Michael,
Did you get my download link? I wasn't sure of your email address.
_
Michael, your opinion that one study can discount another is precious.
What credibility can we find in either? considering the source and the limited scope of the methodology?
Is one or the other brand of propaganda more effective in warding off evil spirits and dragons?
Which would you recommend to line the bird cage, with the lowest risk of stressing out the bird?
A little background
Hormone relacement therapy
"The arrogance of preventive medicine
Preventive medicine displays all 3 elements of arrogance. First, it is aggressively assertive, pursuing symptomless individuals and telling them what they must do to remain healthy. Occasionally invoking the force of law (immunizations, seat belts), it prescribes and proscribes for both individual patients and the general citizenry of every age and stage. Second, preventive medicine is presumptuous, confident that the interventions it espouses will, on average, do more good than harm to those who accept and adhere to them. Finally, preventive medicine is overbearing, attacking those who question the value of its recommendations"
"But surely the fundamental promise we make when we actively solicit individuals and exhort them to accept preventive interventions must be that, on average, they will be the better for it.2 Accordingly, the presumption that justifies the aggressive assertiveness with which we go after the unsuspecting healthy must be based on the highest level of randomized evidence that our preventive manoeuvre will, in fact, do more good than harm. Without evidence from positive randomized trials (and, better still, systematic reviews of randomized trials) we cannot justify soliciting the well to accept any personal health intervention. There are simply too many examples of the disastrous inadequacy of lesser evidence as a basis for individual interventions among the well: supplemental oxygen for healthy premies (causing retrolental fibroplasia), healthy babies sleeping face down (causing SIDS), thymic irradiation in healthy children, and the list goes on.
To this sad list we must now add estrogen plus progestin when given to healthy postmenopausal women under the presumption that they will be protected against cardiovascular disease. The Women's Health Initiative randomized controlled trial, as reported in the July 17 issue of JAMA,3 was stopped when it became clear that the participating women's risk of cardiovascular disease went up, not down, on active therapy. This damage began to develop soon after randomization, and after a mean follow-up of 5.2 years the trial was stopped for harm. In human terms, the 8506 women treated with estrogen plus progestin had about 40 more coronary events, 40 more strokes, 80 more episodes of venous thromboembolism and 40 more invasive breast cancers than the 8102 women assigned to placebo. Given the frequency with which this treatment is prescribed to postmenopausal women worldwide, hundreds of thousands of healthy women have been harmed"
"What about the villains? Who is to blame for the widespread application of this and the other harmful "preventive" interventions that cause disability and untimely death? I suggest that we not waste time blaming the manufacturers of "preventive" drugs and devices, for they are pursuing profit, not health, and anyone who looks to their print advertisements and television spots for health guidance arguably deserves whatever harm comes to them (according to the New York Times4 the company that supplied the study drug has already sent 500 000 "Dear Doctor" letters stressing the symptomatic benefits of their combination). Nor, I suggest, should we blame "demanding" patients who insist on receiving some bogus preventive intervention of unknown efficacy, for they are simply doing their best to improve their lives in an "evidence-vacuum."
I place the blame directly on the medical "experts" who, to gain private profit (from their industry affiliations), to satisfy a narcissistic need for public acclaim or in a misguided attempt to do good, advocate "preventive" manoeuvres that have never been validated in rigorous randomized trials. Not only do they abuse their positions by advocating unproven "preventives," they also stifle dissent"
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/f.../full/167/4/
363
This study can of course only explain the drop in cardiovascular disease among women. It would be interesting to see a plot of trends separated by gender.
If as Vincent describes it, the "front to back" reasoning, seen in the cult of public health and preventative medicine by predictive estimates, were all put aside, for even an instant, a more realistic theory would be allowed to emerge; That nicotine is not an addictive substance which incites smokers to smoke, or a substance which keeps them smoking, but a limiter which stops them from smoking too much.
The effect is more in some and less in others resulting in the three pack a day smoker only rarely. As we see in most chemical exposures, dose response. Less is comfortable too much is not
The reason smoking patches are not seen to be addictive, although they do exhibit the symptoms of nicotine poisoning, and aside from the difference in delivery and the product of burning, the reality should be obvious to anyone who knows how to diagnose and treat any form of poisoning.
The biological certainty that if you smoke more than normal you start to feel sick is the opposite of what you would expect from an addiction. The truth of the situation would be easy to confirm, however the experts would be remiss to have to back peddle once again and admit their mistakes realizing a mistake carried forth for well over 40 years.
If nicotine was increased in cigarettes there is little doubt in my mind people would smoke a lot less not more as is popularly believed among the medically biased elite.
TC has been at the mercy of Tobacco Industry science and Brier Rabbit technology for all these years and still haven't the sense to admit when they have been duped. The heart attack increase was earned as the benefit for allowing drug companies to test their own products.
Public Health have done everything in their power to control our environment through "preventative medicine" except the due diligence basics, which would include verifying their sources and weighing their own advice.
Michael,
Concerning use/non-use of HRT, fair enough. It just adds another to a very long list (hundreds) of risk factors in heart attacks. If we refer to it as a statistical association, fine. If we start using causal terms such as ‘contributed to’ or ‘the reason for’ or ‘increased’ or ‘decreased’, we are going far beyond the implications of the immediate data, especially at the low relative-risk differences involved (and very-low absolute predictive strength). We would at least have to recognize the need to partition the large number of confounders as a point of coherent procedure. The use of causal terms, particularly in lifestyle epidemiology, is astoundingly delinquent.
Concerning your reference to Helena, Pueblo, etc, and smoking bans, I thought you put that to rest in your April 09 (of this year) comment referring to another RAND study. The large, national-level, RAND study indicated that, concerning smoking bans, there were as many regional centers showing an increase as a decrease in heart attacks from pre to post ban, and in extent. What is disturbing here is that 4/4 (Helena et al. studies) published studies for regional data all supported the antismoking position. Why weren’t even one or two of these regional studies showing an increase in heart attacks following the ban, given that they were equally represented nationally? Why wasn’t a national study initially pursued, rather than regional centers? It seems as though the Globalink network looked for regional data, one at a time, that supported their ‘position’, and progressively published those only. In scientific terms, this sort of conduct is utterly corrupt. If memory serves me correctly, there was another regional ‘study’ published a week or so following the RAND study which, again, showed a working-to-a-conclusion decrease in heart attacks following smoking bans (i.e., 5 out of 5 studies all showing a decrease in MI). This is a terrible state of affairs. Even worse (if that were possible), the decreases were immediately interpreted by TC as due entirely (causal) to smoking bans, with not even the concept of confounders, possible methodological issues, or the incredibly low predictive strength of all risk factors for MI considered.
Let’s use some TC ‘logic’. If the current RAND study (concerning HRT) was partitioned from the earlier RAND study, then, overall, there was an increase in MIs following smoking bans. If we then immediately rush to causal attribution, we could claim that no smoking bans are better for heart health or delay MIs (i.e., protective). I don’t see TC rushing out to make this claim. And, yet it is as ‘good’ as any of its ‘arguments’.
Population-level statistics with poor application at the individual level can be highly deceptive. The way they are typically used by lifestyle epidemiology is highly deceptive. Between lifestyle epidemiology, public health and TC, scientific enquiry has been reduced to a dangerous farce, an assault on at least psychological, social, and moral health.
_
Rick
This appears to be the start of the heart attack theory proper
"Heart disease was another focus and was not infrequently said to be the most serious illness brought on by smoking.(24) Late in the war nicotine was suspected as a cause of the coronary heart failure suffered by a surprising number of soldiers on the eastern front.
A 1944 report by an army field pathologist found that all 32 young soldiers whom he had examined after death from heart attack on the front had been "enthusiastic smokers."
The author cited the Freiburg pathologist Franz Buchner's view that cigarettes should be considered "a coronary poison of the first order"
http://www.bmj.com/archive/7070nd2.htm
"Many of the Wehrmacht's soldiers were high on Pervitin when they went into battle, especially against Poland and France -- in a Blitzkrieg fueled by speed. The German military was supplied with millions of methamphetamine tablets during the first half of 1940.
The drugs were part of a plan to help pilots, sailors and infantry troops become capable of superhuman performance. The military leadership liberally dispensed such stimulants, but also alcohol and opiates, as long as it believed drugging and intoxicating troops could help it achieve victory over the Allies.
But the Nazis were less than diligent in monitoring side-effects"
http://www.spiegel.de/
internatio...,354606,00.html
"Cocaine or amphetamine abuse can cause a sudden heart attack. This can happen in persons with no signs of heart disease"
http://www.aipm.net/demo/p387-38...rt%
20Attack.htm
Perhaps another case of Blame the Victim for public consumption.
Especially as the tobacco ration for soldiers was supposedly only 6 cigarettes per day.
Another one bites the dust...in the world of TC, disagreeing is a very dangerous thing. Dr. Siegel, you should contact Tony and see if you could get together and commiserate your loss of places at the table. It's always a good thing though to piss off ASH.
Tony Abbott's smoking comment draws fireJuly 03, 2009
Article from: The Australian
FEDERAL Coalition frontbencher Tony Abbott has accused NSW of being a nanny state for banning smoking in cars in the presence of children.
The former federal health minister attracted harsh criticism yesterday after telling a public health debate at Sydney University that smoking in front of children was a "trivial issue".
Detractors pointed to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations received by the Liberal Party from tobacco companies each year.
Mr Abbott said there were worse crimes as far as parenting were concerned. "I was a child that was regularly imprisoned in a car with heavy smokers ... My parents both smoked heavily when I was a kid. Now has it done me any harm?
"You be the judge ... maybe I would have been six foot six and I would have had much greater intelligence, who knows?"
Brad Pedersen, founder of the not-for-profit group Democracy Watch -- Australians For Political Funding Reforms, said the passive smoke may have affected Mr Abbott's brain development.
"How else can we explain his lack of logic on this issue. His cognitive facilities are in complete disarray. Or is it just a smokescreen?" Mr Pedersen said.
"Either he has brain damage or the political donations from the tobacco industry are affecting his judgment."
Mr Pedersen said unlike Labor, which ruled out donations from tobacco companies, Liberal politicians had continued "a pattern of soft comments" in supporting the industry.
"It is no wonder that Mr Abbott promotes such irrational and reckless thinking when it comes to tobacco. This is unacceptable from a former federal minister for health."
Australian Electoral Commission records show tobacco companies British American Tobacco Australia and Philip Morris Limited donated at least $220,000 to state Liberal Party offices last financial year.
Anne Jones, of Action on Smoking and Health, a lobby group funded by the Cancer Council and the Heart Foundation, said Mr Abbott was "out of touch". Ms Jones, who attended the debate, said she was thankful he was no longer health minister.
"For us, because of the evidence on the need to protect children from second-hand smoke, it is very similar to having seat belts in cars and banning people from drinking and driving. It was pretty disappointing from someone who is such a powerful, influential person."
Mr Abbott stopped short of endorsing smoking, saying he "wouldn't do it" and added that in hindsight he would have preferred not to be exposed to the second-hand smoke.
Who supplied those 6 cigarettes?
Prof. George Davey Smith’s interesting article “Lifestyle, health, and health promotion in Nazi Germany” (BMJ 2004; 329: 1424-1425) makes much of the opposition of some nazi leaders and party institutions to alcohol and tobacco.
However, I feel that Prof. Smith paints a picture which is too black-and-white and misses much of nazi hypocrisy surrounding tobacco and alcohol consumption – a subject which arose incidentally during research for my recently published study of Hitler’s personal finances. (Hitler’s Fortune. Barnsley, 2004, Leo Cooper.)
While I would not disagree with Prof. Smith that there was ‘much antismoking health promotion in Nazi Germany’ – certainly when compared to Britain and the USA – it is a fact that Göring and Hitler both benefited directly from a close association with the German tobacco industry, especially the companies controlled by Philipp Reemtsma.
Indeed, there is circumstantial evidence that Hitler accepted a bribe from Reemtsma to allow the latter’s products to be advertised in the Völkischer Beobachter, the official party newspaper whose profits went into Hitler’s pockets.
The SA certainly mounted a campaign against Reemtsma and his tobacco products – but not for any health reasons, rather to promote sales of their own brands of cigarettes, profits from which went to keep the SA leaders in the style to which they felt they were entitled.
The Hitler Youth certainly campaigned against smoking – and then issued cigarette cards depicting German military might through Cigarette-Bilderdienst Dresden AS, and similar companies, and there are no prizes for guessing where the profits ended up.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/...7480/
1424#90605
RickDP,
Thanks for the link. I'm reading now, and finding it fascinating.
Per Kevin, I think citing RickDP, "nicotine is not an addictive substance ... but a limiter which stops them from smoking too much."
I am unaware of anyone, anywhere, ever being treated for a tobacco overdose. I'm not sure that there is even a protocol for dealing with it if it were ever to occur.
This line of reasoning needs to be given more weight in light of the new regulation of tobacco by the FDA. Cigarettes have been widely consumed for about a century and given that tobacco consumption is a self regulated, self limiting, activity it can be safely concluded that self regulation has withstood the test of time.
If someone were to inhale nothing but oxygen free smoke from 1 cigarette, for the 4 or 5 minutes the cigarette might last, they would pass out about half way through the experiment. I am unaware of anyone ever passing out from tobacco consumption.
There may have been a few instances of denormalized anti-smokers passing out at just the sight of someone else consuming tobacco, though.
A new view ... the anti-smoker cartel and their victims, (fans), have denormalized themselves and each other.
Tobacco is FDA approved and insuring the healthcare of millions.®
"A new view ... the anti-smoker cartel and their victims, (fans), have denormalized themselves and each other."
Yes.
Just looking again at an paper I downloaded.
Briefing on the evidence base and ASH Scotland conclusions regarding the definition of smoking materials in the current draft legislation
"With secondhand smoke, the main concerns are exposure to levels of carbon monoxide and respirable particulate matter.
"While air nicotine metabolised as cotinine provides a marker for measuring exposure to tobacco smoke, the nicotine is not present in such quantities as to present health concerns."
So what was all that fuss about nicotine in the air killing nonsmokers then?
And why were log fires and candles exempted?
2. The wider public health aims of the legislation – to denormalise smoking with a view to reducing uptake and to support smokers who are trying to quit – will be best served by a wider definition.
I don't have a link for this it was from another document.
"With secondhand smoke, the main concerns are exposure to levels of carbon monoxide and respirable particulate matter"
So smoke then, nothing special about it after all, just smoke.
I'm really quite stunned
So something "not present in such quantities as to present health concerns" would need tornado force winds to remove it?
Something "not present in such quantities as to present health concerns" killed more people "in 2002 from passive smoking at work in the UK than were killed by the Great London smog of 1952"?
And the catastrophic loss of livelihoods, murders, suicide, social isolation and general human misery for something "not present in such quantities as to present health concerns"?
Rose,
Go figure!
It seems that there should be a yearly international award for ‘the cigarette’. Some smoke the cigarette. Others, whose full-time job is to find new ways to contort statistical information and sensibility, use the cigarette as an ‘explain all’ for disease. It keeps so many people going, one way or another.
There could be a count-down: Each year, it could be checked how close we have come to the cigarette explaining every disease known (and possibly even unknown) to mankind. We shouldn’t even bother ever looking again for any other causes of disease.
This generation is soooo brilliant, able to recognize what numerous generations could not. Rid the world of tobacco, and every disease disappears! (this is very close to Leroy P. ‘unthink’). Wow.
Tobacco can’t be banned, because so many would be shown up as wrong in many claims. Tobacco is convenient. It can be constantly blamed to deflect attention from the use of questionable substances and thinking.
Never has one phenomenon occupied so many people’s attention, albeit mostly for the wrong reasons.
_
Tobacco in the form of both cigarettes and roll ups can not be seen as the main cause of heart attacks in the UK when there are a number of other causes including growing obesity.
Rick that is the reason there should be a new amendment to the constitution pushing for the separation of science and state. The EPA alone has been caught so many times corrupting science to suit their own agenda that the agency should be abolished. The fact that it is a political issue and funded with tax dollars as well as big pharma there is no way for the public to know what is true. Like Reagan said The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'
ES;
"Per Kevin, I think citing RickDP, "nicotine is not an addictive substance ... but a limiter which stops them from smoking too much."
I am unaware of anyone, anywhere, ever being treated for a tobacco overdose. I'm not sure that there is even a protocol for dealing with it if it were ever to occur."
Not citing Rick, but my own analysis. Rose has posted numerous links to descriptions of green tobacco sickness which carry the same description as the symptoms many experience when using smoking patches. Nicotine overdose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Gre...obacco_Sickness
Jarvik misinterpreted smoking effects when designing the nicotine patch, by the use of a single cigarette in his lifetime. The first one is always the most potent, even after quitting for a short time. A seasoned smoker would likely have informed him of this error in judgment, unfortunately like many of the Public Health "experts" he likely felt it below himself to ask.
This article could be a barrel of laughs; They want to know what you think about FDA regulations, what a novel idea?
"The Food and Drug Administration wants your input on its newfound authority for regulating tobacco products.
The public has until Sept. 29 to offer opinion on how the agency should implement the new law and share comments about the use of tobacco or anything else that is pertinent.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed by President Obama last week, gives the FDA power to ban candy-flavored and fruit-flavored cigarettes, which are considered appealing to first-time smokers. The act also bans tobacco companies from using terms such as "low tar," "light" or "mild," requires larger warning labels on packages and further limits tobacco advertising.
The public can comment online here until Sept. 29"
Story link;
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/
i..._tobacco_l.html
The FDA link;
http://www.regulations.gov/
fdmsp...9000064809e74eb
Have fun, I know I will...
Smoking kills 400,000?
How many die due to smoking related diseases attributed to Altera's other product lines?
It seems the potential risk in total should dwarf any measure of damages done by smoking.
There are five times as many expossed!!!
What about that Michael?
Any numbers you can provide?
And TS promotes only cigarette taxes? How about leveling the playing field and impose a PM tax, so everyone can share the child healthcare burden.
Tax the Vienna fingers.
Its only fair.
Pat Karney is having apoplexy in Manchester.
Smokers must not be seen in public. Perhaps this display of blatant intolerance, bigotry and petulance will make a few more people realise the dangerous absurdity of the anti-smoker crusade.
http://
www.manchestereveningnews..._smokers_parade
GreatScot
Rick
What got me most when I read that, was that throughout all this misinformed ranting about the "deadly addictive drug" nicotine, I credited them with at least the sincerity to believe what they were saying!
Now its clear that they believe it no more than I do.
GreatScot
So I see
Look what I found when I was looking for something else
The Editor
Letters page
The Publican
7th June 1999
Dear Editor
Re: smoking in pubs
It is true that the Health and Safety Executive is developing a new Approved Code of Practice to deal with passive smoking in the workplace (Pubs face new smoking bans, Code is a blow, 7th June 1999). All the ACOP will do is provide meaningful guidance on how the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) should be applied to tobacco smoke in the workplace. This law already exists and has no exemptions for the hospitality industry. The ACOP will clarify the law and help publicans comply with it.
A new ACOP would not mean that all smoking must be banned in pubs. The heart of the law is that employers have an obligation to do what is reasonably practicable to reduce their employees' exposure. That could include segregation,ventilation, banning smoking at the bar or other measures. It also means the 'do nothing and ignore it' approach is not an option. The best approach for any pub is to wholeheartedly embrace the Charter agreed by the Government and trade bodies such as ALMR and BII and to do what is reasonable and practical to protect their employees. That is good professional business, and it should not be a cause for alarm, despair or resistence.
Yours sincerely,
Clive Bates
http://www.ash.org.uk/ash_xifsk91p.htm
10 years later smoking is banned in pubs and they are shutting at, did they say 50 now? Per week.
It reminds you of Chamberlain "I have a piece of paper"
From The HSE document
14 The evidential link between individual circumstances of exposure to risk in exempted premises will be hard to establish
http://freedom2choose.info/news_...ewer.php?
id=496
From ASH
"While air nicotine metabolised as cotinine provides a marker for measuring exposure to tobacco smoke, the nicotine is not present in such quantities as to present health concerns."
www.ashscotland.org.uk/ash/files/non-
tobaccosmokingmaterials.doc
ASH Political Bulletin 2004 Page7
Letter to the Publican
"We all need to be forwarned that the next growth area for the legal system will be prosecutions of publicans for not protecting staff from the dangers of ETS.Since April 27 cases have been taken on - this is the start of a tidal wave - in my view"
...
Thompson's Solicitors Smoking Workplace Hotline
"Since the last political bulletin, ASH and Thompsons have launched their new hotline through a leaflet called "secondhand smoker?"
It is aimed at people who don't smoke themselves but are suffering from ill health due to exposure from tobacco smoke pollution at work.
Thompsons and ASH have been very pleased at the response so far."
http://www.ash.org.uk/files/docu...nts/
ASH_405.pdf
Any chance of an explanation?
From Rose's citation: "The heart of the law is that employers have an obligation to do what is reasonably practicable to reduce their employees' exposure."
The words are wrong, but they sound good: "to reduce their employees' exposure"
Complying with acceptable limits does not necessarily mean that exposure has to be reduced - because it is already at a low level. Measurements taken at various hospitality venues throughout the world are sufficient evidence for the fact that exposures are consistently significantly below permissible levels as defined in international standards, for any workplace.
Original
Passive smokers inhale six cigarettes a year
"PASSIVE smokers inhale the equivalent of just six cigarettes a year from other people's smoke, according to the largest ever study of actual exposure levels of non-smokers."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlC...16/
nsmok16.html
Now unavailable
Passive smokers inhale six cigarettes a year
The figure, which undermines previous warnings about the dangers of passive smoking, is a thousand times lower than that faced by direct smokers, and so tiny that it could not be measured statistically. Results from personal air monitors carried by more that 1,000 people in cities across Europe reveal that even the most highly-exposed passive smoker inhales the equivalent of 0.02 of a cigarette a day - 10 times lower than Government-backed estimates
" The findings, published by an internationally respected UK-based team of air monitoring experts, are the biggest blow yet to the credibility of the Government's insistence that passive smoking causes fatal diseases"
"Dr Phillips said he had encountered considerable reluctance by some scientists even to consider the new evidence.
He said: "They try to dismiss it by arguing that our research receives support from . . . the tobacco industry.
http://www.forces.org/evidence/f...es/
passmok2.htm
"This is in response to Mike Daube and Fenton Howell's request for background on the Covance laboratories study into non-smokers' exposure to ETS. This was reported in the Sunday Telegraph of 16 August 1998 and picked up around the world"
"The study was undertaken by Covance Labs of Harrogate, UK and the client was the Centre for Indoor Air Research of the US. We know the CIAR is a tobacco industry front - so this is tobacco funded research"
"The research is at sharp variance with more direct measurements of the body's exposure to ETS - which are in the form of measurements of the breakdown products of nicotine (cotinine) in the blood or saliva. There is a summary in the 1993 US-EPA report on passive smoking: 3.3.2 Biomarkers of ETS Exposure"
"These are the fingerprints of tobacco industry propoganda."
http://www.globalink.org/tobacco...s/
Covence.shtml
Exposures to second-hand smoke lower than believed, ORNL study finds
"The study, which involved 173 people employed at restaurants or taverns of varying sizes in the Knoxville area, concluded that exposures to respirable suspended particulate matter (RSP), for example, were considerably below limits established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for the workplace."
http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_r...r=mr20000203-
00
Rose,
The newest figure is 53 + closing per week.
For no good reason.
As a reminder:
2005-2 closures per week.
2006-4 closures per week.
2007-31 closures per week (wonder what happened in 2007?)
2008-40 closures per week.
2009-53 closures per week.
Oh yes, smoker bans are a HUGE success.
Still, the 100,000 people the government "protected" are probably thankful. As they sit at home on welfare and wonder what happened to the sudden rush of new non-smoking customers that would fill the pubs to the gunwhales.
No doubt the 5,000 plus ex-business owners are overjoyed too....
Remember Rose,Thompson solicitor's are the ambulance chasers who presented the McTear case.Along with FAG oopps ASH,they were touting for business.Contrary to whatever the ranti brigade spout,the McTear case was kicked TOTALLY into touch,though they always try to suggest that it wasn't .If the case had been presented in the US,the result would have gone against Imperial,because personal choice and personal decision making count for sweet FA.
Anyone who has ever had any dealings with the HSE will know that they are nothing but wind,and a total waste of space.The ACOP on passive smoking caused my senior management to have kittens,and who immediately set about panicking over the "risk" of being sued.I took great delight in helping to kick it all into touch.It was the tip of the iceberg though,working conditions ,far from getting better,started on a slow downhill roll to the crap we are at nowadays,frightened to breath in this subculture of litigation .I believe Guido Fawkes had the right idea.
How can they sue anyone?
"While air nicotine metabolised as cotinine provides a marker for measuring exposure to tobacco smoke, the nicotine is not present in such quantities as to present health concerns."
It seems to have been one huge bluff, relying on general ignorance and a trusting public.
Swarm effect
"We created a coalition around our key messages. A smoke-free steering group was set up involving major health and medical organisations in alliance with the Trades Union Congress, individual politicians, local government officers and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. They ran their own effective campaigns, but remained committed to an agreed strategy originally drafted by Ash. Networks of campaigners can be provided with key resources and a sense of direction without ever being told what to do. It's called the "swarm effect".
Confidence trick
It is essential that campaigners create the impression of inevitable success. Campaigning of this kind is literally a confidence trick: the appearance of confidence both creates confidence and demoralises the opposition. The week before the free vote we made sure the government got the message that we "knew" we were going to win and it would be better for them to be on the winning side"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
societ...lthandwellbeing
Madoff got 150 years didn't he?
From Rose's last article link:
When Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) started campaigning for smoke-free legislation in 2003, we were told by politicians, civil servants and commentators that there was no chance. So how does a controversial social change go from being "an extreme solution" (Labour party official) to a "historic piece of legislation" (Labour minister) in under three years? Deborah Arnott
Did Deborah teach the Labour party the meaning and personal profitability of all things Nanny?
"So how does a controversial social change go from being "an extreme solution" (Labour party official) to a "historic piece of legislation" (Labour minister) in under three years?"
Gilster, something like this.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ded-
groups.html
Just before the ban Deborah Arnott switched from calling people smokers to addicts.
Nicotine patches and gum to be sold in pubs
The move comes amid a changing regulatory climate. The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency, the Government safety watchdog, has relaxed restrictions on dozens of products. And it plans to allow even more patches and gums to go on general sale, opening the door to pubs, clubs and restaurants"
Deborah Arnott, director of the antismoking group ASH, said that addicts should be allowed to use as many patches or take as much gum as they need to give them a chance to quit
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle1969233.ece
It all seems so obvious now.
It's great isn't it Rose,they screw taxes out of us,to pay back to a lobby group who's primary purpose is to denormalise us.All in the name of "democracy".The worst aspect is that Blair reneged on his election manifesto,and wiped his hands of it all.It frightens me that the only alternative is a dipstick called Cameron.
Oh I don't know Si,things could be worse
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle6341560.ece
I'll stave off my horrors by thinking of him joining forces with Campbell,"Mentalson" and wifie and running the world.I signed an online petition a while ago calling for Blair's planned presidency to be kicked into touch.
Talking of which Si
http://timesnews.typepad.com/new...ther-
cheek.html
Many of the posters seem to be having an attack of "I am Spartacus"
The bottom line is that the entire second hand smoke thing is pure fertilizer. As much as DR Siegel would like to believe that there is sufficient evidence to justify bans the fact is that the so called evidence is nothing but a fairytale. Not eve Dr siegel can show one disease that has been proven with equally low relative risks. If there was proof there would be thousands of winning lawsuits against the tobacco companies for exposure as there is for asbestos.
http://banthebanwisconsin.wordpr...ce-and-the-law/
The bottom line is that this is entirely political with no basis in fact. It all started with the EPA who has a long history of prostituting science to suit their agenda!
http://veritasvincitprolibertate...pa-at-it-again/
".. how the new Home Sec.makes his PA carry a hair dryer around for last minute 'blow' dries??" Rose,i wonder if this was the case with Clinton and he got his terminology wrong ?
It's a no brainer when it come to comparing an Electronic
Cigarette Vaping to Tobacco Smoking.Which is a greater risk to your
health, you ask ? Over 400,000 thousand people die each year in the US from
Tobacoo smoking! Not including worldwide... An Electronic Cigarette has
been around for 5 years worldwide, you ask how many deaths has there been
reported within this 5 years from the use of an electronic cigaretts? My
research shows that 0 reports have been made! The facts are in. Please do
your research and choose a better alternative thats right for you & for others I Vape on an Electronic Cigarette. Electronic Cigarette
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