicum of decency and respect for others.
While Bill may try to cover an inconsistency, my question to him did not ask about being inconsistent in his views on smokefree policies vs employment smokefree policies, my question asked why a smoker should have to choose between employment and his/her enjoyment of a legal product, off the clock, by ASH own statements "You shouldn't have to choose between your health and your job,", does this only apply to non smokers? Are they the only ones who have to make a "choice" as to whether or not they can find a job? How about smokers who choose to take the risk?
If forced to follow the behaviour example set in order to find gainful employment, how is that a choice? Isn't that more like dictatorship?
Also, since ASH and the control industry in general seem to agree that tobacco is an "Addiction", by their own standards, how CAN an ADDICT CHOOSE their addiction over anything, the very nature of addiction is an inability to control those impulses, else is it truly an addiction?
So, Bill why is it a choice when a nonsmoker has to choose between employment at a smoking bar, and exposure to this terrible hazard, but also a choice when a smoker is told they can not have gainful employment unless they do as they are told? and how do you justify this against the bill of rights, the right to seek "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?
Jerry
Per Jerry's inquiry, many different courts have upheld the legal rights of emplyers to require prospective employees to quit smoking as a condition of employment.
Bill,
That's not what Jerry asked you.
Obfuscation is the order of the day with Bill. Indeed, with most statists.
"... many different courts have upheld the legal rights of emplyers to require prospective employees to quit smoking as a condition of employment."
A right is not a requirement. But you seem to interpret it that way.
Bill writes:
"Smokefree employment policies... are probably the most effective financial incentive to help people quit smoking."
Threatening to deprive someone of their livelyhood is not exactly what I would call "incentive". I'd call it "blackmail," or maybe "extortion."
Gang rape and torture policies are probably even more effective. When will these start, Bill? Oh, that's right. Sultan Murad IV tried this in the Ottoman empire.
Regardless, I'll bet you expect those whom you have so insincerely gotten to quit to thank you, out of some twisted Stockholm syndrome type of mentality.
"Thank you, massa Bill, i gets to keep my job! ANything for you massa Bill!"
Ah, Dr. Siegel
I begin to have genuine sympathy for your plight, which has to be something like waking TO a nightmare. Like the Marxist idealists of the 1930s waking up one morning to the Stalin-Hitler pact (if they'd managed to sleep through all his other depridations.) But the fact is, the Movement hasn't suddenly-- or even only recently-- changed its plans or the means by which to achieve them, and the hatred is nothing new. From the get-go it was driven by the nastiness of concepts like "denormalization" and "social isolation" (you can find it in the literature going back about 20 years). Right from its opening moments, it wanted to drive smokers, not just out of public life -- both indoors and out-- but out of their jobs, out of their homes, and out of their rights to remain parents. It had mastered, right from the start, the oldest tricks of the propagandist about arousing hatred and fear as the means to create scapegoats-- to libel and then punish and then eject--and then ultimately erase-- an entire class. And Helena and Pueblo--? doesn't matter about the "science" -- they weren't meant to be good science they were meant to be what they are: good weapons of propaganda. (After all if your heart attack was "caused" by your neighbor's smoke-- instead of your genetics or your Hagen Daz or your stress-- shouldn't you hate and fear your neighbor? That killer? that swine?)
Take a look at the published "Blueprints" of the Movement's organizations going back to the early 90s; take a look at the published Visions of the Anti-Tobacco Commission that was headed by Kessler-Koop. Take a look with your new -- or with your newly opened-- eyes. And then tell me it shouldn't be titled, say, "The Final Solution to the Smoker Problem."
Welcome to the Reality that smokers saw all along.
Well, sir, I'd say the facts have you cornered, as Walt has so eloquently stated. It's time to get off the fence; do you prefer individual liberty, or a smoke-free tyranny?
Hate is the best way to describe it, and I believe Dr.Siegel hit the nail on the head. The other Walt points out the long time coming with the denormalization process.
I would also like to point out how Bill characterizes discrimination and invasion of privacy of off duty smoking as smokefree employment policy when it is really smoker free employment policy.
I believe the hate expressed by some of those in anti-tobacco towards smokers to be a form of transference, as smokers patronize the real target of their hatred.
On the road but still reading in D.C.
Talking about credibility:
As an important indication that we are being taken seriously by our colleagues, we have been invited to give a Symposium entitled “Reassessment of the Long-term Mortality Risks of Active and Passive Smoking” at the 2006 Congress of Epidemiology (http://www.epicongress2006.org). At this Symposium we will present a strong case that the mortality risks of both active and passive smoking are being distorted by ideological and political forces that are dangerous to the scientific integrity of epidemiology. In addition, we will argue that the unethical tactics used by the ACS and others, including ad hominem attacks and condemnation of legitimate research based solely on the source of funding, have no place in scientific discourse.
Enstrom & Kabat in a new submission to the Rapid Responses section of their 2003 paper on the relation between ETS and lung cancer/CHD.
Thanks Wiel. The link you included contains some interesting references, such as: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...18/
nsmoke18.xml
I haven't seen anti-smoking advocacy for any initiative that even vaguely resembles a reasonable approach to improving public health, on the tobacco control front. (eg: making the importation, manufacturing and sale of all tobacco or nicotine-inclusive products ILLEGAL).
Quite frankly, once "public health" mandates broke free of their former restrictions as imposed by allowances for their intervention into matters regarding communicable diseases ONLY, public health swiftly became the umbrella for activists and social engineers wishing to control the conventional wisdom and all independent, individual choice regarding vaguely-defined and ever-broadening issues pertaining to what most would call "social justice".
As such, it was inevitable that achieving the desired absolute conformity to the collective will of their power-sharing activists and elected puppets would require the progressive, but incremental, elimination of all individual responsibility and hence the most essential and formerly universal individual rights.
Here is how the majority of so-called "municipal" smoking bans, that have been fraudulently imposed for enforcement within recently re-defined "workplaces" and "public places", actually work to publicly, collectively and punitively regulate all privately-owned property, its owners and all occupants on an individual basis:
You could be fined if you allow anyone (including yourself) to smoke tobacco within your private residence or property of any type:
- Your private residence and/or other property could be defined as a “workplace” with “employee[s]” present and you could then be defined as an “employer” because: You receive in-home support or services of any kind performed by one or more non-family member people (whether they are paid or unpaid) - nursing care, meal deliveries, disability-related support or assistance, home improvements, education or training, child care, counselling, etc…; You own and/or operate a home-based business of any kind (whether any customers ever enter the premises or not, now that the owner can be defined as an employee simultaneously, in contradiction to taxation laws...
- Your private residence and/or other property could alternately (or even additionally!) be defined as a “public place” because: One or more non-family-related people enter your residence or other property - at their choice or yours):
- Parties, functions, events, meetings, bible studies, club meetings, anyone drops into your home to visit you, pick something up or drop something off, in-home gatherings of any kind that are publicized by word of mouth, beyond the property owners' control, or otherwise …
Property Rights, Free-market Enterprise and The Family (and all other voluntary "contracts" undertaken and initiated between individuals that are virtually reliant upon gov't-independent exercising of individual decision-making authority) can thus be attacked and ultimately regulated by collectively-empowered tyrants, supposedly on behalf of the "greater public good" interest, simultaneously.
There IS a name for the concept enabling all this, but I don't care to repeat it, nor should that be necessary to enlighten anyone with a brain still capable of exercising independent thought...
Does anyone recall any other similar initiative that has been capable of striking terror into the hearts of families struggling to care for their most vulnerable (ie: children, elderly and/or disabled) family members at home... AND struggling to retain decision-making authority on behalf of their incapable dependents (at the same time their private businesses supporting their entire families may be coming under attack at the same time/)? One must not forget about all those families with a smoking member or smoking family asistant who smokes, now faced with allowances for prosecution both in their commercial AND home "workplaces"??
May God protect and keep the historically-noteworthy mothers and 'natural' protectors of our most vulnerable as the collective nannies wishing to displace such are increasingly funded and empowered by draconian tyrants in public office.... looks like nobody else will be able or willing to protect their requirement for authority, in a smoke-free society defiant of "spontaneous natural order".
Best expect the "mental health" activists' role and regulatory empowerment within the anti-smoker lobby to expand shortly?
Here is one place you can look for hate spewed. Taking the battle of tobacco to a personal level for the exec. of tobacco, ad agencies, anyone who has anything to do with tobacco.
News analysis Section of the Tobacco Control 2006;15:6
Sweden: cockroach of the year
by David Simpson
Yet this is in a supposedly highly regarded medical journal?
Here's a small quote "often they are in the USA and feature the word "Butt"—but the "Cockroach of the year" award was new to many when it scuttled into the limelight recently."
Too bad that they must make it a personal fight rather then based on the real science, like their journal is said to contain. After all what does a cockroach have to do with tobacco or science? It's the image and negative connotation they are after, therefore proving personal not medical or even scientific.
In Canada the Tobacco.org site right now has the article written by a the biggest hate speaker, and foul mouthed extremists out there. Airspace, out of BC Canada, an organization that has spewed this hate across Canada. They thought it appropriate that they have the Grim Reaper at the Hearings on provincial tobacco control legislation.
This wouldn't make much controversy, except for one factor. The hearings were the same day (and building) that tobacco farmers were negotiating the "buyouts" for the next years crops. Now imagine while the same building as the allotment of crops for farmers was happening the grim reaper is at the steps where you are walking out of , and into the building. Yet this organization found it appropriate that the ending of their living, and badly compensated for those last years, that the grim reaper character show up. Is it no wonder that many of the
farmers this fall were committing suicide , after this sanctioned Non Government Organization approved this type of "marketing campaign"? The grim reaper was really an Airspace representative under that costume.
I get a good laugh every time advocates of cigarette smoking (America's deadliest killer) claim to be concerned about sound science and public health.
It gets even funnier when they accuse smokefree advocates of being Nazis, Stalinists, Communists, McCarthyists, tyrants, jihadists, terrorists and other silly terms.
Interesting response Bill, but I notice that you don't actually say anything about the science, methods used, or irrationality of the anti-smoking crowd, just as you can't actually refute the science, you take one of two obvious courses, disparage the poster/speaker, or claim that its a joke, without ever actually answering any questions nor backing any claims with any proof that can be disected. BTW, I'm still waiting to hear you explain how it is a "choice"? If a non smoker may look for work in a nonsmoking venue, how is this taking the choice of employment or health, but a smoker may not be allowed any way to support his/her family? and this is still a choice? People are starting to wake up to the depravities the anti smoking cartels will stoop to to have their way, and the backlash will be vicious, you might want to start looking for a hole to hide in now, before the SH** hits the fan, so to speak. I believe that when the public becomes fully aware of the tactics, lies, false data, misleading sound bytes, etc, espoused by the alliances warring on our private lives, they will fight back, it's happened before, history clearly shows you can get away with these tactics for a while, but it will not last, justice will triumph and those who lied to achieve their own vicious ends will be slapped down, yet again.
Jerry, you should already have noticed that everytime Bill is questioned by someone about one of his dubious claims he either:
1) ignores completely the thing and moves on;
2) personally attacks the person who dared to oppose his views;
3) gives sorry excuses (as he's regularly doing with his advocating of social discrimination against smoker)
4) replies to a different question, that has little or nothing to do with what the inquirer asked.
We need to add a #5:
5) tells that what the opposer says is "a joke" or "an absurd claim", without giving any meaningful reasons why what the opposer says should be taken as a joke or an absurd claim.
We could bet on what of those tactics he will use next time he's questioned about one of his claims. My bet is #1 - now he will probably reply to have me lose the bet 
I am saddened to see that you laugh when there's humans dying due to the advocates tactics. Oh sorry I should have said denormalization campaign, right?
How many of those farmers did you save by using the hate inflicted by the grim reaper; while they were knowing they were losing the family farm in the fall??
Here I thought you had a heart, and concern for all the people whether they smoked, or not.
In response to requests for scientific research linking smoking with various characteristics that many employers try to avoid when hiring, the following is an excerpt from a new article "Smoking Comorbidity in Alcoholism: Neurobiological and Neurocognitive
Consequences" published in
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
"Recent neuroimaging studies of chronic smokers have shown brain structural and blood-flow abnormalities," said Dieter J. Meyerhoff, professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, associate researcher at the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center San Francisco, and symposium organizer. "Specific cognitive dysfunction among active chronic smokers has been reported for auditory-verbal learning and memory,
prospective memory, working memory, executive functions, visual search
speeds, psychomotor speed and cognitive flexibility, general intellectual abilities, and balance. We also believe that the adverse effects of smoking, just like drinking, likely take many years to impact brain function significantly, and interact with age to produce a level of dysfunction that is apparent on cognitive tests."
and
Meyerhoff said that, collectively speaking, the research discussed during the symposium may help raise awareness that chronic smoking itself has detrimental effects on the brain and its function. "These effects are
similar to effects that in the past have been attributed solely to the
excessive consumption of alcohol," he said. "As chronic alcohol drinking and
chronic smoking more often than not co-occur, researchers have begun to
realize that the brain effects previously attributed to alcohol drinking alone may in fact be the result of both drinking and smoking. This realization may have consequences for how we look at treatment for alcohol-use disorders."
In this article, Bill; they are talking about the "abuse" of legal products. This is not the norm.
Are you saying that if an employer knows an employee or potential employee uses tobacco, the employer should "assume" he/she abuses both alcohol and tobacco; which then will result in future health problems?
I note how Mr Godshall rejoices at the prospect of Meyerhoff being able to wipe off alcohol damages on smoking. Perhaps we have arrived at the core of tobacco control.
Godshall wrote:
“I get a good laugh every time advocates of cigarette smoking (America's deadliest killer) claim to be concerned about sound science and public health.”
“advocates of cigarette smoking”? What next from him – advocates of junk food?
And this:
“It gets even funnier when they accuse smokefree advocates of being Nazis, Stalinists, Communists, McCarthyists, tyrants, jihadists, terrorists and other silly terms.”
“smokefree advocates”? Dr. Siegel is not only a smokefree advocate, he’s respected. It isn’t “smokefree advocates” we accuse of being fascists et al, it’s fascist-minded people like Godshall who either refuse to – or can’t – recognize the line between advocacy and off-the-wall totalitarian coercion, which marks the difference between free citizens in a free society and coerced citizens in a jackboot society, a police state. Coerce, coerce, coerce: that’s all Godshall knows, or will ever know.
Tricky noted that Bill's responses (or lack thereof at times) could be broken down into four standardized categories.
A Seattle poster over the "The Stranger" message boards did something similar with regard to the Antismokers over there. I believe he outlined 10 "responses" of Antismokers that fit just about everything they had to say. They are outlined in the smokersclubcom.inc newsletter at:
http://www.smokersclubinc.com/mo...rticle&
sid=2424
I'll offer superbrief summaries here but the original should really be read:
1) Don't Debate - Distort!
2)Question begging
3)Spew glib enthusiasm of victory!
4)Insult smokers
5)Make lie accusations while lying.
6)Resistance is Futile! (Bandwagon fallacy)
7&
Mudsling w/ref to Big Tobacco
9)If you lose an argument just pretend you've won
10)Shoot the messenger
11)Just shut up and ignore your opponent's arguments if you can't do any of the above
Melle says it very well in its entirety. Do check out the URL.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Bill tyrannizes others, but doesn't think he's a tyrant.
So he laughs at those who call him what he is.
Then he convinces himself that those who accurately describe him are really the evil ones, because they say such mean things about him.
Bill's a living loop of vanity. Poor thing, he should be institutionalised for his loopiness. It's for our own good!
Speaking of which: when, in a refutation of Godshall, I posted elsewhere on this board (hard to keep track of exactly where the way things are organized) a long post with many citations of studies showing that smokers were better at problem solving, memory and other mental functions than nonsmokers (and speculated that-- therefore-- they might make better employees) said post was (no surprise) completely ignored.
On the tangential subject of How things are organized here, I wonder if we couldn't somehow have more accessible threads, each set off by Dr. Siegel's posts, since some subjects generate ongoing commentary. For instance, in the Comments on an article somewhere down there, (i think the headline was something about ANR changing its tune) Dr. Siegel offered links to articles about AQ and ventilation. I read them and had both comments and questions but fear, that since it's no longer top of the list, they may go unanswered.
If smokers were "better at problem solving, memory and other mental functions than nonsmokers" why are smokers much less likely than nonsmokers to graduate from high school, college and graduate school?
The folks at FORCES only tout cigarette industry funded research and a few other studies that didn't find health risks due to smoking, while repeatedly criticizing the overwhelming majority of research that find health risks due to smoking.
Even if everyone of Bill's falsehoods were true, he's still doesn't live up to the responsibilities of an American citizen:
Realize that values are individual, and leave everyone else alone!
The philosophy promoted by Bill and millions of others is dangerous, destructive, and just plain wrong.
Bill wrote:
"The folks at FORCES only tout cigarette industry funded research and a few other studies that didn't find health risks due to smoking blah blah blah"
Rule #2 at work (or #10 in Mike's list).
PS. Mike, i read the thing. Great! Had 2 minutes of good laughters. Thanx for the link!
@Walt:
I agree with you that the blog format doesn't work that well anymore if the discussions start to be a bit complex, like this blog. Also, compared to most blogs, there is important and interesting information here that needs a good organization structure to be used as reference. The blog format is ok for fast and superficial discussions where the news gets old very quickly.
I think that a searchable forum format would be better to keep track of messages and would provide more insight in the issues at hand here.
Hey Bill--
I am not a "folk at forces," and the studies I cited were the product of independent research, with many reported in The New York Times and then later tracked to source. Though of course the NYT is a well-known tobacco industry front-- as is every researcher who doesn't toe your line.
Why don't you hunt up that post of mine and deal with the actual facts and citations? Could it be because you can't?
I apologize about the blog format not supporting easily accessible threads. One helpful addition will be when Haloscan is able to list more than just the 10 most recent comments. That upgrade is expected soon, and I will get it as soon as it comes out.
Bill wrote:
"If smokers were "better at problem solving, memory and other mental functions than nonsmokers" why are smokers much less likely than nonsmokers to graduate from high school, college and graduate school?"
Could it be that smoking is more popular among ethnical minorities and people with a low income than among the middle and upper classes, and that lower income people are less likely to graduate for a bunch of social and economical reason that are completely unrelated to smoking?
Where is the proof that smokers are generally less likely to achieve academic success? Or that smokers are the most economically disadvantaged in society (another claim I hear over and over again)?
All of my friends are college graduates with good jobs. About one in four of them smoke. None are poor. I notice roughly the same ratios (smokers to non-smokers) at work, in restaurants, at my neighborhood clubhouse, at all our favorite marinas, etc. What I don't find in all these places are high school drop-outs or poor people.
It may well be that certain groups of people (prison inmates, ghetto dwellers, drop-outs, etc.) smoke in larger than average percentages, but the sole fact that these people smoke can't be the single reason for their unfortunate circumstances. If it were, then I, along with roughly a quarter of the people I see anywhere I go, wouldn't be at the other end of the economic spectrum.
I think tR1cKy is on the mark. The reason that smokers are more likely to be less educated is not that smoking makes them less likely to achieve academically, it's simply that smoking tends to be more prevalent among people with lower levels of education. Education level is, in fact, one of the strongest predictors of smoking.
It doesn't really matter to employers and many others whether smoking causes educational deficiency, other drug addictions and social deviance, or whether educational deficiency, other drug addictions and social deviance causes smoking.
The fact that smoking is highly corrolated with these characteristics (in addition to smoke pollution and many deadly diseases, which are clearly caused by smoking) is sufficient grounds for employers and others to reduce those undesirable risks by reducing smoking.
To sum it up:
Bill: smoking causes A, B, C and D.
tR1cKy: my impression is that a low income causes A, B, C and D. And smoking is more popular in the low income class, thus smoking isn't the culprit.
Doc: right, smoking doesn't cause A, B, C and D. It's poor income that causes those things, and smoking is more popular in the low income class. So smoking is an indicator, and not a cause.
Bill: it doesn't matter if smoking causes A, B, C and D or not. I am right and you are wrong.
"The fact that smoking is highly corrolated with these characteristics (in addition to smoke pollution and many deadly diseases, which are clearly caused by smoking) is sufficient grounds for employers and others to reduce those undesirable risks by reducing smoking"
I don't know how you can say this. Do you really believe that Corporate America can afford to eliminate 25%-30% of its workforce for any reason under the sun - much less for smoking on one's own time in one's own home? Do you think all but a lucky few (smokers) are too uneducated and non-productive to be employed anyway, and hence, their elimination from the workforce would be hardly noticed anyway? Please get real. We can't even keep a million illegal aliens a year from finding work here. The laws of supply and demand are just not in your favor on this one.
That is, we can't keep a million or so NEW illegal workers from finding work here each year (even if they all must smoke - being poor minorities n'all).
Many employers also don't hire marijuana smokers, and fire those employees who test positive for marijuana during random drug tests.
But that hasn't resulted in the elimination of marijuana smokers from the workforce.
Rather, the result has been that many marijuana smokers simply quit smoking, while other marijuana smokers choose to not apply for jobs with those employers.
Bill, you still haven't explained how the choice between working or "health" is a valid argument for non smokers, but not for smokers, since non smokers still have the "right" to apply for a job at many places that have chosen to go smoke free instead of "endangering" themselves at a smoking establishment, why do smokers have no right to make a choice? You and your allies have repeatedly said this is about the rights of non smokers to breathe clean air, yet they still have that right, why is this an acceptable policy to deny those who choose to take the risk a valid chance to earn a living? and why is it not being enforced for all others who engage in "risky" behaviour or activities? surely those who engage in sports/athletics outside of the workplace cost those who do not much more in health care costs. surley those who engage in such activities as skydiving, rock climbing, mountain biking, skateboarding etc, etc, ad nauseum, cost society much more for their health care than those who do not, so why is it ok to discriminate against this one group as opposed to the others, or is this again, just another fallacy concocted by blind ravenous fanatics?
Bill wrote:
"Many employers also don't hire marijuana smokers, and fire those employees who test positive for marijuana during random drug tests."
Ahem... could it be that marijuana, apart from being illegal, is intoxicating too, and enough to give various reasons (first of all, security concerns) to keep away stoned people from certain jobs?
Considering that commonly used urinalysis tests can detect marijuana usage that occurred more than a month prior, I don't think tR1cKy's argument has merit, as marijuana intoxation doesn't last more than a hour or so.
Bill, tR1cKy's argument was that there are legitimate and valid reasons for banning the use of marijuana and firing those who do use it in certain professions such as those requiring security clearances because marijuana use in itself reflects lower levels of respect for authority (since it is illegal) and it also lowers inhibitions which could both increase risk of security compromises.
There are no such concerns associated with tobacco use.
Bill wrote:
"Considering that commonly used urinalysis tests can detect marijuana usage that occurred more than a month prior, I don't think tR1cKy's argument has merit, as marijuana intoxation doesn't last more than a hour or so."
At least you took some time to respond to one of my objections. Probably next time you will be able to give a meaningful reply too. Now, if you REALLY mean it, tell me that you wouldn't find any problem in taking a plane knowing that the pilot, although it seems perfectly sane now, was caught positive at last month's drug test.
Now, what about the smuggling problem and the MSA thing? Just in case...
Frank: thanks, but i don't think that his misinterpretation was by accident.
It is irrational and inconsistent to support employer discrimination against those who smoke marijuana, while adamantly opposing employer discrimination against those who smoke cigarettes (which kills 418,000 Americans annually).
Nothing like defending the deadliest drug addiction, while opposing the use of a drug that is far less hazardous.
So, the simple answer is to outlaw tobacco, and legalize marijuana, is that what your saying bill? Are you honestly going to tell us that Marijuana, smoked in a "public" setting is less harmful to those around the smoker than tobacco? Sign me up, I'll gladly trade my tobacco addiction for marijuana, or as a lot of marijuana users do now, smoke Marijuana to hide the smell of the tobacco smoke, LOL, that would be funny, as I know for a fact it is done with tobacco now to help cover the unique odor of Marijuana. BTW, how about incense Bill? Is this also to be prohibited in all public places and oudoors as well?
Also, when are you going to answer my question about why its a valid "choice" for a non smoker to have to choose between their health and a job, but not for a smoker to have the same choice, regardless of whether the tobacco is consumed on the premesis, or at home, on the smokers own time, not the company they work for?
"(which kills 418,000 Americans annually)."
Are you saying that they wouldn't die otherwise? Eternal life in non-smoker's heaven?
First of all, Bill, I do not adamantly oppose discrimination against smokers in employement matters any more than I would oppose similar discrimination against non-smokers. I've told many anti-smokers as well as Dr Siegel a number of times such as in this post that I don't care if a company thinks it can arbitrarily discriminate against 30% of the workforce and expect to remain competitive. We've already seen how the city of North Miami and CNN have both quietly dropped their discrimination against hiring smokers as shown in the CBS 60 Minutes story, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, broadcast back in Oct.
You appear to be the irrational and inconsistent one in your advocating discrimination against smokers, yet you also advocate smoking bans for non-smoking workers who you claim shouldn't have to make a choice between their health and a job. Why cannot bar owners simply refuse to hire non-smokers when you claim there is no right to employment?
And as far as your claims that marijuana is far less hazardous, I'm sure you wouldn't think twice about having an airline pilot of a flight you are taking sitting in the cockpit toking on a joint rather than a cigarette. Your arguments are simply so bizarre.
Frank Koza inquired:
"Why cannot bar owners simply refuse to hire non-smokers when you claim there is no right to employment?"
They can do so legally, except in states that have enacted laws prohibiting employment discrimination against nonsmokers.
Frank Koza also wrote:
"And as far as your claims that marijuana is far less hazardous, I'm sure you wouldn't think twice about having an airline pilot of a flight you are taking sitting in the cockpit toking on a joint rather than a cigarette."
You misunderstood my statements on this issue, as my comparisons of smoking marijuana vs cigarettes only applied to off-the-job use of those products.
The subject of this thread is employer policies that prohibit off-the-job cigarette smoking, while I compared and contrasted those policies with employer policies that prohibit off-the-job marijuana use.
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