…punish smokers for exposing their children to small increases in health risks, and ban smoking beyond the places necessary to protect the health of nonsmokers…
Kindly explain to me how you feel SHS is a “small increase in health risks” for children living with smokers, but is a “serious health threat” to ADULT employees who can easily choose to work elsewhere? Amazing how you can be reasonable when it suits you, but not budge on your stand that hospitality workers are somehow enslaved beings not able to change jobs or make a decision for themselves.
Talk about a contradiction Doc.
Another important finding of this poll is that despite anti-smoking groups' gross exaggerations of the acute cardiovascular health effects of secondhand smoke over the past six years, the proportion of people who believe that secondhand smoke is very harmful has not increased. This suggests that the anti-smoking groups' strategy of trying to increase the public's appreciation of the hazards of secondhand smoke by exaggerating their messages and creating the appearance of a more serious, more ominous, and more immediate threat to the heart than actually exists based on the scientific evidence is backfiring.
It couldn’t possibly be that more people have chosen to utilize their constitution right to read whatever they want and found the opposing studies, could it? It couldn’t be that perhaps there are more people out there not afraid to use their common sense, who see the baby boomers thriving, note their own healthy survival and figure TC is exaggerating? Naaahhhh it couldn’t possibly be THAT…………..you have them brainwashed, don’t you? What you said here just reinforces what we have believed all along, it isn’t about health, it is about controlling everyone and making everyone submit to your beliefs.
I am much more concerned about passive parenthood.
Has anyone done a study on that?
And I am much more concerned about the other "s" word at the Cleveland Clinic...STAFFING...slim pikins already
...the road to hell is filled with good intentions...reeeeeally makes me want to light up...and I don't
"I have been roundly criticized by my colleagues for allowing these commenters to express their opinions and have been even more harshly criticized for engaging in a dialogue with these readers, who many of my colleagues have called tobacco moles or angry and deluded."
That is not surprising. These deluded whackos (your colleages) call anyone who disagrees with them tobacco moles.
Common sense and Science 101 tells us that the zero safe level and 30 min exposure are false. So if that is the basis of their stance then the whole superstructure is likely of the same quality.
And yes we are angry. Soon as we reach some critical mass, these anti loons and their Drug Bosses will be made to account for themselves.
I can't wait!
Excellent overview!
Business Week Magazine
August 6, 2007 Issue
NEWS & INSIGHTS
When Medical Studies Collide
Contradictory reports? Meta-analysis may make things more confusing
Lead in:
Two years ago, the headlines blared that echinacea was a bust. Millions of people who believed the best-selling herbal remedy was warding off colds were probably deluding themselves, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. Now echinacea is back in the news. This time, it works! So says a study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Excerpt:
FRUIT SALAD
"What's more, meta-analysis is still a bit of a black art because it combines data from studies done with different methods and protocols as though the data came from one large trial. Sometimes the data are too different. The latest study on echinacea "overstepped" in tossing together "apples, oranges, and grapefruit," says Barrett. A legitimate criticism, Coleman concedes. "To be honest, we are lumping apples of different varieties," he says. "It is a limitation we admit to."
Meta-analyses may also mislead by relying on data reported in papers rather than on original raw data, which are usually kept secret. "Good raw data from one study can be worth 50 studies in a meta-analysis," says Vanderbilt's Harrell."
URL: http://tinyurl.com/298xd6
Tolerance.org is an organization that battles discrimination and hatred against virtually every group under the sun... EXCEPT smokers.
I wrote to them almost five years ago about this and received the following in response:
"As a smoker, I relate to what you are saying and wish that I didn’t have to stand out in the rain to get my fix at airports these days. But, as the director of Tolerance.org, I have to tell you that the pro-smoker agenda is well outside the scope of Tolerance.org mission and work."
Over the next year or two I sent them numerous examples of murders, suicides, mistreatment, discrimination, and more, all relating to the intolerance created by antismoking organizations. All further emails were ignored.
Not even an organization devoted to fighting intolerance against EVERYONE has room to worry about smokers. That's the world that the Antismokers have created.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
The appearance of incompetence, and perhaps fraud, in the work of public health authorities has caused the public to become more sceptical about health warnings. For instance, the New York State Department of Health just issued a press release concerning a new secondhand smoke exposure study of the general public. The press release proclaimed:
"This is the first time a scientific study has compared non-smokers' exposure to tobacco smoke before and after enactment of a clean indoor air law," said State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D. "Given the 47 percent drop in non-smokers' exposure to secondhand smoke, this study proves that clean indoor air laws greatly benefit non-smokers and have the potential to avert disease and save lives. This is a great accomplishment for public health."
http://www.health.state.ny.us/
pr..._hand_smoke.htm
But a much larger earlier cotinine study of the general public by Jerome Adda and Francesca Cornaglia came to hugely opposite conclusions: bar and restaurant smoking bans do not decrease the overall exposure of nonsmokers to ETS and in fact increase the smoke exposure of children. What gives?!
http://www.ifs.org.uk/
publicatio...ication_id=3523
From the survey I found the wording interesting:
'24. Which of the following statements better describes your view toward people who smoke -- [ROTATED: you are unsympathetic toward smokers because they continue to smoke even when they know it's harmful to their health and the health of those around them, or you are sympathetic toward smokers because they are addicted, and you understand that it is difficult to stop even if they want to]?'
No mention of it being a matter of choice of lifestyle, and it's none of your business.
.
Perhaps the public have more faith in the reporting and modus operandi of FORCES.What you omit to mention Dr Siegel is that you are also convinced of the position taken by Tobacco Control,ie your unshakeable belief in the perils of SHS being potentially worse than glowball warming.Why can't you be a little more forthcoming in your real reasons to expose the follies of the anti movement ?
Is it really paranoia when everyone really is out to get you?
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0...-
name_page.html
I would hazard a guess as the comments on your blog are representative of the attitude of more than 50% of smokers worldwide. We're not tobacco moles, we're more likely to be tobacco customers. As for being "angry and deluded", I can agree with the first one but bearing in mind the wild overstatements made by the anti-smoking industry, having them call me deluded is a bit rich.
Sunz,
not interesting, sinister.
'24. Which of the following statements better describes your view toward people who smoke --
[ROTATED: you are unsympathetic toward smokers because they continue to smoke even when they know it's harmful to their health and the health of those around them,
smokers are stupid, smokers are callous, uncaring selfish good for nothings and deserve all that happens to them.
or you are sympathetic toward smokers because they are addicted, and you understand that it is difficult to stop even if they want to]?'
the only reason smokers continue to smoke is because of their addiction. We must pity them and force them to do as we want for their own good
Nice!!
GreatScot
It took a Gallup Poll for you to believe what we have been trying to tell you? We have also told you that you and your movement is losing ground and support from the general public. Are you ready to believe that now too? You know who the general public is, don't you? They are the other tax payers seeing you coming for them. We have told you that with your lies and fraud and smoking bans that you were all on slippery slopes. Didn't listen to us then either, did you? Now do you believe that when we tell you that we are all gathering and will be protesting in the streets, we will be having the support of around 45% of the non-smoking general public? Public health, pharmacuticals and the rest of the antis with their hands out for a free lunch will be meeting their demise real soon. Good Lord, people really can think for themselves and can see right through all of this.
MJM;
Re intolerance.org
I wrote them in reference to another discussion I noticed after the fact you too had participated in, the praising of convictions for smoking in a car with children present. I noticed this is starting to take on a sexual bias because most of those charges were directed at women. Which would of course make a lot of sense.
Here was an interesting statement a new claim in support as far as I know recent trial balloning by the OMA was met with strong resistance and dropped I heard the rhetoric at the time and it made no mention of this research it appears they are intensifying the language in hopes of trying again with a new slant.
I believe Michael had something to say strongly opposing this opinion, too bad we couldn't get him to give the OMA some professional advice. An intervention if you will just as he proposed for bartenders who were not properly informed.
"Canadian research from the Ontario Medical Association suggests second-hand smoke in the confines of a vehicle can be 20 times more toxic than in a house."
Here is what I wrote in response to the article;
This law is so wrong in so many ways it is a really low spot in civilization to realize we could even discuss such intolerance, let alone applaud it and create such a law. There is a well represented number of those who support the top down community structures here, judging by the comments. Communities were never supposed to be designed that way. Corporations a few years back abandoned the failings of the traditional power structures realizing the power of communities is in the empowerment of every member of the group. The common sense of thousands of years of trial and error and the pool if intelligence from which to draw that wisdom. The reversal of that power is evident when viewing this thing they call Public Health, I would associate with the Galton Institute who has a large part in it's current management, explains the hatred and divisions of society. They have a long history of creating such divisions in fact their council in eugenics selecting who had a right to exist by genetic selection gave Hitler his power to do horrific things while others could only watch. We had best babies contests and cheered it along.
The UN is absolutely the worst organization on the planet to manage the affairs of communities much less micromanage our personal lives. The politicians who give away your rights in wholesale agreements pandering to these agencies need to be brought to judgment for this chaotic mess they call globalization the wholesale purchasing of fear with the public purse to inspire the rest of us. The smoking bans are now to be used as a model to punish us all to no end fighting fat contagions and alcohol use. Global warming is the largest wholesale theft in human history and just look at how we flock to sign on with no other solutions even allowed to be discussed, let alone examination if the problem even exists to begin with. Top down; a problem is presented along with the plan of action already decided, all that is left is to jam it down our throats. This is not community or villages this is imprisonment and slaves made of all of us who without complaint hand over what we earn, to appease the top of the organizational ladder.
Communities are about caring and encouragement, working together to find solutions, it really is our power, and that is never a top down principle. We can do better on our own, Legislation is empowered by the gun and a poor solution for issues we have always worked out together. Legislators need to get a new message and reaffirm who is working for whom. Centerest policies adored by both right and left wing parties reaffirm what we are hearing everywhere; it doesn't matter who you vote for they really are all the same, living by the polls and offering nothing in the way of integrity in line with traditional party values. We need controversy in politics that is what makes it work, the debate has long been replaced with personal slander as a sign of leadership not much wonder the streets have grown so mean with such poor representations of leading by example, we can do better. Tell them.
"New Gallup Poll Reveals that Nearly Half of Smokers Feel Discriminated Against As a Result of Smoking Restrictions"
To quuote my 15 yr. old, ..."DUuuH!"
Yet you seem surprised by this.
Why does it take a questionable polling organization like Gallup to get your attention?
How 'bout you and your TC buddies funding a poll, and let us (Tobacco users) compose the questions.
I'll bet the outcome would be vastly different than the misleading propaganda derived from the results of polls created and funded by TC to date.
Nothing misleading in the questions, nothing to gloss over, no attempt to manipulate or direct the respondent.
Just straight-forward questions with RELEVANT answers to choose from.
C'mon, you know you want to.
We can't ask Big Tobacco to fund it, even though they likely would.
You already know why we can't do that.
But if the Smoke Nazi's fund it, and let those most affected by their Smoke-Free World Policy, (but that don't suffer from ASDS), create the poll, then what do they have to lose?
After-all, if their right and we're wrong, this could only solidify their position and we would all acquiesce and start taking our medication without any further dispute.
Is TC is interested in REAL opinion?
or just in opinion that can be manipulated as easily as their smoking studies have been to date?
"These results are of particular interest to me because they show that the feelings of many of the smokers who read and comment on this blog are not extreme views, but represent the attitude of about half of all smokers nationwide."
You are too smart to be so naive, Michael. Do you really believe that 47% of smokers spew such venom towards government, public health, science and scientists? Comparing tobacco control zealots to Nazis and Hitler? And that the couple of dozen individuals who repeatedly comment on your blog are a representative sample of "unjustly discriminated" smokers? I know you don't believe that.
Perhaps you're just throwing them a bone, for what reason I'm not sure. I can only imagine that the commentary is somehow important to you, even when it gets bizarre.
Obviously, I'm not stating that all of the views expressed here are representative of the nation's smokers. But the point is that the feelings of discrimination and intolerance appear to be very widespread. And I think tobacco control practitioners need to acknowledge that. I hope this also causes anti-smoking groups to reconsider their extreme agenda, such as supporting discrimination against smokers in employment.
You tell me----Are they alluding to the cause of the disease of this long-time tv personality in the headline and first line.
http://www.knbc.com/entertainmen...880/
detail.html
hrj01, And since you believe in 'tossing' bones to the vile smokers----here is one for you
(Although I would call it the Italian Salute)
Pehaps a history lesson is in order for you, on how this little scene played out 1 time before.
http://constitutionalistnc.tripo...eftist/
id1.html
Get back to us when you've finished. I would love to know what you think about it then. But then if you are an avowed anti---you are no doubt suffering as the rest of them from the dreaded ASDS.
.
Well, hrj01, I can tell you that I've heard a lot of "No offense to smokers, but...their habit really stinks." It reminds me of some jerks from high school who "(weren't) racist, but..."
And I doubt that every antismoker thinks that smoking around kids is child abuse. But that is what people at the top are doing. And people go along with it, so while the vast majority may be inoffensive, there's nothing to check people who pretend to be in the vanguard.
And it is hard to evaluate the relative harm of a press release/ad/speech calling smokers stupid(Hi Mr. Bloomberg!) or a menace to nonsmokers(affecting many people) or comparing antismoking tactics to Nazi or totalitarian tactics. But it is obvious that the questions brought up when people bring up totalitarianism ARE NOT BROUGHT UP in large part at forums where smoking bans are discussed.
And one big difference not mentioned is that we(smokers) do not have our own PR firm that can make our aims seem softer than they are.
I've also found that a lot of the hatred is soft hatred, which is heartening. People "glad for the ban" are pretty damn shocked when I mention I 1) smoke cigars, 2) enjoy them, and 3) mention that if beer were taxed as much as cigarettes, people might be upset. Most of the time there is no counter argument, which I think shows many people don't follow the science.
If medical societies and charities say it, and big tobacco says something else, it's not something people want to think, but they might as well go along with the good guys. After all it's not knuckling to authority like giving in to the government, right?
Dear Dr Siegel,
You wrote --
"I have been roundly criticized by my colleagues for allowing these commenters to express their opinions and have been even more harshly criticized for engaging in a dialogue with these readers, who many of my colleagues have called tobacco moles or angry and deluded."
I am a devout Christian and take very seriously the commandment to love my enemies. For the most part, I take this as an exhilarating challenge, though it's not as much work in your case as it is with some others. You have made it clear that what you believe in promoting is what I fight against; but unlike your colleagues, it appears it did not stop occuring to you that smokers have a right to speak. Did you know that we also have a right to assembly and a traditionally interpreted right of association? Do you recognize our right to gather together in privacy [which necessarily means indoors] without nonsmokers around? I find many of your colleagues (and their fans) react with horrified delusion when they are informed many smokers may no longer want to be around the lethal stuff they spew forth. Do you recognize our right to have our own [necessarily smoking] places?
It's not just discrimination of people that smoke. It's economic sanctions against small business, and the owners of those businesses whether they smoke or not.
Forcing small business to cater to only a small portion of their clientel is a receipe for disaster.
Corporate franchised operations are not affected by smoking bans to the same severity that small independent hospitality businesses are because the majority of people that visit the franchises quite naturally expect less from nearly every aspect of those operations. They're not looking for choice.
There is no way that TC could understand the unique individual business models of every independent hospitality opeartion, because their polling data comes from the "same everywhere" franchised operations.
That's what Anti's want, they want the sameness, no matter where they go. They don't want to think.
Why should my business suffer because I offer safe haven for people that want to smoke, and because I prefer to make that space available for them to practice that activity.
This is still no more complicated than posting a sign. "Smoking Permitted"
If you don't like tobacco smoke, don't come in, and don't apply for employment, I'll get over it.
On the other hand, if you have a firm grasp on reality and realize you're not stepping over bodies everyday becasue of SHS, and you don't really care one way or the other, by all means, WELCOME.
But make no mistake, you are, WERE never under any obligation to enter or remain in a business environment that you didn't like.
"NO CHOICE" for smokers is the trade off made to achieve NO DECISION REQUIRED by Anti's.
This IS discrimination.
Why would it take a poll to make anyone aware if it?
" You are too smart to be so naive, Michael. Do you really believe that 47% of smokers spew such venom towards government, public health, science and scientists? Comparing tobacco control zealots to Nazis and Hitler? And that the couple of dozen individuals who repeatedly comment on your blog are a representative sample of "unjustly discriminated" smokers? I know you don't believe that."
And Michael should be confident with the Gallop poll which states smoking is reduced now to it's lowest levels since 1944 as reported in the press this week as well, but he should ignore this study from the same source which is by your assessment pure hyperbole
"I believe that the promotion of policies that discriminate against smokers in employment (i.e., refusing to hire smokers or firing existing smokers), treat smokers as child abusers, punish smokers for exposing their children to small increases in health risks, and ban smoking beyond the places necessary to protect the health of nonsmokers are all contributing to the increasing perception among smokers that they are being unfairly targeted and discriminated against."
You still don't get it, do you?
Smokers weren't feeling unfairly targeted and discriminated against when only cinemas and theatres banned smoking in auditoria. Most took it on the chin when smoking was increasingly restricted on public transport. The sense of injustice started to rankle when we were thrown off aeroplanes and out of our offices.
But the killer, the real definitive and wholly unacceptable action has been the introduction of zero tolerance bans in the very places where people can go to socialize, to relax and to have fun.
Stop fooling yourself, Michael. Smokers aren't suddenly feeling discriminated against because of the newer - yet more extreme - actions of anti-smokers, and not because you rail against such actions in this blog. No, all these things do is make smokers feel even more discriminated against and even more victimized. It was your campaign, one of which you are still so smugly proud, to throw smokers out of their bars and other places of relaxation, to suit your personal agenda, that started the sense of victimization.
It was all so unnecessary, all it needed was the application of a modicum of compromise and common sense. Not in your world, though, Doctor!
And, since you are a doctor, you will know how feelings of victimization and oppression, and the stress that inevitably accompanies them are far more detrimental to the health of these people than the slight exposure to ETS is to non-smokers. Go on, admit it. You know this is the case, don't you?
So you think you now know how we feel? Well bully for you! Perhaps you should go and reintroduce yourself to the Hippocratic Oath, now you know the full extent of the (human) damage of your actions.
Then come back and tell us how we feel.
"And Michael should be confident with the Gallop poll which states smoking is reduced now to it's lowest levels since 1944 as reported in the press this week as well, but he should ignore this study from the same source which is by your assessment pure hyperbole"
Kevin,
The hyperbole and overinterpretation was Michael's, not Gallup's.
hrj01
Any thoughts on the link I provided yet Or are you making like Mikey and ingnoring us? Monkey see Monkey Do?
For your reading convience here it is again.
http://constitutionalistnc.tripo...eftist/
id1.html
Waiting for your response
.
.
"Any thoughts on the link I provided yet Or are you making like Mikey and ingnoring us? Monkey see Monkey Do?"
Likening Hitler's fascist regime in Nazi Germany to public health today is like saying that Dr. Mengele was a committed if slightly overzealous physician. My dead Jewish anscestors would not cotton to that and neither will I. This is a good example of what I meant earlier by the commentary getting bizarre.
hrj01:
Is it bizarre at all to measure SHS deaths by assuming that 100 percent of bartenders will work 40 hours a week for 40 years, despite the fact that researchers know that very few bartenders actually work those hours? Wouldn't it be less bizarre to measure the death-toll using real-world working conditions?
Is it bizarre to publicly report that these people "are dying," despite the fact that the researchers in question know that the people don't actually exist?
I agree that the "reducto ad Hitlerium" arguments can get pretty highly charged. But then again they are being made against people who claim that smokers "are killing" 40,000 people a year. And no one can find the bodies. Then there is talk of "carnage" and "mass deaths" and "murder" and all the rest.
I suspect that if charges of overblown rhetoric apply to people who oppose bans, similar charges might come right back at you.
Nobody is comparing "public health' to the Nazi's. This is a leap that is routinely made my Anti-smoking proponents. (cutting a little close to the bone perhaps makes it easier for them to associate, but,....)
The comparrison is in the tactics employed by the "overzealous" german military, and those employed by the "For your own good, sake of the children, level playing field, worker safety, taxes make 'em quit" crowd.
The fraud, deception, and graft employed to achieve the desired social engineering is identical.
hrj01 - Likening Hitler's fascist regime in Nazi Germany to public health today is like saying that Dr. Mengele was a committed if slightly overzealous physician. My dead Jewish anscestors would not cotton to that and neither will I. This is a good example of what I meant earlier by the commentary getting bizarre.
...........
How about "Mothers Murdering Their Babies?" Not one reputable doctor or health official has called them on that.
Parents that smoke at home are criminal child abusers and their children should be taken away.
Is that bizarre? How "bizarre" does it have to be before one takes alarm?
Did the German Jews ever think they would be exterminated?
Wait, you mean anti's aren't doing this: nazis greatly restricted tobacco advertising, banned smoking in most public buildings, increasingly restricted and regulated tobacco farmers growing abilities (ok, ok, not yet on this one, but I hear it's in the works), and engaged in a sophisticated anti-smoking public relations campaign.
or this
anti-tobacco activists succeeded in banning smoking from government offices, civic transport, university campuses, rest homes, post offices, many restaurants and bars, hospital grounds and workplaces. Tobacco taxes were raised, unsupervised cigarette vending machines were banned, and there were calls for a ban on smoking while driving.
never heard of instances of this have you?
Karl Astel -- upstanding president of Jena University, poisonous anti-Semite, euthanasia fanatic, SS officer, war criminal and tobacco-free Germany enthusiast -- liked to walk up to smokers and tear cigarettes from their unsuspecting mouths.
Oh, we don't use this phrase today:
It comes as little surprise to discover that the phrase "passive smoking" (Passivrauchen) was coined not by contemporary American admen, but by Fritz Lickint, the author of the magisterial 1100-page Tabak und Organismus ("Tobacco and the Organism"), which was produced in collaboration with the German AntiTobacco League.
oh and we definitely don't see this:
This great crusade, propagated through a remarkable network of lectures, re-education programs and congresses, was backed up by the medical and health establishment for the sake of "science." Or at least a certain type of junk science, one in which objective research and the scientific method was subordinated to, and bastardized for the sake of, a greater political program.
I'm offended you're offended. How similar do you have to get? Does an anti actually have to name himself Hitler to see them?
This is where "Monkey see, Monkey do" begins to make a lot of sense to me. In fact, it may be the only thing around here that does.
Mm..no response except an insult, typical.
I'm surprised this subject has been brought up. Every society needs a minority group it can hate. Political correctness has narrowed the field considerably.
What can smokers do? They can't have a sit-in at a counter -- they can't even ride in the back of a bus. Their best hope is to be able to hide in an attic, like Anne Frank.
Well, quick, protect the skinny!!!
"If one person gains, it can affect social ties with three degrees of separation, so a friend of a friend of a friend also is affected, he says. "One person's weight influences dozens of other people they are connected with both directly and indirectly. It can impact people who are connected through a mutual friend or family member."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/hea...sity-
usat_N.htm
hrj01,if you really want to see something bizarre ,ask the man himself to explain the need for his outbursts when pressed to elucidate on facts introduced by him in the first place.The possible use of drugs has already been mooted .
hrj01,
All I am saying is that, if you think one side has the market cornered on heated rhetoric, you are wrong.
Talked about doctored. The report today on the Beaumont smoking ban cited 7 places as showing that business has not been much affected by a smoking ban. All of them have outside smoking patios where you can eat and drink alcohol. That is cheating. One of those business owners even said he lost $30,000 after the ban until the patio was built. However, they DID list a group of places that people keep getting fined for smoking at them. I'm going to those places!
Sam, I don't know if I'd consider that article rhetoric. If it's historically accurate, then it's IS same things the Nazi's did. I went through the article and as you can see from above, it's eerily similar. There's not much differentiation for sure.
Don S.
Smokers are still socially active around here. I myself have people come to my smoking home, and we either "potluck" or chip in on the themed dinner that is prepared. Now it does help that I have acres of property, and it also helps that everyone in the group "takes turns" at doing this, and invites a few "new" people most times.
When you aren't accommodated, you make your own version of what you think is hospitality. Whether its everyone staying the night once they arrive, drive everyone home, or its making sure that people have the ability to get a cab. The people are accommodated, and hospitality is dispensed.
I've "managed" rather well; the oriental themed dinner and the lanterns around the back patio went well, and then sitting out with the fire pit going in the spring (cherry blossom season) was just great fun 
.
This week it looks like I will only have over 30 people at my house for a whole weekend affair (which of course won't have a theme but I think camping close to home is rather cool anyways!).
Oh its tough when you actually have control over who gets to hang around you! Although if the extremists want to make themselves think that they are harming my social life, let them think that. Just don't tell them they are liars (them saying they are destroying everyones habits) they don't like to be given examples where the "denormalization" hasn't worked (everyone's partying & happy), and they lost control over peoples habits.
Why do you think right now its the kitchen that is the most remodelled part of the "home"? People are realizing that their 90's kitchens just don't cut it in having more then the family around. They were all small, no connection to the food; now most have added a "family room" that is like an informal bar section in days gone by (when you went to the restaurants).
BTW I was talking about this to lady at the grocery store, and they mention this "social circle" idea as well. Let the people who don't want the word accommodation to be mentioned attend bars that are really busy for only 3 hours, and filled with strange people who have already been drinking.
Need more examples?? I can continue, if you enjoy, I'm accommodating! LOL
Need more examples?? I can continue, if you enjoy, I'm accommodating!
*raising hand in air* me me me....great examples, care to share more? hehehehe 
Just imagine yourself a party planner. What is the great topic going on this week?
Down south is having fun with the anti's. Well you support them in spirit, and have a potluck of "picnics in the park". Serve southern fried chicken, etc and give everyone a blanket to take home. (blanket is a square of fabric that has the edges serged- you could make the square an inch or big enough to actually sit on.) Now You must specify that there's 4 people on each "blanket", and order in order out. That way you don't know who your sitting with. Since the south showed you what hospitality was, why not just write a letter to the editor of a paper and let then hear the twist to the local extremist?
How about a starlight night a the movies? Anyone have a white house, or large TV? Why not take everything (the party) outside, for a big game or movie that is a romantic classic, thriller, or how about the new "great thing" that is just released? People bring their own chairs, or blankets to sit on, and you provide the entertainment.
Do you know of any place that you have been thinking of going to? (I have a bike trail in my area that all the "tourists hit") I was thinking of inviting everyone for the afternoon, to go together and do our very own "tour bus" harassing of the "locals".
Lynda D..............YOU are my party planner............
I just haven't got that much creativity in me.........my creative streak seems to lean more towards "other" areas................LOL
The reasons why some smokers feel discrimated against are because the cigarette industry has spent billions of dollars over the past 50 years incorrectly claiming that there is a right to smoke, because smokers have become accustomed to poisoning innocent people with tobacco smoke pollution, and because folks like Mike and the angry smokers who post on this blog continue telling smokers that they are being discrimated against.
But considering that hundreds of thousands of illegal drug users and alcoholics who are in sitting in jail and prison cells because of their drug use (or for being at the wrong place at the wrong time), cigarette smokers should be thankful that most of us compassionate smokefree air advocates do not support cigarette prohibition.
If smokers who violate smokefree laws had were required to go through similar programs that DUI convicts are required to go through, smokers would begin to realize that it is they, not smokefree air advocates, who have been discriminating against (and harming) innocent people for far too long.
cigarette smokers should be thankful that most of us compassionate smokefree air advocates do not support cigarette prohibition.
Oh puhleeeeze. The ONLY reason you don't support prohibition is because your cash cow would vanish overnight and there'd be NO MORE FUNDING for you and yours. Who the hell are you trying to convince otherwise?
If smokers who violate smokefree laws had were required to go through similar programs that DUI convicts are required to go through, smokers would begin to realize that it is they, not smokefree air advocates, who have been discriminating against (and harming) innocent people for far too long.
IF you had actual and real proof of this...............then we would have to go through the same thing.
Again, it all comes down to your cash cow. We pay your rent/mortgage/car/etc..........try being a little grateful for that billyboy.
" But considering that hundreds of thousands of illegal drug users and alcoholics who are in sitting in jail and prison cells because of their drug use (or for being at the wrong place at the wrong time), cigarette smokers should be thankful that most of us compassionate smokefree air advocates do not support cigarette prohibition."
Don't mind if I quote you on this Bill? it serves as a great example of how anti smoker advocates treat others without provocation.
Thanks for that.
I knew Bill wasn't all bad.
This is priceless stuff; LMAO
" If smokers who violate smokefree laws had were required to go through similar programs that DUI convicts are required to go through, smokers would begin to realize that it is they, not smokefree air advocates, who have been discriminating against (and harming) innocent people for far too long."
Good old bill always such a kidder...
And you Bill should remember that the folks that pulled this the last time faced firing squads, hanging, or just plain commited suicide because they did not have the balls to face what they had done.
Thanks GreatScot (from last thread)
Rod,
This is the link I was talking about in the last thread re the good doc and is directive to the antis to not discuss the scientific evidence:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/...show/
27666.html
~snip~
It started with an article by Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health and at the time a board member of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights (ANR), the California activist group that Glantz co-founded. Titled "Responding to Tobacco Industry Attacks on the Scientific Evidence Linking Secondhand Smoke to Disease and Death," it was published on ANR's Web site last July. In the article, Siegel advised fellow scientists in the anti-tobacco movement: "Do not get into arguments with the industry about the scientific evidence. This is exactly what the industry wants. It wants to draw public health practitioners into a debate....Instead, the best approach is to expose the tobacco industry ties of the so-called scientists making the arguments."
Apologies, Rod if you have seen this before. I just remember us discussing this before you graced us with you many contributions.
.
note: I could not get this to post on the previous thread.
.
lynda Duguay--Your themed dinners and potlucks sound divine! I am so thankful that civility is not dead--despite the best work of the rAntis.
htj01: Likening Hitler's fascist regime in Nazi Germany to public health today is like saying that Dr. Mengele was a committed if slightly overzealous physician. My dead Jewish anscestors....
That's the most BIZARRE thing I've read in a long time. Someone so proud of his/her "dead Jewish ancestors" that s/he doesn't bother to notice that the "passive smoking" fraud began in Germany as a means to subdue the population and, eventually, exterminate a large portion of the population. ("Passivrauchen" was coined in Tabak und Organismus by a NAZI, Fritz Lickint.) Contemporary "public health" is proud to announce that it was all part of Germany's war on cancer, as shown in Proctor's book linked by Sunz...*snort* notice how eagerly Germany has cottoned to the banning craze--NOT.
Bill...is just plain laughable. Notice he goes for that "reasons why" business. (See, doc? You really can be better than that! *smiles* And I warned you not to get too cuddly with him when he was feigning friendship. You don't need friends like that, do you.) No wonder the rAnti "movement" is slipping. Agreed, it shouldn't be funny and, being better than they are, we shouldn't laugh at them. These people need help. Rather than brainwashing centers for people who smoke, we need treatment centers for people suffering from ASDS. (Sunz, please bear in mind that these people are already being hunted and confined by their own prejudices, fears/phobias and mental illness. Pity them.)
Bill, only in your convoluted world (mind).
Rather than trying to seek freedom for all classes (substance types) you see equality as equal punishment. It's "if they can't be free than neither should you" babyishness.
Grow the hell up and join the crowd (us) who would choose to ask for equality by giving every class their freedom.
Though really, once again I'm struck by something more deep, more personal here. Bill's revenge for something nearer and dearer that happened to him personally or was close to home. He's not out for what's right, he's out for revenge.
Linda Duguay---'Why do you think right now its the kitchen that is the most remodelled part of the "home"? People are realizing that their 90's kitchens just don't cut it in having more then the family around. They were all small, no connection to the food; now most have added a "family room" that is like an informal bar section in days gone by (when you went to the restaurants)."
Exactly what were doing here. That way we might be somewhat ahead of the stampeding food police. Life is too short to be hounded in our leisure time. We are both becoming great cooks and having a great time.
.
Sunz,
I went to the Reason link you provided, and I also found that when the Doctor went too far he apologized at the risk of falling out with his colleagues. Here it is in that same article --
"When Marimont also insisted on an apology, Siegel added this statement to his proposed retraction: "Ms. Marimont has engaged in a career in science...for 37 years, and there is no reason to believe that her writings on smoking or any other issues were guided by anything but her best scientific judgment and professional integrity."
That should have put an end to this episode, but it did not. After ANR pondered Siegel's retraction and apology, Peter Hanauer, the group's co-founder, wrote back to him, in an August 31 e-mail message that Siegel shared with me: "Mike...we do not want to post ANYTHING on our web page that can be construed as an apology or as backtracking from the position taken in the paper you wrote....Given Levy's long history of attacking ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] science, it would be a mistake to state anything that would give him credence [sic]. So, we have decided to remove your name from the paper...and we will post an addendum to the effect that an attempt was made to censor it....ANR must put its political credibility ahead of what you consider to be your scientific credibility."
The Doctor repeatedly makes his position clear that he promotes tobacco control. He also makes it clear he breaks ranks with his colleagues when they step beyond the bounds of decency, no doubt as he defines it, yes. For the large part, I don't see the inconsistency.
Sunz - Apologies, Rod if you have seen this before. I just remember us discussing this before you graced us with you many contributions.
.
note: I could not get this to post on the previous thread.
.......
Sunz, thank you, but you embarass me. Yes, I have seen it before.
But, I am so impressed with the depth of knowledge, the sharp minds that post here challenging claims that have no substance, that I thank you again for your gracious words.
"Sam, I don't know if I'd consider that article rhetoric."
What I am getting at is that htj01 was complaining not about the content of the debate, but the fact that it seemed accompanied by so little... charity?
And what I was attempting to show was that charges of "like the Nazis" are not the only forms of nastiness out there. And that both sides--including htj01's--engage in that kind of banter.
And right on cue, Mr.Godshall arrives and says smokers are "poisoning" people.
Hey htj01: Should you be taking Bill to task, too? Or does he get a pass? Why?
Either way, stick around. Ban supporters constantly use rhetoric like "gassing" and "genocide" and "poisoning" and "murder" and "toxic clouds" and all the rest.
You don't seem to mind, though.
Weird.
Paraphrasing Bill: "There is no right to smoke. But there is a right to no smoke."
Let's put this lie to bed -- this time, anyway. I'd say for good but Bill will pretend he never saw it and repeat it anyway. This is a paper put forward by a lawyer that looked at the issue from YOUR point of view, Bill. Except he showed some integrity:
Public Health Institute
Technical Assistance Legal Center
There Is No Constitutional Right to Smoke
April 2005
http://www.smokefreeapartments.o...org/
noright.pdf
Because smokers are not a protected group, laws limiting smoking must only be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose.13
Footnote 13:
13 Note, too, that nonsmokers also are not recognized as a protected class, so equal protection claims brought by nonsmokers exposed to smoke in a place where smoking is permitted by law are unlikely to succeed.
Also, the "No right to smoke" court rulings you and your comrades like to hold over others as legal support for your side is out of context. You mislead to advance your agenda.
You've cited CLASH's case before so let's look at that.
Bill et al like to spin the judge's ruling into that supposed blanket decree ("smoking is not a right") when what the judge ruled is that smokers are not denied entry, they just can't smoke there. In other words, he didn't rule on the "RIGHT TO SMOKE." He ruled on the right of government to decide WHERE they can't smoke because under the conditions of such SMOKING BANs in these places there is "no fundamental right implicated." (Pg. 66)
In a case similarly structured it would be found that Bill's restricted use of smokeless tobacco in a bar or restaurant has not been infringed because of "no fundamental right implicated." And certainly neither did it confer any "legal rights" to nonsmokers. That would be like saying that because a challenge to a smoking ban prevailed it extended the legal rights of smokers.
As a matter of fact, pulled from the opinion is the judge's own hedge on it:
Pg. 35: "Nor are they aimed at the person as a smoker by reason of his social habit of choice or addiction, as the case may be. Rather, the Smoking Bans are aimed at the act of smoking itself, and only when carried out in certain public places where the state and city legislatures have deemed it to adversely affect other people.13 In short, the right of free speech, like the rights of assembly and association, is not inherently accompanied by the unrestricted ability to smoke everywhere."
[Footnote 13 actually stomps all over Bill]:
13 The Smoking Bans also do not attempt to intrude in such places that would be considered to be within a person’s sphere of privacy, such as in a private residence, automobile, hotel room, or private social event, and thus, do not ruffle the implied right of privacy in the "penumbras" of the Bill of Rights. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484-85 (1965).
Get that, Bill? The CLASH court judge actually said that HE could see a point where "right to smoke" feathers could be ruffled.
The reasons why some smokers feel discrimated against are because the cigarette industry has spent billions of dollars over the past 50 years incorrectly claiming that there is a right to smoke...
Sorry Bill, seems the claim (and no we don't have puppet masters like you do so that claim is not sole property of any industry or entity) is not and never has been incorrect. The very ACT of smoking has not been addressed in the courts.
But even more chilling is your belief that feeling discriminated against is tied to what "rights" are CONFERRED on us by other men and put in writing. As if man depends on the permission of man? YOUR permission?? Whoever wrote the phrase "Inalienable rights" would have you tossed out of the room.
In your warped mind blacks were not allowed to feel/say they were the victims of discrimination because all branches of government decreed they didn't have certain rights.
Boxers fear lethal beatings, motorcycle racers fear lethal crashes and window washers fear lethal falls all because they have seen their peers die such deaths. The life risks of ETS remains speculative and academic rather than real for bartenders because bartenders don't know any other bartenders that have died from ETS.
Bill,
How many times do you need this explained to you?
My state attorney general explained the implied right to fish in my state. It isn't specifically spelled out in our constitution, but because fishing was legal before our state gained statehood we have the right to fish.
And guess what? Tobacco was legal back then too. Therefore, we have the right to smoke.
The reason the state AG spoke on this matter was because of goofballs like you who don't know ****, but run off at the mouth like they do know something.
If the tobacco companies have been saying this for 50 years then I'd say they're a helluva lot brighter than you.
Even Israel fails to learn the lessons from history.
http://www.ynetnews.com/
articles...3430531,00.html
Excerpt
If individuals violating the law refuse to put out their cigarette, business owners are further required to report them to the local inspection authority. The new law also requires local authorities to advertise a telephone number where inspectors can be reached.
GreatScot
Hey I'd party with you guys too!
Hope that more people realize the ability to have fun is still there. This ban extreme propoganda isn't going to stop me from smiling, and having more friends.
Party on people! lol
Hi Bill Godshal!
You’re the best! Man you’ve got it all!
“the cigarette industry has spent billions of dollars over the past 50 years incorrectly claiming that there is a right to smoke”
“poisoning innocent people”
“tobacco smoke pollution”
“angry smokers”
Again Bill, its all old hat. I mean feel free to use up the last of your propaganda coupons. Fact is Bill, its over. Its coming back around; fact of life.
Maybe 10,000 years from now an archeologist will discover the lost corpses tied to the claims you and yours cling to. Please Bill don’t blame “angry smokers”, many of us have been asking for solid evidence, for what, 20 years now. Unfortunately, your still hauling around that big SHS goose egg. Boy it must get lonely. Hey!! maybe that’s where those famous 220 bartenders are; hidden away in Bills big SHS goose egg. (just playing along with your delusional claim oh great one.)
I always get a big kick out of Bill when he start’s his “no right to smoke” funnies. Bill, people don’t need a right to smoke, all they need is an invitation. Invitations can be declined by anyone: even those who have been consumed by fraudulent propaganda.
Really Bill, so you like to huff smoke-free pollution, (whatever the hell that is) what you want a medal?
JTF, absolutely PERFECT!
And of course the scary thing about footnote 13 is that ALL FOUR of those places the judge marked as "holy" have now been desecrated by Godshall and friends.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Thanks Michael M.
I figure that's good citation should a legal case ever be made over bans in those places.
But seems there's new Bill fodder. Bill doesn't just compare our situations to pot smokers, drinkers, etc. regarding how each our treated. Let's remember he thinks they get the short end of the stick (which I'd agree with in spite of Bill) and shouldn't. His sympathy lies with them either genuinely or because it suits his purposes.
But Bill, you're all about Public Health Morals not Unequal Treatment Morals right? I mean, if the issue was public health and smoking....
Impact on Lungs of One Cannabis Joint Equal to Up to Five Cigarettes
July 30, 2007
http://www.newswise.com/articles...es/view/531937/
A single cannabis joint has the same effect on the lungs as smoking up to five cigarettes in one go, indicates research published ahead of print in the journal Thorax.
It diminished the numbers of small fine airways, which are important for transporting oxygen and waste products to and from the blood vessels effectively.
They also mention this:
The news comes after research published last week showed that cannabis could more than double the risk of developing psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia. Experts found that any use of cannabis - even taking the drug just once - was associated with a 41 per cent greater risk. People who smoke the most cannabis were found to be the most likely to suffer a psychotic breakdown marked by delusions, hallucinations or disordered thoughts.
Now, I've been of the opinion that the reason Bill gets all heated up over the issue of drugs and how poorly those people are treated (no employment, arrested, etc) is because it's possssssible it's touched his life some way. Note Bill, I made no accusation. I only said it's an opinion that it's possible.
But if I'm right wouldn't that last explain soooooo much 
Richlady248---'
and I also found that when the Doctor went too far he apologized at the risk of falling out with his colleagues. '
And fall out he did. Agreed.
.
Walt----'On two conditions: No statute of limitations. And Sentence proportionate to number of smokes per day ( a reasonable marker for number of innocents killed.)'
Can we add just one more condition? Retroactive payment of the taxes at current rates by the former smokers. This would help for the damages way down the road of the damage they did to themselves and the innocents!!!
LOL. I can hear Ol Bill screaming now!!!
.
From GreatScots link:
~snip~
“The old law didn’t offer a real incentive to authorities and business owners to reinforce the prohibition. I believe the new law will prevent the absurd situation that forces pregnant women, children, and non-smokers in general, to tolerate cigarette smoke entering their lungs in every public place,” Erdan said'
And our troops fought to free these people when what was entering their lungs was indeed killing them? They even have the bodies and mass graves to prove it. A good portion of those fighting to free them were smokers!!
I guess Erdan would also be saying as htjo1 does " "My dead Jewish anscestors would not cotton to that and neither will I."
It takes all kinds.
.
DTB;
"Contemporary "public health" is proud to announce that it was all part of Germany's war on cancer, as shown in Proctor's book linked by Sunz...*snort* notice how eagerly Germany has cottoned to the banning craze--NOT. "
If you research the Galton institute, you will find they were entirely instrumental in promoting the same Healthiest domination then and are back in business bigger and more popular than ever, dedicated to selling the same slime today.
Currently as Stakeholders or NGOs in the WHO. The language may be more subdued or deceitful but make no mistake we are still seeing the same promotion.
They are re-popularized and well received in the medical community, [like they ever really left] currently quite acceptable once more in political communities after recently climbing out from under the rock. They went right back to work promoting their bigotry for bucks campaign in the World health Organization, a place they can operate above the power of elected officials and send their orders downstream to the rest of us.
The Eugenics society was instrumental in many of the policies of the so called New Public health promoting the same policies they have always promoted.
Control of our biology in exchange for the sacrificing of our humanity.
They were vilified after the war and worked in obscurity, but were never deterred from their goals having learned nothing from the disaster they had caused. The hate was not originated with Hitler it only gave him the tools he needed in a world which accepted his twisted sense of humanity much as they do once again today.
The Eugenics movement originated in the USA, Canada and England with best babies contests and the castrations of Jews and Imbeciles widely promoted in the scientific community and distributed in the press.
The Hatred which originated from a century which started much as this one did in promoting hate and fear, still lingers today. We wrote anti semitic laws to battle some of the hate developed back then, but we never really purged it completely, as is evident in finding that hatred so easily when we judge those around us and find camaraderie in pointing out their defects.
Bill says it with such pride "smokers have no rights" fool that he is in judging his own superior claim to rights, he fails to realize; we didn't give ours to others, he did, in joining with the Non smokers rights association he afforded his rights to others to use as they please. His proxy to promote nothing more than hatred.
Is it reasonable someone could take your rights without your permission or any legitimate claim? Perhaps they grow in stature because no one feels a sense of loss in the theft of their greatest asset. How many people really understand who the words health care officials refers to?
We hear about their judgments and decries from above all the time bandied behind WHO predictions in news releases, but who are they?
The Galton institute used to call themselves a society once in a similar deceptive fashion.
Are they using your proxy wisely?
This is about a lot more than smoking versus non smoking issues, and when people come to terms with that, things will finally start to change.
BILL "If smokers who violate smokefree laws had were required to go through similar programs that DUI convicts are required to go through," just taking your idea a step further Bill,a similar course for those smokers who have stopped but who exhibit tendencies to become born again rabids should become mandatory.The nice pleasant side of a person's nature,highlighted by enjoyment of tobacco,becomes totally eradicated when they deny themselves that pleasure,leading to an imbalance in their personality that not even psychiatry can helpThey are doomed to an existence of hatred as the only coping mechanism available.
Good old Bill,
never fails to disappoint.
"Punishment, re-education, Punishment,re-education" DON'T LIKEN ME TO A NAZI "punishment, re-education,"
One small step away from "eradication, elimination, eradication".
Bill, how do you eradicate smoking if smokers refuse to comply? Eliminate the smokers?
Man, you need some professional help.
Here is an article by someone who will tell you, Bill is wrong; smokers absolutely do have rights.
http://www.iapm.ca/newsmanager/a...r.asp?a=489&
z=8
Although Bill and others will claim the proxy of all non smokers they actually speak for a very small group. A group with no standing, non elected and self impossed on the rest of us. Are they really so credible they can lead the rest of us?
Apparently they think so.
Michael in this very thread attempts one of the standard tricks to find that power telling us to speak in his terms or don't speak to him at all.
OK what are the ramifications of our silence? He looses his power entirely to dispense his arguments, would be the most resounding effect.
He is bluffing and we all know it.
If everyone was properly educated we would all know ETS is deadly? He says himself the public accepts smoking as an "acceptable" risk and he hates that. The balance between acceptable and unacceptable needs to change and the promotion of a much lesser risk is his plan to move the "acceptable" to the "unacceptable" category.
His partners have done the job of swaying half the public with a decade of high intensity advertising campaigns acording to the Gallop poll at least, however the poll itself is suspicious in the way the questions were worded and in the creative writing describing the results.
The scientific basis of a self aggrandizing poll, are as questionable as what Michael and others refer to as "scientific research". In light of the methods and the vast limitations an oxymoron only second to political correctness in a credible sense.
This is science in a real sense only given power by our acceptance of his terms. There is no science involved unless you can consider political science or Scientology to be legitimate, it is mind games and deceptions to find; "what they want" to be more credible than what society wants. so how can it be scientific research? We all know smoking bans are wrong and it doesn't even need an explanation to find that consensus.
Those swayed by hearing what they want to hear will deny it but the bans are wrong ethically morally and legally wrong.
You can feel it in your gut and the promoters do too, otherwise such an extreme effort to promote them would never have been considered. Hitler once tried to the best of his abilities to do the same in the past and even those subordinates who walked in fear of the man still smoked behind his back.
This campaign is enormously larger and longer, yet the numbers of smokers as opposed to the stability in real numbers as they have remained for 50 years have now started to climb. So what was accomplished? The Tobacco industry is growing again.
Nice work TC, failures because they lack morals and integrity and the public is only just starting to notice.
Denormalization? Borrowing from the article above "what right do they have to tell us what is normal?"
None, beyond what we afford them.
http://news.independent.co.uk/
he...icle2819599.ece Well if tobacco is bad for you,alcohol appears to be joining it,cannabis is like smoking 5 fags concurrently ,it looks like it will have to be Britain's most favourite up market drug after all,the posh nobs love their cocaine.
Here is a challenge to Michael, to Stanton Glanz and the entire Health scare movement;
Show me the numbers which demonstrate any of the personal activities which are said to be detrimental to health and longevity, which are even close to the effects of poverty, in not only the above mentioned effects but to well being, quality of life and self worth.
The number one campaign strategy of TC is to promote financial restrictions on others to force compliance. Promoting poverty and intensifying poverty among by far the highest demographics of smokers those most at risk. The aged and the poor.
Hardly an ethical approach now is it?
Still proud of you efforts Michael?
It takes all kinds I suppose.
As I have said before, "If you back an old dog into his own yard he will turn and bite you". It appears that the old dogs may have been pushed too far? In any case, I think the group of people is much larger than Gallop indicates. Smokers are generally people who believe in live and let live. They usually don't insert themselves in others business. So, you won't hear a whole lot until they've had enough. I believe that day is coming.
Lastly, (and I mention this because of the hypocracy)since 1973 in America alone, we have averaged over 1 million abortions per year. In this case, what would be the most preventable case of death in America?
I though doctors and other in health care would be about preserving life not destroying it. No, they show ther true colors and only attack what is perceived as politically correct.
Keep spreading the word about the farse of SHS. You may not know it, but it is starting to resonate.
Still here, Bill?
Good. Again, look up "negative liberty" as opposed to your "positive liberty" fetish and get back to me. Our right to smoke is implicit and has nothing to do with the tobacco industry.
I must admit, I've been waiting for you to write about your "anti-prohibitionist" views; you're also a liar:
"...cigarette smokers should be thankful that most of us compassionate smokefree air advocates do not support cigarette prohibition."
Look here:
FDA Regulation of Tobacco, The Heartland Institute, May 2007 (pdf):
Statement for the Record
William T. Godshall, MPH
Executive Director
Smokefree Pennsylvania
Bill wrote, p. 16:
"But S. 625 prohibits
the FDA from issuing many of the most effective regulations that could reduce cigarette usage,
especially among youth, including prohibiting the FDA from:
- increasing the minimum age to purchase cigarettes beyond 18 years;
- eliminating cigarette sales from any type of retail outlet;
- requiring prescriptions to buy cigarettes (as FDA requires for other hazardous drugs);
- removing nicotine from cigarettes; and
- eventually removing cigarettes from the market."
So, you're against prohibition but you lament that cigarettes couldn't be prohibited under S. 625. So, which is it?
Here is the language which we hear increasing more and more, which will end the spread of the Heath scare pandemic. One of the most toxic diseases known to man.
People need to be educated as to the deadly risk of this absolutely unacceptable product. It should be taken off the shelf before more unnecessary mortalities are created to suit the pockets of a few, who steal not only life but an acceptable quality of life from the rest of us.
http://www.iapm.ca/newsmanager/a...r.asp?a=539&
z=8
"To Be Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts
What then lies ahead? Can we overcome our tremulous national psyche and truly be greater than the sum of our parts? Can we end the paralysis of analysis over our "community of communities"? Can we "Go bold" as General Lewis MacKenzie is fond of saying. I think we can. Here's how.
Let people alone!
Stop the social experimentation. End the political correctness. Kill the nanny-state. Celebrate the potential of individual consequence and end the paternalism of group think. Politicians will actually have to get votes with principles not paycheques. But though they might lose the votes of the tens of thousands of bureaucrats who'll be unemployed once the statocratic programs are terminated, they'll win hundreds of thousands of votes by showing courage and demonstrating a faith in the people tempered only by prudence rather than a fear of the people driven only by avarice. Courage is the cardinal human virtue. And people recognize it. They recognize authenticity. "
"paralysis of analysis"
I love that term.
WLC ' Our right to smoke is implicit'
and that right trumps Bills, fears anyday.
.
Mr. Godshall
You are hereby BANNED from my restaurant.
I reserve the right (in the interest of public health) to refuse service to anyone with such a highly infectious disease. ASDS is a dibilitating disorder and for the sake of the children, I can't allow you to enter the building.
Even though this would level the playing field for other sufferers of the affliction, it would be disruptive to the business and potentially put my employees at risk.
Feel free to call ahead, and I'll have someone meet you outside with your order. Please have the correct dollar amount ready including tip, but don't come within 25 feet of the door. Trust me, ..it's for your own good.
The Nazi comparison really is stupid. Most people think of gas chambers, massacres, and the execution of political opponents when they think of the Nazis.
And just because we have people like Bill, Carl, and a few others who like to make outlandish claims and who resort to character assassination, doesn't mean we have to as well. Let them be ruin their credibility with childish rants and them comparing smokers to child molesters, murderers, drunk drivers, etc.
Personally, if we are to compare them to anyone, I think Puritans and possibly the Eugenics movement would be far more accurate and fair. The Puritans were prudes, they were moralists, they were self-righteous, and anyone who questioned them was a witch or minion of Satan.
I think that describes the anti-smokers on this blog far better than Nazi ever did. Just replace witch with "delusional" and Satan with "Big Tobacco".
Eugenics supporter to make second try for Congress in Tennessee primary:
His web site: http://tinyurl.com/2ne6ts
Excerpt from Irregular Times
5/30/2007
"In 2004, James Hart got 78 percent of the vote in the Republican primary for Congress. He earned that support by promoting a program of eugenics in which members “favored races” are promoted over others.
Hart blames the decline of Detroit on the presence of “less favored races” there (rather than the idiotic reliance of Ford, GM and Chrysler executives upon short term promotional activities rather than long-term preparation of hybrid and other energy efficient technology). He created the graphic you see here in order to compare people of non-European descent to cavemen, australopithecines, and apes.
Guess what? James Hart is running for the Republican nomination to Congress again in 2008.
Right wing presidential candidates try to win by appealing to the same kind of Republican voters who provide support to politicians like James Hart. I think that counts as another reason to counter the right wing agenda in 2008, and vote to elect a progressive President instead."
.............
Rod's take:
Today, people have the perception that the philosophy of Eugenics is promoted only by racist rednecks. Not true. It is said that evil comes in many forms and disguises. The current push to coerce behavioral change in the name of a physically healthy society disguises the inevitable result.
Once it is accepted that a physically/mentally healthy society takes precedence over an individual's choice of lifestyle, then anything can be done in the name of health.
I am more frightened of Eugenicists sneaking in by the back door than those who blatantly proclaim their position. The latter are much easier to recognize and defeat.
" The Nazi comparison really is stupid.'
You may call it stupid. I don't agree.
So we'll just have to agree to disagree---BTW I don't think you are stupid for your views.
.
Lynda F inaccurately wrote about me:
"The ONLY reason you don't support prohibition is because your cash cow would vanish overnight and there'd be NO MORE FUNDING for you and yours."
Lynda obviously isn't aware that I've never received a salary or any other financial compensation from Smokefree Pennsylvania since I founded the organization in 1990. I'm just a dedicated volunteer working to reduce the deadliest drug addiction and the most prevalent form of air pollution exposure to humans via humanitarian public policies.
Kevin inaccurately quoted me when he wrote:
"Bill says it with such pride "smokers have no rights""
In fact, smokers have the exact same legal rights as nonsmokers. But burning dried leaves in public places is not one of those rights.
WLC inquired:
"So, you're against prohibition but you lament that cigarettes couldn't be prohibited under S. 625. So, which is it?"
While I oppose cigarette prohibition, it would be disingenous and counterproductive for US Congress to authorize a federal agency (i.e. FDA) to regulate any product while specifically prohibiting that agency from having unfettered regulatory autonomy over the product (as doing so prohibits the agency from having real regulatory authority).
If the Nazi comparison was an outlandish claim, I might agree it's stupid. However, seeing as how the TRUTH is what I posted, then that means I was sharing the TRUTH. Nothing outlandish about the truth. I can't help how other people see it. If they are stupid enough to think nothing started until the Jews and massacres...well I suppose that's their problem, not mine. I however know that there is always something that starts the ball rolling, and he'd have never gotten to massacres and executions if he hadn't started as he did.
History is never stupid, it's to LEARN from. Don't you think we should SHOW them where to find the information?
Yeah, sure Bill, we'll quit burning stuff when the rest of the world does. Surely you're interested in consistency and fairness? Oh, darn, no you're not, you support tobacco taxes. Probably because you don't PAY them.
Sunz,
I never said the people who said it were stupid, I said it was a stupid thing to say and I also think it is a tad dishonest.
You see Hitler and the Nazis believed in a lot of things and some of them are still pretty legit to this day. Hitler supported capital punishment (I don't), but I would hardly call someone who thinks that someone like Jeffery Dahmer or Son of Sam should have been (or should be) executed a Nazi. Hitler also believed in animal welfare (not to be confused with Animal Rights) and enacted some of the first animal protection laws. I wouldn't call someone who believed that microwaving a cat is wrong a Nazi. Hitler was an exercise nut, you get the idea.
Hitler and the Nazis weren't the only people who hate smoking and it wasn't a major part of their ideology, so calling anti-smoking people Nazis is rather weak. Henry Ford was an anti-smoker and Thomas Edison (a cigar smoker) believed that cigarette smoking caused laziness and sexual deviancy. You compare anti-smokers to a really bad group of people over some relatively minor thing they have in common, they can compare themselves to some really great people over something minor they have in common.
Like I said, Puritan or comparing the anti-smoking movement to the Temperance movement is so much better because it describes there mindset so well and they have so much in common. I can picture Bill Godshall writing editorials about "the vile drink" and ranting about how immorality and unhealthiness of alcohol. I can see John Banzhaf proudly suing the "makers of this demonic drink" and rail against them for "corrupting the soul and poisoning the body".
Jalestra wrote:
"If the Nazi comparison was an outlandish claim, I might agree it's stupid."
The only perinent comparison between cigarette smokers and Nazis is that both cigarette smokers and the Nazis poisoned millions of innocent people with air pollution.
The key difference, however, is that cigarettes continue poisoning hundreds of millions of innocent people, while the Nazi atrocities ended more than sixty years ago.
"Most people think of gas chambers, massacres, and the execution of political opponents when they think of the Nazis."
Perhaps. And I guess if that's what you first think of, the current comparison is harsh.
But when I think of Nazi's I think of the insidious way they managed to seduce a whole group of people into thinking it was right, just, and correct to increasingly deny liberties to another whole group of people. Once that denormalization and then dehumanization was complete, the rest followed.
I also think of an entire world that stood by and believed that it could never happen, or that someone else would stop it.
"cigarettes continue poisoning hundreds of millions of innocent people"
read: baby-killers
You made my point Bill
"The only perinent comparison between cigarette smokers and Nazis is that both cigarette smokers and the Nazis poisoned millions of innocent people with air pollution."
Read the above statement. Now do you realize how stupid it is when someone throws around the word 'Nazi'?
While it is still wrong to throw around the word Nazi, at least there was a connection (however strained) when it was first used. Nazis were control freaks and autocratic.
Bill is calling smokers genocidal.
Harley - I don't know about *throwing around the word Nazi* -- but it's important to point out that the tactics are quite the same. The end game? Perhaps Bill doesn't really want to "exterminate" smokers. But I hope we never have to find out.
Harley,
I do see your point, but I am more in agreement with GDF when she states:
'But when I think of Nazi's I think of the insidious way they managed to seduce a whole group of people into thinking it was right, just, and correct to increasingly deny liberties to another whole group of people. Once that denormalization and then dehumanization was complete, the rest followed' (well stated)
That is my concern with the likes of the Bills of the world. It's the control that he feels very comfortable with excerting in his cause.
I don't think the connection is outlandish but your point here is well taken when you state: "Like I said, Puritan or comparing the anti-smoking movement to the Temperance movement is so much better because it describes there mindset so well and they have so much in common. I can picture Bill Godshall writing editorials about "the vile drink" and ranting about how immorality and unhealthiness of alcohol. I can see John Banzhaf proudly suing the "makers of this demonic drink" and rail against them for "corrupting the soul and poisoning the body"."
I CAN easily see that being future for them.
.
Bill Godshall -The only perinent comparison between cigarette smokers and Nazis is that both cigarette smokers and the Nazis poisoned millions of innocent people with air pollution.
The key difference, however, is that cigarettes continue poisoning hundreds of millions of innocent people, while the Nazi atrocities ended more than sixty years ago.
................
Bill,
Thank you for coming out of the closet - you have finally revealed your true nature.
The lucrative business of Big Tobacco Control in partnership with the Legal Drug Cartel have used all the propaganda techniques of Nazism,Fascism and Communism.
When this new axis must resort to Kills! Baby Murder! Poisonous Toxins! Criminal Child Abusers! - then how are you different?
The goal is the same whether you call it Nazism or Crusaders for a Healthy America.
"...the Nazi atrocities ended more than sixty years ago."
Did they? Why do you wish to travel down the same road?
"What was new in the Nazi period were augmented police and legislative powers to implement broad preventive measures." The police powers implied by fascism allowed the public health ideology to show its real nature."
Pierre Lemieux
Nazi era propaganda piece:
"Brother national socialist, do you know that our Führer is against smoking and thinks that every German is responsible to the whole people for all his deeds and emissions, and does not have the right to damage his body with drugs?"
New, updated version for American Socialists (BTC and Big Pharma)
"My fellow Americans, do you know the Health and Freedom party is against smoking and that every American is responsible to all Americans for all his or her deeds and emissions, and does not have the right to damage his or her body with drugs?"
"In fact, smokers have the exact same legal rights as nonsmokers. But burning dried leaves in public places is not one of those rights."
And here, for me, is the crux of the problem.
You are under no obligation to enter or remain in a bar or restaurant that prefers to cater to a specific market segment. It's typically private property, especially and specifically in the case of the small independent mom & pop venues.
Patrons in these places are there by choice. A choice that Anti-tobacco proponents simply don't want to have to make, or for whatever reason believe they shouldn't be required to make. It's not that hard.
You are not entitled to a Smoke Free environment by accepting an open invitation into Private Property.
You are free to decline, or otherwise ignore that invitation.
I should not be required to provide an atmosphere that is not condusive to the growth of the business.
Since the majority of patrons gained since opening the business were the result of those people being ostracised from other hospitality businesses that had VOLUNTARILY set a no smoking policy, to force me to extend that same discriminatory policy whether I want to or not is equal to an economic sanction against the business simply because you say so.
It's discriminatory toward my patrons.
Tobacco prohibitionists will routinely and triumphantly proclaim ”There is NO right to smoke” as if this were the only logical end of any debate on the subject. This statement is absolutely correct of course. Smoking is NOT a right.
Smoking is a Civil Liberty, just as the choice to NOT smoke is a Civil Liberty as well.
There is also NO right to a Smoke Free environment. A Smoke Free environment is a personal preference.
A Smoke Free environment is neither a Civil Liberty, nor a Freedom guaranteed under the US Constitution.
The Freedom to seek out and enjoy a smoke free environment that meets your personal preference is a Civil Liberty.
The Freedom to seek out and enjoy an environment that specifically caters to citizens that smoke is no less a Liberty.
An individual Non-smokers personal preference for a “Smoke Free” environment is irrelevant to the business and property owner that has spent their time, energy and resources in designing an environment that is specifically aimed at enticing citizens that smoke into patronizing their establishments. Non-Smoker’s are always welcome of course, but their personal preferences end at the front door of businesses where smoking is obviously permitted, since they are aware that to cross that threshold of their own volition means they would be assuming personal responsibility for their actions. Fortunately for them in a Free Society they have the right to do so, but make no mistake, by doing so they are ignoring their own personal preference for a Smoke Free environment. How is this even remotely the responsibility of those business owners?
Non-smoking potential employees are no less capable of avoiding such environments.
Contrary to Tobacco Control propaganda, the Freedoms, Rights and Civil Liberties of Non-smokers do not preempt the Freedoms, Rights and Civil Liberties of anyone that disagrees with their false assumption of a Right to a Smoke Free environment on PRIVATE PROPERTY, and least of all the Freedoms, Rights, and Civil Liberties of the property owner.
According to the US Constitution, the Freedoms, Rights and Civil Liberties of Non-smokers are no more or less important than the Freedoms, Rights and Civil Liberties of any other individual regardless of how much Non-smokers may believe, or selfishly wish it to be so.
Non-smokers Freedoms, Rights and Civil Liberties end precisely where these things begin for everyone else; when those Rights infringe on the rights and well-being of others. This of course includes people that have made the personal choice to smoke, and more importantly the property owners that would allow that legal activity to occur on Private Property.
Don't smoke?, Don't like smoke?. Don't want to work around smoke?,....don't come in.
It really is that easy.
But you're still banned, so don't even try.
I can go with "Prohibitionist" too. But let's not underestimate the damage that Prohibition caused. In fact, it has more of a personal connection to me. My great-grandfather was killed by the police in 1927 for distributing alcohol. He left 3 children, who were completely orphaned 5 years later, during the Depression era.
Recently, as I did a little more research on the event - I ran across an old newspaper article that stated that the father-in-law of the man who was killed by the police had been 30 years earlier "a founding member of the Prohibitionist Party" in the area.
Isn't it ironic... doncha think?
Bill...
50 years ago it was 1957, do you have any proof cigarette companies were spending billions of dollars a year to fight for smokers' rights in 1957?
Mike Mcfadden...remember the South Park episode where the smoker got kicked out of the museum of tolerance?
Dr. Siegel, on a recent thread, you said that the reason 46% of the public still thinks shs is not that dangerous is because of people like us. and you went on to say if 90% of the public thought shs was dangerous, then you would not support bans because you would consider everyone adequately warned.
When the ban demons came to St. Louis County, ( and lost twice) I listened to several talk radio shows where callers were generally saying that they could not believe shs is that dangerous because they knew so many smokers who lived full, healthy lives well into their 80's, which is what they said was how long the nonsmokers they knew were living too.
And they just could not believe that nonsmokers getting much smaller doses could be at that much risk.
My point is, the reason why 46% of the public does not believe you, is not because of us, or as Bill put it, because big tobacco spends billions of dollars, it's because the plausibility is just plain not there.
And even the Surgeon genneral's report loudly trumpted last year simply could not change many minds about shs because the whole concept sounds just plain stupid to so many people.
So..I'm just pointing out that people like myself and others cannot be blamed for the fact that 46% still don't believe you, and therefore are not adequately warned, and certainly, we are not to be blamed for the fact that you still support bans.
dave K
“Lynda obviously isn't aware that I've never received a salary or any other financial compensation from Smokefree Pennsylvania since I founded the organization in 1990. I'm just a dedicated volunteer working to reduce the deadliest drug addiction and the most prevalent form of air pollution exposure to humans via humanitarian public policies.” Bill Godshall…
Hi Bill!!
As you must know Bill, the law does not favor a “volunteer”. I applaud your effort to correct what you believe was “inaccurately wrote” about you. Keep in mind that more compelling, damaging ,and inaccurate statements made about smoking and smokers happen to be part of regular debate both here and elsewhere.
Have a nice day Bill.
Bill,
As I understand this new FDA bill (sponsored by some R from Wyoming, I think), the goal is to eliminate cigarettes within a 20 year time frame. So, this is not a bill you would approve either?
If you do not favor prohibition, why should the FDA have any authority over tobacco when it's clear where it would lead? At least by your testimony, they should have the power to impose prohibition.
Sounds more like an arguement to chuck the whole FDA regulation idea altogether.
"I can go with "Prohibitionist" too. But let's not underestimate the damage that Prohibition caused."
Exactly. I have no doubt in my mind that the anti-tobacco people can do a lot damage if they keep getting their why. A lot of small bars and restaurants have gone out of business due to smoking bans and here in Australia, a lot tobacconists have gone out of business because the government here views the mere display of tobacco products as a form of advertising. The anti-smokers living off of the government or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation might not realize that when a small business goes under it is like losing your house. A lot of these people end up with crushing debts and have a hard time finding employment afterwards, but if it means getting what they want and protecting people from themselves, so be it.
I can see it getting much worse as people like Stanton Glantz get more people to listen to them and get more influence. The more influence they get, the worse they get.
Well Bill, then allow me to point out how you consistently INACCURATELY call smokers: delusional, rapists (elude to actually), murderers, child abusers, selfish, stupid, UNintelligent, etc etc etc.
If you can dish it out dear, you best be prepared to take it too. Who funds Smokefree PA? Just because YOU personally don't get paid, doesn't mean the org you volunteer for doesn't. And I'll bet they take tobacco money too (and directly from smokers too via the MSA).
So kindly spare us the self-righteous attitude.
Nazi era Death Certificate:
Signed by the chief medical officer of Auschwitz:
Cause of death, question number 35:
Did semitic blood contribute to death?
Yes
Or,
Did National Socialism's health policy contribute to death?
Yes
A thought...
Question number 35 on the CDC-approved death certificate may be the main correlation for the claimed deaths due to smoking:
"Question 35 is the leading preventable cause of premature death."
Bill: But burning dried leaves in public places is not one of those rights.
Is burning petrol in public places one of those rights?
OT Article
"Printer Particles Pose Risk"
http://www.photonics.com/content...y/31/
88624.aspx
~snip~
Workers could face a health threat -- in some cases, on par to that of cigarette smoking -- from office laser printers that emit large amounts of tiny particles into the air. Potential effects range from respiratory irritation to effects on the cardiovascular system and cancer, said Professor Lidia Morawska from the Queensland University of Technology, as reported in Australia's ABC Science Online.
Harley,you have previously stated your dislike for the use of the term Nazi.I advised before that it is in common usage on both FORCES and FOREST websites .That is perfectly sufficient to my mind.If you wish to disagree,perhaps approaching FORCES may disabuse you of your concerns.
If we now know that ETS kills tens of thousands of unsuspecting nonsmokers each year, aren't people who continue to smoke indoors in public places criminals? Dr. Siegel, why shouldn't they be punished?
What car is it that Bill drives,i seem to recollect its rather inferior green record.Oh Bill do you support discontinuing the burning of fossil fuel,or wood ? Der how are people supposed to keep warm,or cook food.Burning tobacco leaves has taken place for the last umpteen hundred years,slightly longer than you have graced this planet i would suspect.As you never receiving any money for "smokemore PA" do you charge extra for your celebrity appearances ?
Sorry the resemblances are there. I'd suggest the anti's change their behavior and then the comparison would be lost. You may feel the word is stupid, but the if the ideology fits..*shrugs*
If you act like an idiot, someone will eventually call you an idiot. Should we change the word idiot because some idiots did a couple of smart things? No, even a broken clock is right twice a day. The anti behavior follows the exact ideology, that's not MY fault. You are correct,they haven't followed the exact plan of action, but wouldn't you like for people to SEE where this behavior leads BEFORE it actually leads there?
You may think that we'll never see another Nazi era...I see one every day, and it looms closer and closer. Stop and look around you, "fat's contagious", "smokers kill non-smokers and children", people that are fat getting paid less because their skinnier counterparts get bonuses for being skinny, people who smoke paying for hospital care that is (in some countries) being denied to them, being taught to fear EVERYTHING because if we're scared, we don't fight. So we're not split up into Jews and gypsy's. But the purity of the species is the centerpoint and the new evil people are fat and they smoke, they have diabetes, they are "costing us money".
sorry, that last should read "they are "costing us money", the pure, the healthy.
Harley-----'Henry Ford was an anti-smoker and Thomas Edison (a cigar smoker) believed that cigarette smoking caused laziness and sexual deviancy. You compare anti-smokers to a really bad group of people over some relatively minor thing they have in common, they can compare themselves to some really great people over something minor they have in common.'
Re; Henry Ford, I would hardly consider this having something minor in common:
http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/9...99/
hhr99_2.html
~snip~
However; Ford himself never abandoned his deep-rooted anti-Semitism. His anti-Semitic literature can still be found in great abundance, more than fifty years after his death. While Ford is considered to be a great man by many Americans, he spawned an ugly legacy of hatred and bigotry that still has ramifications today.
BTW are you also aware that with their snooty attitude toward cigarette smoke, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison partnered in inventing the charcoal brickette (Kingsford Charcoal) as a way of recycling their waste? How ironic, huh?
.
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Illinois State Representative Abraham Lincoln, 1840
This is the car Si,
http://www.amlibpub.com/
liberty_...nvironment.html
And burning dried leaves was quite acceptable to Godshall as a 3-pack a day smoker. BTW Bill while Si is here, could you please give him a count of those you 'poisoned' w/ SHS in all of those years. Or at least tell us where the bodies are.
.
Sunz,
fascinating link on Ford. Well worth a read. Awarded a Nazi medal from Hitler who thought highly of Ford.
Excerpt
Hitler commented, �I wish I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections. We look on Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascist movement in America.
GreatScot
Bill,
Just so we're all real clear Bill, who did you say was doing the 'killing'?
http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_...ing-
people.html
~snip~“the effort to 'prove' ETS is a human carcinogen is largely and activist/advocate effort...by avowed anti-smoking advocates determined to somehow prove that ETS is a human carcinogen in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary."
~snip~
'Once again, it is clear that, regardless of the good intentions of the jihadist do-gooders, lies and a belief that the end justifies the means simply do not work. They cannot make a safer world than truth, science and respect for individual rights--including property rights--of people causing no harm to others. Liberty is still the best answer--in fact, the only answer--to a better, safer society. But some people never learn; they keep trying to prove that force is better than freedom and individual rights. And their mistakes continue to be paid for with the blood and lives of innocent people.'
.
Thanks GreatScot,
More here:
http://www.allfreeessays.com/stu...nti-
Semite.html
"In "Mein Kampf", Hitler voices his praise for Ford even more. "It is Jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the American Union. Every year makes them more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions; only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence."
Fords's factories were in fact the only buinesses' not taken over by the Reich.
More:
http://www.orange-papers.org/ora...e-
rroot540.html
~snip~
The first paragraph began: "There is a race, a part of humanity which has never yet been received as a welcome part." This people, the article continued, has ever been fouling the earth and plotting to dominate it. In order to eventually rule the Gentiles, the Jews have long been conspiring to form an "international super-capitalist government." This racial problem, the Independent said, was the "prime" question confronting all society'
_________
It amazes me who we make into heros, when we don't know our history and learn from it.
.
LightningBoy wrote:
"You are under no obligation to enter or remain in a bar or restaurant that prefers to cater to a specific market segment."
That argument has been repeatedly rejected by courts throughout America.
Bill Godshall wrote, " “Lynda obviously isn't aware that I've never received a salary or any other financial compensation from Smokefree Pennsylvania since I founded the organization in 1990. I'm just a dedicated volunteer.... ” "
Bill, just two quick questions, so that we are on a "level playing field"...
Does SmokeFree Pennsylvania receive any money for its activities from any group, industry, company, or organization that has financial connections which could benefit from promoting smoking bans through either grants or profits? And, if it does, do you feel that such a connection invalidates, or should be used to invalidate, any of the work or statements of SFPA or yourself? Would you use such connections from the other side to invalidate the work of others?
And do you yourself or the funds of SFPA have any investments in such companies, or mutual fund type things that include such companies?
There is no reason to avoid answering such questions Bill: They are exactly the same sort of questions you would pose to those of us on the other side of the issue.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
WLC inquired:
"As I understand this new FDA bill (sponsored by some R from Wyoming, I think), the goal is to eliminate cigarettes within a 20 year time frame. So, this is not a bill you would approve either?"
Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) opposes FDA regulation of tobacco products, and he has introduced legislation that would require tobacco companies to reduce the number of consumers of their products by 90% over the next 20 years.
That's not prohibition, as cigarette companies would simply be fined $3,500/year for every consumer of their product that exceeds the allowed number, which would give cigarette companies a financial incentive to reduce the sale of their products.
Ya just gotta laugh...
BILL FOR PRESIDENT !
And Bill the doc finally got around to reading the Heritage article (next thread)that I posted awhile ago stating that we will need 22 million new smoker to support your plan for the children. And you claim you have no financial interest in continuing tobacco sales. You are a liar.
.
here is the link:
http://www.heritage.org/Research...Care/
wm1548.cfm
0.
Michael McFadden inquired:
"Does SmokeFree Pennsylvania receive any money for its activities from any group, industry, company, or organization that has financial connections which could benefit from promoting smoking bans through either grants or profits?"
No.
But if Mr. McFadden would like to contribute to Smokefree Pennsylvania
(since sales of his book may increase as more smokefree laws are enacted), I'd be pleased to deposit the check.
Persecution of smokers goes back for centuries, world-wide. So does collecting exorbitant taxes from them. The only thing that changes is the rationale. Sometimes it was a religion of one sort or another. It's an on-and-off kind of thing that changes with the fashions of the times. We happen to live in one of the more enlightened ages, adept at selecting from a wide-ranging body of science whatever points we need to backup our position. I suspect that in some future time this will also be seen for what it is.
Wow, the companies have to go out and force smokers to quit buying their product? Are you holding Ford to the same standards in an effort to reduce auto emissions? How about DuPont, holding them to those standards to reduce the levels of pollution released into our atmosphere? Are you holding Coors to that standard to reduce the instances of drunk driving? It's funny, but seeing as vehicles and plants are producing the most amount of pollution, the only companies you are holding to that standard are tobacco companies. What about Kellogs, you know, WAR ON FAT, do they have an allowed amount of customers? Hershey's?
Punishing a company for making a legal product people enjoy enough to buy? Wow, what jerks. How could they????
Can you prove that, Bill?
Oh, and while we're on punishing companies for making things their consumers like, can we PLEASE hold the music companies responsible for Britney Spears and the tv companies for Paris Hilton?
Michael McFadden inquired:
"Does SmokeFree Pennsylvania receive any money for its activities from any group, industry, company, or organization that has financial connections which could benefit from promoting smoking bans through either grants or profits?"
No.
Then there should be no problem disclosing all their funding sources? Excellent. Let's all go look, and I do hope they are public...I'd be hard-pressed to believe Bill didn't accidentally on purpose forget to list one or two.
Alright, Bill.
Since what you suggest would lead to de facto prohibition (which you support) as opposed to de jure prohibition (which you oppose), why do you dance around the obvious?
We're not newspaper editors or the general public: you do, in fact, support prohibition--or policies that deliberately tend in that direction in one form or another.
If you would come clean, perhaps some would respect you, even if they still oppose you. But, then, victory is all that matters, I suppose.
Linda, there's also all that digging to find that those companies ARE supporting under some other name. I haven't heard of a single anti organization that wasn't held up by some kind of questionable funding, mainly pharmaceutical. Like I'd believe Bill without hiring the Pinkerton agency. He hasn't listed his financial sources, so..well..
Does anyone have a link to SmokeFree PA? I'm not finding one. Lots of references for "smoke free pa" but no real site.
Bills site, of course is nothing but him talking to himself (since no one could answer), and of no help at all.
I'm not terribly worried. During prohibition the alcohol manufacturers went into other lines of business and in the meantime (1919-1933) amassed evidence against prohibitionist groups.
When congressional hearings began in the early 30s, the manufacturers hit so hard the prohibitionists never recovered. When the time comes, we'll hear from RJR, PM, and others.
Bill: "The only perinent comparison between cigarette smokers and Nazis is that both cigarette smokers and the Nazis poisoned millions of innocent people with air pollution."
Harley: Read the above statement. Now do you realize how stupid it is when someone throws around the word 'Nazi'?
Me: Antismoking *BEGAN* in NAZI Germany. To turn around and call people who smoke NAZIs is the ultimate in hypocrisy. Harley, the NAZI comparison in this instance is NOT stupid; it is hisorical fact. (Although GDF's comments are also well worth noting.)
Another BIZARRE thought--
Bill believes that everuone has the "right" to smoke-free air? there is no such thing--unless he believes that he can outlaw fire, barbeques, burning fossil fuels.... what an absolutely...bizarre notion. Serious case of ASDS.
(Lynda D.--If you get a chance, please send an e-mail to BlueroseGarden-at-aol-dot-com. Thanks. --Stephanie)
I appreciate that emotions on both sides of the discussion are high, and I also appreciate people's honesty and candor in expressing their feelings. However, I do implore everyone to attempt to avoid hurtful personal attacks as well as unnecessarily broad comparisons that may be disrespectful or may be perceived as being disrespectful or insensitive. I agree with Harley that comparing public health or tobacco control to the Nazi movement doesn't make much sense, and I also think that comparing smokers to Nazis is equally nonsensical. If people are comparing specific anti-smoking tactics/agenda with specific anti-smoking elements of the Nazi movement, then please try to be very specific, as many readers might be offended by being referred to, or compared to Nazis. The same goes for comparing smokers to Nazis. While I try to let discussion flow freely, I also have to note that these kinds of comments do not really contribute much to the discussion - especially if they are overly broad.
I also reiterate my plea to try to avoid derogatory personal attacks aimed at an identified individual. Attacking someone's arguments is fair game, but I'd like the discussion here to focus as much as possible on the issues, not the character of various individuals who are commenting here.
I thank everyone for their candid and heartfelt participation in these exchanges. I'm not aware of too many forums where this could take place (at least not where people from both sides of the issue participate).
Bill tells Mike that should he like to write him a check from all the money he will be making on his book, he would be more than glad to deposit it. So I ask. In what account will it be deposited? Your personnal account or the hidden one from MSA or pharmacutical money?
Along the lines of not insulting anyone, I want to clarify two comments of my own which seem to have been misconstrued.
First, I do NOT believe that if someone doesn't feel that secondhand smoke is a severe health hazard, that they are "uninformed." The point I was trying to make is that IF we accept that secondhand smoke is a severe health hazard, then the current state of knowledge of most Americans is not such that one could call the public adequately informed of the risk. Thus, the argument that smoking bans are unnecessary specifically because people are adequately informed that secondhand smoke is a severe health hazard is not really relevant. The relevant issue, I argue, is whether or not the stipulation is correct or not (that secondhand smoke is a severe health hazard).
There are many well-informed people who opine that secondhand smoke is not a particularly hazardous exposure. I am not calling these people (or anyone with similar views) uninformed.
However, if we stipulate for the purposes of discussion that secondhand smoke is a severe hazard, then I feel that it is not compelling to use the argument that smoking bans would not be necessary because people are adequately informed of the risks. That's all that I'm trying to say.
Second, I should clarify that I'm NOT suggesting that the reason why only 44% of the public believes secondhand smoke is a severe health hazard is that people like some of the commenters here are disagreeing with the conclusions of anti-smoking groups. I think both Bill and Dave K. point out insightful reasons why people have the beliefs they do about secondhand smoke. One important point is that while you can observe the immediate impact and deadly consequences of exposures like car racing, poisons, excessive alcohol, drugs, lightning, etc., one cannot observe immediate effects of an exposure that causes effects many years later and only after chronic exposure - or where there is less of a definitive observable connection between the exposure and the human response.
I do however feel that it is true that it is difficult for people to be adequately informed about a severe health risk when there is not a general public consensus about the severity of that risk.
Jalestra, I'm quite content to take Bill's word for it: he's a public enough figure and SFPA a public enough organization that it would be silly for him to lie. Although I'd like an answer to the second part of my question as well (regarding his or SFPA's own investments... particularly given the issue raised here a number of times about smokeless tobacco. I would think Bill would welcome the opportunity to make a clear statement in that regard.) For my own part I'm quite happy to make a similar disclosure, though it would have to be regarding hospitality and tobacco companies (Though I'm not going to try to say that none of them have ever bought my book! LOL! Just wish they'd buy MORE of them! :> ) (My disclosure also includes any mutual funds etc. insofar as I'm aware... I have NO idea if my local bank has any investments!)
And Bill, the first time a major school system in the US decides to balance its curriculum on social justice or public health policies by ordering quantities of Brains for its students I'll send a contribution to ... hmmm... well, I may not be willing to contribute to SFPA, but I'm sure there are some organizations out there unrelated to smoking that we both support.
I'd also like Bill to address the third aspect of my question: if he or SFPA *did* have such connections, would he feel that it should invalidate what he has to say or should be used against him or his statements?
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Bill, I do apologize, it wasn't really a personal attack on you when I said "Like I'd believe Bill"...what I meant to say should be clearer in the rest of the comment--I haven't yet seen an anti organization that isn't funded, even secretly, by some biased party.
I wouldn't believe you, Bill, but again that's also not personal. I pretty much don't believe anyone. People lie entirely too much for me to take them at face value. It really isn't intended as an attack on "Bill Godshall" as much as it is just my own opinion of human nature.
Finally, two other points:
1. Take my word for it - Bill does not have any significant funding (personal or through Smokefree Pennsylvania). He is one of the FEW tobacco control advocates who is still doing this essentially as an individual concerned advocate, not as a paid professional. The anti-smoking movement has become far too dominated by large, highly-funded, professional organizations and has lost its small, individual, grassroots flavor. This I see as a tremendous detriment to the movement. But Bill is one of the last stalwarts from the old era. This is one reason why I respect his work so much.
2. While there is no absolute right to smoke, and certainly no Constitutionally-granted right to smoke, I think it is well recognized that people have the right to do things unless otherwise prohibited from doing them. And in order to prohibit them from doing those things, there needs to be a compelling government justification. I don't find it any more useful to speak about there being no right to smoke than to talk about there being no right to drink alcohol, or no right to play on a swing in a playground.
If a town wants to prohibit riding on a swing in a playground, however, there needs to be a compelling justification for doing so. If the swing was damaged and represented a health threat, then that would be a reasonable justification.
In the same way, if government wants to ban smoking in certain places, I believe there needs to be a compelling public health justification. When it comes to widespread bans on smoking in all outdoors places (e.g., parking lots, streets, sidewalks), I just don't see that compelling justification. So the argument that smokers have no right to smoke in a parking lot or on a sidewalk does not do anything for me. A person has no absolute right to walk on a sidewalk in the first place. (If the sidewalk were not maintained and became dangerous, a town could prohibit people from using that sidewalk)
The important issue is whether there is sufficient justification for interfering with people's individual liberties to prohibit the activity in question. I have been trying, for some time, to engage colleagues in the tobacco control movement in such a discussion regarding these outdoor smoking bans. Unfortunately, I have been unable to engender any discussion, only personal attacks and insinuations.
"That argument has been repeatedly rejected by courts throughout America."
So you ARE obligated to enter a smoking venue whether you want to or not? You have no freewill?
You ARE REQUIRED to remain in a business that doesn't meet your personal preferences?
YOU have no CHOICE?
Is that it?
You're delusional.
"Thus, the argument that smoking bans are unnecessary specifically because people are adequately informed"
Noo... the original argument was that bartenders COULD be adequately informed (by signing a consent form with any info you wanted). THAT's the argument you backed away from by bringing in the issue of belief.
"... it is true that it is difficult for people to be adequately informed about a severe health risk when there is not a general public consensus about the severity of that risk."
Well that's basically the most astonishing thing I have ever heard. Dr. Siegel says that we need to ban SHS in bars because it is "clearly" a health risk. It is so clear to him that he thinks that is justifies intruding into small businesses with the storm troopers and bringing all those little old ladies to justice. It is so obviously a health scourge that he wants to ban it, even though he ADMITS it destroys at least some businesses and the people who own those businesses.
Why not just provide a warning to bartenders instead? Well, because there's no clear consensus that SHS is a real threat, making it impossible for bartenders to... come to the same conclusion Dr. Siegel comes to.
So, to clarify: When a ban requires it to be CLEAR that SHS is a real and severe health threat, Dr. Siegel says it is. Unless, of course, you are asking whether bartenders can really understand the threat. In that case, no one can really agree whether it's a threat or not.
Yeah. Well. My ass is a pumpkin. Again.
What a bunch of low-grade, thoughtless hackery.
The above was addressed to Michael S., of course.
*refusing the pie next Thanksgiving*
Not really OT:
How Much Jail Time?
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek
Lead in:
Aug. 6, 2007 issue - Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them."
You have to hand it to the questioner; he struggles manfully. "Usually when things are illegal there's a penalty attached," he explains patiently. But he can't get a single person to be decisive about the crux of a matter they have been approaching with absolute certainty.
Excerpt:
If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail.
URL: http://tinyurl.com/27go4h
My reason for posting and linking to this article is in reference to the campaign by some Health Jihadists to enact legislation that would make parents who smoke at home with their children present criminal child abusers. That criminal act may be extended to automobiles.
What would be the penalty? Would the children be removed from the home? Would the parents be sent to prison? With a conviction for child abuse and prison time, would the parents ever be able to get jobs again? Without jobs, then what?
I asked that question(s) of Cathy Bell who indicated support for such a law. In fact, I asked it at least 4 times. She refused to reply.
On this blog I make no argument for or against abortion. Only,when a ban is enacted, when an act is criminalized, then what?
Sam-
You're twisting my arguments so much that you are completely distorting them. My argument is pretty clear: smoking bans are necessary because secondhand smoke is a severe health threat and the public is generally not aware (only 44%) that secondhand smoke is a severe health threat. That's my argument.
So you have 2 choices if you want to shoot it down:
1) Argue that secondhand smoke is not a severe health threat. If you do that, you shoot down my argument. People obviously do not need protection if the threat is not substantial.
2) Argue that although secondhand smoke is a severe health threat, people are sufficiently aware that it is a severe health threat so that they can make a fully informed decision to assume that threat. If you do that, you shoot down my argument.
I can't quite figure out which of these arguments you are making. Is it #1 or #2. It can't be both, because argument #2 accepts that there is a severe health threat.
Maybe if we can narrow this down to which argument you are making, then we can make some progress in focusing our discussion.
Or imagine this. Just for a second. I know it will be hard for you. But try.
Let's assume that most people are not helpless nitwits. And that they can analyze information and come to their own conclusions. Sometimes these will be shocking decisions. But how about we accept that, because people are free to do what they want.
For instance, I cannot fathom that a grown man with children would get in a racecar and drive it. But some do. Some don't think it's that dangerous. Some admit it is but love the thrill. Some don't give a crap either way and are just trying to make a buck.
Wow.
But if we applied your logic to that profession, we would ban the risk. Which would be, ahem, arrogant and domineering and patronizing.
As for shooting down the notion that SHS is dangerous, I can't. Because when I or anyone else begins an argument, you start from the position that SHS is CLEARLY a severe health hazard. So you are assuming the conclusion. Which of course is the definition of begging the question.
See two posts below if you don't recall doing that.
You will not address the fact that very smart people have looked at the evidence and concluded differently than you have.
We know this, because you use the fact that 44 percent of people disagree with you as EVIDENCE of their nitwittery.
Although you won't mention Drs. Whelan or Gori in your analysis. Weird.
What you do is claim to want to talk evidence until someone actually takes you up on it. Then you run and hide for a few weeks. Then you switch to saying that it has less to do with the risk than with a sufficient warning. Until someone calls you on that. Then it's all about the science again. Unles someone asks. Then it's time to ban NASCAR. Unless someone does two seconds of research to kick the crap out of that promise, and you switch things up again.
The fact of the matter is, you are an arrogant, arrogant man., And you cannot fathom that intelligent people might disagree with you. In fact, it infuriates you to such an extent that, when your powers of persuasion fail you, you run to the legislature and tattle on the nasty smokers. Who think you are full of crap.
But prove me wrong. Tell me right now, in your next post: You say a person does not have to agree with you to be sufficiently warned. OK. Tell me what a person who disagrees with you would have to do to prove that he or she had gotten the right warning, but drawn a different conclusion.
I challenge you. As a man and as a professinal. To answer that directly, openly and honestly.
But you won't. Because then you will be in trouble. Because we would then have in our hands the elusive warning that you say would suffice to make you back away from a ban.
Instead, you will continue to measure "knowledge" and "warning" by measuring the people who don't think you are wrong.
So do it. And do it now. Name me someone who disagrees with you but has been sufficiently warned. Tell me what those people know.
You say they exist. Call me out. Prove me wrong. Tell me what bartenders need to know to be sufficiently warned.
And everyone else... get ready for the crickets.
I meant to look one post down.
See? Not so hard to admit a mistake.
Now about that promise to advicate for a ban on racing...
Dr Siegel,yet again you attempt to throw the question back at Sam.You,and only you,are the person who specified figures.I am getting pretty pissed that you WILL NOT ANSWER A STRAIGHT QUESTION ,but that should not come as any surprise.Your blog needs comments,even if they are the same things over and over again.You are the person who states SHS is such a dangerous commodity,yet,you WILFULLY REFUSE to discuss YOUR STUDIES THAT PROMOTED THIS POSITION.YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO WISH TO EDUCATE US AS TO WHY 1.19 IS OF SUCH CONCERN.As to the personal attacks you referred to,the primary reason is your blase attitude.You whine about the lack of knowledge the general public has in its opinion of the "danger" of SHS,YET,you don't use your blog to raise awareness of what YOU see as the "facts" WHY ?DO YOU WISH TO PERPETUATE THIS WHEN THERE IS NO NEED ? YOU APPEAR TO BE A PERSON OF EXTREMES ?
The problem is that the Doctor at one moment takes thed angers of SHS to be almost self-evident. That is, he says that there MUST be insufficient knowledge about the dangers, because otherwise 44 percent of people would not disagree.
But then comes back and insists that he is not saying that people have to agree with him to be smart people.
Which is it? Are Drs. Gori and Whelan idiots or otherwise insufficiently warned?
Or are they sufficiently warned, but simply disagree?
If the latter, fine. OK. What is it they know that bartenders need to know?
Put more succintly, doctor: If the law allowed any bartender who was sufficiently warned to tend bar in a smokey saloon, and you were in charge of licensing people who proved they were sufficiently warned, would you issue such a license to Drs. Whelan and Gori? Would you issue one to me? DTB? Sunz? Anyone else who posts here?
Or would you issue them to no one? Would their refusal to agree with you automatically disqualify them?
If not, what would the test say? What would we need to know?
Tick. Tock.
You are the one that said bartenders were smart enough to learn such things. And you were the one who said, if sufficiently warned, you would allow them to suck in the SHS.
I am calling you out on those things.
Doc you mentioned all those bartenders you know. Where you the one that explained the so called serious risks? There is not a barkeep or wait staff in all the gin joints in the world that would not understand this. The foot note explains it all.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/
pub...cation_bias.htm.
To bad the main stream media is not willing to admit that "the fix is in".
My argument is pretty clear: smoking bans are necessary because secondhand smoke is a severe health threat and the public is generally not aware (only 44%) that secondhand smoke is a severe health threat. That's my argument.
You assume they are not aware because they don't believe as you do. In todays climate, with years of propaganda shoved in their faces and down their throats, with little children having nightmares because they parents smoke and they've been told their parents are killing them....do you honestly believe anyone is uninformed? Just because they don't believe as you do?
1) Argue that secondhand smoke is not a severe health threat. If you do that, you shoot down my argument. People obviously do not need protection if the threat is not substantial.
I've pointed out baby boomers to you. You yourself cannot answer (and admitted it) WHY we are not as ill as we should be, or dead long before retirement (and apparently too many of us aren't as they are concerned about us retiring and collecting OUR social security), considering you say SHS is so toxic and deadly.
You never did answer why asthma rates increased AS exposure to SHS decreased. And sorry, but your 16 million sounds like a lot, yet when put into it's proper context within the general population.....it's barely a drop.
With over 3 million births every year in this country alone, your 400,000 (or whatever number it is this week) deaths are also just a drop in the bucket in comparison.
As far as I'm concerned these two things blow your belief out of the water. Hands on is always better than book learning. In this situation hands on would be actual real living experiences and observations, and book learning would be just that.....books, computer programs designed to tell you what you want it to.
The majority hear you, BUT their personal experiences, watching family grow older without your deadly diseases, is more compelling to them than the words of someone they really don't know (your title and education mean nothing to most people Doc) just because he claims to have the answers.
2) Argue that although secondhand smoke is a severe health threat, people are sufficiently aware that it is a severe health threat so that they can make a fully informed decision to assume that threat. If you do that, you shoot down my argument.
Nice move there......try to trick us into saying "ok you're right"
Why? You just want the satifaction of the masses agreeing with you? That's pretty lame Doc.
I stated earlier, that with all the anti-smoking crap shoved at all of us on a daily....no, hourly....basis, there isn't anyone over the age of 4 who isn't aware. Your argument is already shot down. Especially since even other scientists, epidemiologists, etc, don't agree with you. Are you really suggesting they too are NOT properly informed?
One very simple question, since you pose your question based on an IF doc.
Where is YOUR proof that SHS IS a severe health threat.
Assuming that you DON'T have this at hand, then where does your IF question fit into a model whereby you actively seek to make changes based on an assumption?
You and your bretheren in BTC are DEMANDING these laws be put into place based on this "severe health threat", yet you have been asked numerous times to provide ANY evidence that PROVES your theory that SHS is extremely dangerous to those exposed, (which is pretty far fetched, since your assumption is based on workers being exposed for 40/40 when in reality there are an extremely small percentage of bar staff who would be exposed at this rate for this duration, you have argued yourself that passive exposure that is not chronic for 40/40 is NOT a "severe health risk", IE: outdoor bans), yet in the last two months, we have honestly asked you for your research, for what evidence you can provide to prove this supposition, and at every turn our pleas of "educate us" have fallen on ears that I swear would belong to Bill, who absolutely refuses to hear any part of a sentence that doesn't fit his agenda, why does it do the same for yours?
You want us to respect you? simple, answer our questions, honestly, and without equivocations, a simple straight forward presentation of your raw data and the methods you used to make your conclusions would suffice, are these available for our "peer" review process anywhere? Anywhere?
You are the one who can't have it both ways Doc, either you have the proof we ask you for, or you are supporting reductions in the freedom to choose, economic impact on industries other than those that employ you, and a general raising of the Nanny state to fit your belief's, based on just that, your assumption that because YOU carried out the research in question, it must be correct, and using that assumption to force others to comply with your wishes. That is unethical and corrupt as hell doc, you want our respect? Then earn, the old fashioned way, provide the proof, or at least your sources for it, your personal raw data, and methods used to calculate this "severe Hazard". We have read, collectively, if not all the literature and studies available on this subject, and have drawn the conclusion that IF there is a RISK at all, it is a statisically insignificant one, and the researxh seems to bear OUR opinion on this out, so prove us wrong oh great educator, and provide your proof, or admit that you are NO BETTER than any other tobacco control group and could care less about the truth and science unless it fits YOUR agenda.
sorry about that "We have read, collectively, if not all the literature...",
Should have read
"We have read, collectively, most, if not all the literature...".
I still say, you are losing the respect of MOST of your readers here Doc, and not because you believe differently than us, but because when asked, you pull the same old Antismoking playbook chapter out, that apparently you wrote, "don't discuss the science", and it is frustrating to say the least to watch you resort to these tactics after flying the flag of ethics and truth so high, If you have none yourself, you have no basis to criticize others for their lack either.
Doc,
I have asked this previously but probably got lost in the trees.
How do you define "severe" or "serious" in the context of ETS increased risk?
Is there a threshold or is it subjective?
Thanks in Advance
GreatScot
Doc you keep saying that its 44% of bartenders that only know. Although that # comes from the poll, and thats not just bartenders they asked but the general public. So you really don't know how many of those random sample (true survey) were actually bartenders do you? no Why are you trying to feed people a typical anti smoking twist?
Is money the only way people get paid? NO There is the ego that can make their "move up the social/ political levels" equal money, for those so inclined.
The exact question in the poll was: "In general, how harmful do you feel second-hand smoke is to adults -- very harmful, somewhat harmful, not too harmful, or not at all harmful?"
44% answered "somewhat" and "not too/not at all". Feeling, not knowing!
And you couldn't ask a question like: "Do you know how harmful SHS is?" because there is no common measure for "knowledge". We know what we know, its a question of access to information, interest in a subject, perception, memory and recall, understanding, level of education, personal appreciation, personal bias, believes.
And there is no answer, because nobody knows.
What they measured was personal believes, feeling.
... and we all know to what extent people can be lured into believing something through propaganda.
One example of European history was cited above.
Another example is the People's Temple movement which ended with a mass-suicide.
Another day, another paradigm shift.
You do realize, doc, that the 2 choices you "offered" Sam as an ostensible response to the challenges he posed, have nothing to do with the challenges he posed and little to do with your own previous statements. Nor do they fit the big questions involved. They're another try at sidetracking, or at any rate an attempt to cram the discussion into a few shoeboxes you found in your closet that once upon a time held some shoes you were comfortable in.
But let's play it as it lays. Or nearly. Since I'll offer you a third shoe box:
I'll argue that, given the depth and breadth of the contradictory findings, (the pros and the cons), the small RRs and the weak associations where such even exist, there is simply no proof that secondhand smoke is a serious health threat, but the majority of people (56%!!) have been led-- thru incessant hyperbolic propaganda-- to falsely believe there is. And in the wake of those beliefs have gone along with a social program that has injured, not only individual citizens but society as a whole and done irreparable damage to American ideas about liberty, tolerance, autonomy and in fact, the very concept of the iindividual.
The boxes you offered are narrow traps, at least as far as real discussion is concerned.
Since, first, you won't accept any argument that denies "serious threat," no matter how well-grounded or cited. And second, you won't accept any argument that people are well or sufficiently informed on the circular premise that if people were well informed they'd demand legal protection from the "serious threat."
Both of your boxes were false choices and both, to begin with, were entirely beside the point.
Well observed, Walt.
Crickets: 1. Doctor Michael Siegel: 0.
Chirp.
Chirp.
Choke.
Doc's 2 question analysis is based on his own failure to interpret the data presented in a clear construct based in entirely flawed logic.
The Gallop poll interpreted the response of those asked if ETS is dangerous. They never asked Bartenders exclusively. Therefore pointing at the poll of the public [who are living in fear of the smoke apparently for no good reason] and asserting Bartenders are uninformed about a completely different risk is quite confused I would think Michael would be more analytical and realized his huge error.
They never asked about bartenders lifetime risk they asked regarding public risk. Michael has argued himself the two are far from the same. The casual exposures are not a substantial risk however the public has been led to believe the lifetime risk to bartenders also applies to them. Apparently the public is over informed to the point of panic while no one talks about bartenders risk at all.
If Michael wishes to precede with any form of realistic discussion based on mutual respect he needs to
#1 tell us he believes the casual risk to the general public is the same risk of bartenders. Which of course we have no published proof to substantiate his belief. He would need to say the public has not been mislead far enough and his 90% should be achieved based on his belief the casual exposures defined in the polls are an extreme health risk and the public needs to be told even more to get the point out regardless of it's inspiration.
Alternately
#2 Admit in agreement with many of his previous statements the risk to the public is much lower than generally believed, by examining the Gallop poll this would seem to indicate a large percentage of the population is poorly informed and agree ETS to be a severe risk in reference to casual exposures when in fact no such evidence exists to substantiate such fears.
Unfortunately the majority of the medical and scientific community see no need to set things right in fact Michael seems to promote the fact the misdirection needs to be expanded to the point 90% of the public is misdirected by rhetoric and exaggerated fears prior to a point he would support a ban being abandoned.
Well,
after Dr. Siegel puts up a nice post practically begging everyone to feel free to attack issues, but not to attack each other, i then see more posts below that where people are right back to attacking each other. (someone called doc arrogent, for example) How can enyone of us take each others posts seriously if we are contunually bashing each other? I even have problems with the posts of those i agree with when they are imediately followed by a personal attack on someone else.
And those of you who have been following these threads for a long time know i do not post as much as i used to, and frankly, It makes me sick to see nice people ripping each other up all the time. I think we all need to acknowlege that the shs contorversy is doing as much damage to society as Dr Siegel claims the shs itself does.
Doc says "The relevant issue, I argue, is whether or not the stipulation is correct or not (that secondhand smoke is a severe health hazard)."
That's true. It's also true that those who make the positive statement "shs Kills" are the ones who have the duty to prove it, those who make the negative statement "shs does not kill or injure" are in a position of trying to prove a negative statement which is impossible.
So, the way sicence is conducted, and I don't care what branch you are talking about, it is those scientists who make the positive statements who have the burden of proof.
This logic train even falls outside science where in our court system, the one(s) alleging guilt are burdened with the proof. (unless you are a DA in North Carolina)
I think the reason why we are constantly going around in circles here, is due to basic differences in our beliefs about how scientific measurements should be intrepreted. In this specific case, shs and health outcomes.
So, I ask Dr. Siegel to state his specific beliefs on how, GENERALLY science should be intrepreted when alternate explanations of the observed phenomona exist?
Here's my take on the whole shs issue,,,in a nutshell...I beleive people exposed to shs get sick more often than those who are not, but I also beleive that that effect is an indirect assocaition. In other words, to cite an example, I think researchers many times find spouses of smokers get lung cancer more frequently that spouses of nonsmokers because smokers, and thus their spouses, are more frequently urban area dwellers. and spouses of nonsmokers more frequently suburban or rural dwellers.
I alos think the reason dr siegel finds more lung cancer among hospitality workers is because hospitality estalishments are located near busy roads more often than his control employees. I also beleive the odd hours and stress hospitality workers endure causes more CVD events.
So, I think we have a situation here, where shs exposure is only a handy indexing method to isolate nonsmokers who engage in, or are exposed to, real risks which are other than shs more often.
So, I think my question to Dr Siegel is "how do we sort all this out?" and do you beleive we smokers rights people have the burden of proof, or do you?
Now, if someone wants to go around saying shs kills, they are entitled to that opinion and I have no real problem with that until it begins to affect the way i live my life. and over the last 10 years it has.
So, what I am asking Dr Siegel to do, and anyone else who reads this who beleives shs is a serious health risk, is to carefully go back over all the evidence, look for alternate explanations of the phenomona,and bluntly ask yourselves if you are so sure of your claims, that you can intervene in other's lives. and cause hostile comments to be posted on this blog, for example, and basically divide society into 2 opposing factions. There are, after all, other concerns aside from public health too.
If alternate explanations of the phenomona are just as likely as the hypothesis, then I beleive Dr Siegel should admit it, and design experiments specifically aimed at determining if these alternate explanations are indeed the true ones.
dave K
Part II
One kind of epi study which has never been discussed on this blog or coments, and which many readers probalby do not even know exists, is a kind of epi study called a "matched" study.
Here's the take on matched studies: they are extremely costly, and difficult to design, and run, but they are able to isolate and measure small risks more accuratley.
and they are not common in shs epidemiology. ( I do not know of any true matched studies of shs) but in the old days, when epidemiologists needed to measure small risk factors, it was generally agreed that they had to use matched studies inorder to be sure thay were not picking up indirect assocaitions.
here's an example. If you plan to findout if shs causes lung cancer, you would make sure just as many controls as experimentals were also exposed to radon, urban pollution, asbestos, and yu name it, all the other 30-40 known causes of LC, in both the controls and experimental groups. You would also match nonsmokers exposed to shs and not for occupation, family history of LC, and those hosts of factors which could affect the results. and it would ahve to be large. and It would cost a hell of a lot of money, take a lot of time, but the public ehalth groups do have a lot of money and time and other resources so it is feasible.
One constantly overlooked segment of the 2006 Surgeon generlas report ( the peer reviewed part) is where Carmona says that the whole observed effect can be alternatley explained by misclassification bias.
So, if Carmona says the claim has alternate possible explanations...Then why are responsible public health officials not addressing that possibility? and why are they not following very careful scientific protocol to be absolutely certain what they claim is true, is actually true?
I think they decided a long time ago, to stick with the slop because they beleive the real goal is just to force smokers out of society, If that is indeed the main objective, then it seem to me that they would rationalize that careful science is not needed because the goal is not scientific at all. Dave K
Chirp. Chirp.
Chirp.
Just as I predicted.
I think they decided a long time ago, to stick with the slop because they beleive the real goal is just to force smokers out of society, If that is indeed the main objective, then it seem to me that they would rationalize that careful science is not needed because the goal is not scientific at all. Dave K
I don't know Dave, from what you say of this matched study, well, laziness in some form or fashion may also play a big part. You say it's a long, expensive, complicated study. Well, you've hit at least 2 major human failings. Laziness (complicated, long) and greed (expensive), plus the instant gratification (something very wide spread in our "I want it NOW" society). It would also mean that, if one wanted to be PERFECTLY honest, anti's would HAVE to back down somewhat and compromises be reached until the results of the study were available. Something the anti's do NOT seem to want to do.
If science was really the issue, we wouldn't be at the point we are today, with much of it being faked and lied about. It's a good idea, but I don't think it will help at this point. The search is not for truth, but for control at this point.
Aristotle: "Experience of facts is the test of truth - it is experience that has the last word. What is not in harmony with the facts, we must look upon as just a theory."
lies, more lies and then there's statistics
let's get some common sense into this discussion...
As an RN working for the Cleveland Clinic I'm supposed to bend over backward to care for a patient who was admitted positive for cocaine, an ILLEGAL substance, who is most likely uninsured and whose care will be paid for by my taxes.
My aching body will care for his every whim as I slowly kill myself because as usual we are working short staffed. Meanwhile I am the one discriminated against if I smoke a LEGAL substance in my home to de stress from work? This is where we are...
Watch out people, next thing you know they won't do surgery on you if you smoke. But hey, doing cocaine...no problem. Makes me want to throw up, not to mention START smoking and quit the Cleveland Clinic.
We are all going to get sick sooner or later, smokers, non-smokers... Who will care for us? The staffing on the floors is totally unrealistic already. I would rather have a staff member go smoke for 15 minutes every hour than have no staff. Cleveland Clinic you have made a huge mistake.
Med/Surg nursing is a killer.
The road to hell is filled with good intentions...
"The road to hell is filled with good intentions..." utopia,when was this ? i thought the road led to riches,hence the clamour to jump on the bandwagon .
it might lead to riches for administration but it's hell on the med/surg floors...
~snip~
http://www.americanthinker.com/
2...complexity.html
Walt, that was an excellent summation of the situation. Extremely keen in observation.
Chirp.
Chirp (with a few rippits too)
.
The exact question in the poll was: "In general, how harmful do you feel second-hand smoke is to adults -- very harmful, somewhat harmful, not too harmful, or not at all harmful?"
benpal | 08.01.07 - 3:31 am | #
I think bar and restaurant smoking bans are silly, but if secondhand smoke can kill by provoking an asthma attack, then isn't it at least somewhat harmful?
Bill H. wrote, " think bar and restaurant smoking bans are silly, but if secondhand smoke can kill by provoking an asthma attack, then isn't it at least somewhat harmful?"
Yep, but by the same token then, cat dander is at least somewhat harmful, and so is perfume or aftershave etc etc.
The real crux of the question here, and one I've been trying to frame properly over the last several days, is how one defines severity of harm and awareness of harm.
40,000ish people die in the US each year because they drive. Does the average person consider that getting a job that requires a 30 minute commute is a "severe risk"?
If I understand correctly, that is the standard Dr. Siegel would impose here.
Does being a cook in a kitchen with cooking fumes and temperatures often exceeding 90 degrees in the summer pose a severe risk? We could avoid that with ventilation systems that would double the cost of our dinners, but hey.... we're talking lives here, right?
How about patio dining? Why on earth should innocent young waitresses, many of them perhaps still in high school, be forced to endure a future of watching their skin rot away in a cancerous sludge simply because inconsiderate "Sunners" want to loll around on a patio for lunch?
After all, sunning is no more a necessary part of dining than smoking is a necessary part of drinking.
And while some recent discussions have led me to wonder about the equivalence of alcohol fumes and secondary smoke, there's still no question as to the whole "zero-safe-level" argument... So why shouldn't we ask the alkies to simply pop outside for a few moments, take a couple of quick gulps of wine, and then come back in where the normal people are?
Dr. Siegel, I understand your belief that long term workplace exposure to secondary smoke might be harmful to workers. I might disagree with it in terms of substantive reality, but I can understand it.
But if you are going to stick with that, then you NEED to recognize those other threats as well. Simply because there's no big tax-funded lobby pushing studies to magnify their dangers to insane levels doesn't mean they simply don't exist.
Dr. Siegel, you NEED to define what you mean by "severe threat" before you can make a pronouncement that workers either need to "be protected" or that they are not "adequately informed".
Otherwise your stance is nonsense.
If you can show otherwise, I, and I believe, many of the others here would be quite open to fairly hearing your argument. Sam, Walt, JTF, and too many others to list have given you some serious challenges in this thread. Answering them is FAR more important than proceeding to a new blog post on the Antis' "issue of the day".
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
MJM---' Answering them is FAR more important than proceeding to a new blog post on the Antis' "issue of the day".
I've noticed the new blog post come fast and furious when the challenges put the doctor in a corner as well. This is kind of a shell game at this point.
BTW, I enjoy your posts MJM and thank you for you efforts. They are appreciated more than I can say.
.
Michael J. McFadden wrote:
"Why on earth should innocent young waitresses...be forced to endure a future of watching their skin rot away in a cancerous sludge..."
Not to mention premature wrinkling.
Just think. Those wrinkles could be the difference between snagging a nice rich guy and an ex-con. A life of luxury or a life of beatings.
Getting married in a church full of flowers with a limo waiting outside or a civil wedding followed by the ex-con going out drinking with his parole buddies and leaving the wife at home to cry.
Skin cancer is but a tiny bump in the road for these girls.
Michael asks a very fair and important question (what do I mean by a "severe" health risk?)
I define severe in two dimensions:
First, in terms of the severity of the disease, illness, or condition caused by the exposure. So with secondhand smoke, the diseases that it causes are things like lung cancer, heart disease, asthma attacks, and angina. These I would call severe because they are associated with hospitalization, disability, and often - death.
Second, in terms of the likelihood of getting the disease (the magnitude of the risk). For someone with asthma who is sensitive to secondhand smoke, the likelihood of having an asthma exacerbation due to secondhand smoke exposure is extremely high. I think the likelihood of acute health effects from secondhand smoke is quite high. In terms of the chronic health effects, my own risk estimates are that for every 40 years of exposure, approximately 4 bar workers out of every 100 will develop heart disease or lung cancer. When you're talking about occupational health risks from a preventable exposure, 4% over a 40-year period is an astronomical level of risk. We certainly wouldn't tolerate that level of risk from any other chemical exposure that I'm aware of.
Thank you Dr. Siegel. I don't know if you've answered the questions laid out by the others in this response, but you did answer mine.
However, now that you've laid out that groundwork, you need to defend it.
Your first point is to some extent specious since those conditions or worse are also caused by MANY things that are, properly, NOT considered to be a "severe health risk"... e.g. eating a Big Mac or refraining from 30 minute tri-weekly jogs or driving your car for a 30 minute commute each day. Using the severity of the effect as part of the argument for definition makes some degree of sense but it is a minor base compared to the second half of the question.
The second half lies in two main areas: asthma and the cancer/heart effects. For asthma, you say, "For someone with asthma who is sensitive to secondhand smoke, the likelihood of having an asthma exacerbation due to secondhand smoke exposure is extremely high. I think the likelihood of acute health effects from secondhand smoke is quite high."
The only "acute health effect" you mention is asthma. In order for the second half of your statement to be true (The likelihood of acute health effects from secondhand smoke is quite high.) we'd have to assume that an extraordinarily high portion of the population is so extremely sensitive to secondhand smoke that it's correct to say, in general as you did, that "The likelihood... acute... quite high."
Think about your wording there. Are you saying that this is true for a small subset of the population? You phrased it as being general. This leads to a very biased perception unless you meant it that way. And if you *did* mean it that way, I have a hard time understanding what you mean by the "likelihood being quite high".
I realize you have recently begun emphasizing asthma in arguing for smoking bans, but you are also aware of the fact that the proportion of the population who will suffer from true asthma attacks in well-ventilated smoking situations is very small. How small overall? I don't actually know, but given that I've gone through a half century of life and only seen two incidences it must be pretty small indeed. Asthma attacks brought on by allergies to cats seem to be more common in my own experience and yet there is no move toward banning cats from bookstores (they seem to grow there for some reason), or to make shopping malls "pet store free", or to remove asymptomatic foster children from homes because the parents adopt a kitten, etc.
Are there some people who "could not work" in a bar/restaurant that allowed smoking because of smoke-triggered asthma? I'm sure there are. There are also some people who could not work in a restaurant that served shellfish. The "need to work" argument does not serve as sufficient grounds to ban all restaurants from serving shellfish, nor should it serve as sufficient grounds to ban all restaurants from allowing smoking.
Dr. Siegel, I would like to see you mount a more spirited and detailed defense of the asthma question or simply leave it out of the ban discussion altogether: I truly believe it does not belong since smoking establishments could be labeled as such and workers who are exquisitely sensitive are too rare to justify laws that have the amount of attendant social and economic harm that we've seen arise from bans and their denormalization basis.
As stated: I'd like to see you mount a more serious defense of the size and severity of the asthma question in well-ventilated venues or else simply set it aside and move on to the life-threatening situations for the general population: lung cancer and heart disease.
I'll address those in my next posting.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
You've lumped together lung cancer and heart disease in your "4 out of 100" estimate."
Let's separate them to see if we can reach an agreement, OK?
If you are willing to accept that without significant ETS exposure a person's chances of getting lung cancer are about 4 in 1,000 (I've seen estimates ranging from 1 to 10 on this) and if you accept the EPA estimate (based on a 90% confidence interval metastudy that I think you yourself would admit was quite questionable) then we are talking about 1/20th of a bar worker out of every 100.
And that's based on the far more poorly ventilated and smoker dense situations of 20 to 50 years ago. Today, with about half the smokers the figure would be more like 1/40th of a bar worker. And with roughly triple or even quadruple the ventilation found in old fashioned smoky bars or private homes, we're talking between 1/120th and 1/160th of a bar worker out of every 100.... about 7 out of 100,000. If we accept that there are about 100,000 full time career bar workers in the US (that's a guess) we are talking about 7 deaths... compared to the unknown but probably quite large number of deaths that will come about due to the economic effects of a smoking ban... and not even taking into account the socio-psychological injuries that you have seen such bans exacerbating (which themselves probably lead to FAR more than 7 deaths from depression and quality-of-life-related results).
Dr. Siegel, you might find some fault with some of my estimates above: put your own numbers and the reasons for making the changes in them and see if you can honestly expand that 7 in a 100,000 to anywhere near 4, or even 1 in a hundred.... or a thousand.
Do bar workers improperly perceive this as not a "severe risk" ? We'd have to look at some other, less contentious, risks to get an idea.
Do you think taxi drivers consider themselves at "severe risk" of being murdered while driving their cab? I think a survey similar to the one you cited for smoking would have similar results with about half saying it was just "somewhat" or a "not very likely" risk. But according to:
a 30 year driver has about a 1 in a 1,000 chance of being murdered on the job... about 15 times (or 1500%) the risk of a bartender of getting lung cancer after 40 years.
I would wager that most cab drivers understand or underestimate their risk... while most bartenders in today's atmosphere probably grossly overestimate their own... at least as regards lung cancer.
Would you agree? And if not, why not?
Now, you threw heart disease into the mix to get about 95% of that 4 out of 100 number. I'd like to ask you two things regarding this:
1) What specific studies do you base that estimate upon and why do you consider them more valid than other studies that might be out there giving different results?
and
2) Having become aware of the lies and tricks and games with language and study design that has brought about the "30 minute heart attack" claims, why do you feel that the studies on long term heart attacks are any more valid? Surely the same pressures for the various forms of fakery and fraud are there for the longer term studies... and often without the safeguards inherent in the shorter term ones of easy replicability.
We know that outright fraud is a problem in medical research when the only motivating goal is money. Think how much greater a problem it is likely to be when the motivation extends to "saving people's lives"? Look into yourself 15 years ago and consider whether you might have been tempted to tweak a study in some very minor, but essentially dishonest, way in order to make it clear to your patients that they should give up smoking for their overall health.
Even if you can honestly say that even so laudable a goal would never have given you a ghost of a temptation to stray a hairsbreadth... would you say the same about your past colleagues who you've come to see so differently in recent years?
Do you really believe that the Helena researchers didn't report on nonsmoker AMIs simply because the numbers were smaller than ideal? Or that the Pueblo et al researchers simply "forgot" to separate nonsmokers from smokers? Or that it never occurred to Otsuka to set up a control situation? Or that Klepeis didn't see the sham involved in continuously burning cigarettes to the butt just 10" from a putative nonsmoker's nose for a measurement?
Can you even, given the outright frauds that have been exposed in purely money-hungry researchers in other areas, truly say that you are confident that no fraud exists in a field where the idealistic combines so perfectly with the monetary and prestige incentives?
OK... so I went off track a bit, but I feel it's a VERY important fork to explore. Given all of the above, and given the oddities that the 50,000 heart deaths claim seems to be promulgated by a cancer society rather than a heart association, has remained unchanged while smoke exposure in the late 80s was at least 300% to 500% higher than today, and has, to the best of my knowledge, never been strongly backed up outside the Wells/Parmley/Glantz circles.... can you really with confidence stick with your 4 in a 100 claim and back it up?
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/
Sorry... forgot to insert the reference for cab driver murders:
http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/
c...s.html#data_usa
- Michael
::sigh:: I hate posting on the fly. I made a significant error in deriving the 1/20th bar worker at the top:
I said, "If you are willing to accept that without significant ETS exposure a person's chances of getting lung cancer are about 4 in 1,000 (I've seen estimates ranging from 1 to 10 on this) and if you accept the EPA estimate (based on a 90% confidence interval metastudy that I think you yourself would admit was quite questionable) then we are talking about 1/20th of a bar worker out of every 100.
SHOULD have been:
If you are willing to accept that without significant ETS exposure a person's chances of getting lung cancer are about 4 in 1,000 (I've seen estimates ranging from 1 to 10 on this) and if you accept the EPA estimate (based on a 90% confidence interval metastudy that I think you yourself would admit was quite questionable)of a 19% increase then we are talking about 1/10th of a bar worker out of every 100 getting lung cancer because of secondary smoke.
This change brings the ultimate risk to 14 out of 100,000 and would leave the murdered cab drivers at just 700% the risk of the cancerous bartenders.
- Michael
Really really good stuff, MJM
I say we take up a collection to send Dr. Siegel on a retreat for a week -- armed with these questions and others -- for him to answer without distractions or the need to also conduct other daily work that could honestly deprive him of the time to see, let alone answer, ALL of the questions.
In the meantime, short of a retreat, I'd hope he'd set aside several hours in solitude to answer MJMs, Sams, Walt's (and maybe just one of the several I've asked myself). An hour for each, give or take, is a total of 3 hours of your time, give or take, Dr. Siegel.
Thanks for these very well explained, well-reasoned comments MJM!
First, as far as asthma goes, I understand that many people are viewing this as a rare phenomenon, but I think it's far more common than people think. Based on my clinical experience treating people with asthma, I would estimate that about half of asthmatics are sensitive to (triggered by) tobacco smoke exposure. To be sure, tobacco smoke is one of the most common asthma triggers.
There are 31 million people with asthma in the United States. That means that if my clinical observations are correct, approximately 16 million Americans are asthmatics who can be triggered by tobacco smoke.
Assuming that the proportion of bar and restaurant workers with asthma is similar to that in the general population, then the number of these workers with asthma sensitive to tobacco smoke is approximately 114,000.
This is not a small number. I don't think we're talking about a situation where there are a few food service workers who are sensitive to secondhand smoke and have asthma. I think we're talking about a huge number of people - certainly in the tens of thousands. I don't think that's something we can ignore.
As far as the magnitude of the risk goes, you are entirely correct that the bulk of the risk is attributable to heart disease, rather than lung cancer. The studies upon which I base my estimates are summarized in the Cal EPA report (http://www.oehha.ca.gov/air/
environmental_tobacco/pdf/app3partb2005.pdf). While I agree with you that the recent science in tobacco control has been shoddy in many cases (aka Helena, Pueblo, Piedmont, Bowling Green, 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, instantaneous, etc.), the Cal EPA's conclusions are based on a large number of studies, most of which are NOT conducted by anti-smoking researchers. So I think these original papers have more credibility than the biased and faulty misinterpretations of the work by advocates.
I appreciate JTFs offer of taking up a collection to send me on a retreat to address all of these questions I am getting, free of my other professional duties. Where do you propose to send me off to?
MJM-
In terms of your point about the risk of murder of cab drivers, and that risk being much higher than the heart disease/lung cancer risk for bar workers accepting my numbers, I do not dispute your figures and your conclusion that the risk is higher for cab drivers. But the reason why I would argue for treating these differently is that the tobacco smoke risk is entirely preventable, while the risk of a passenger murdering a cab driver is not preventable, short of eliminating the cab business altogether. Police officers probably also face similarly high death risk. But this risk is largely unpreventable.
Michael Siegel wrote:
"Based on my clinical experience treating people with asthma, I would estimate that about half of asthmatics are sensitive to (triggered by) tobacco smoke exposure. To be sure, tobacco smoke is one of the most common asthma triggers."
Half the people you treated were sensitive. But what if the people you treated only represent 10% of the asthma population (only 10% of people with asthma see a doctor for example and half of them are sensitive)? Then your 16 million becomes 1.6 million and your 114,000 becomes 11,400.
There was a study a few years back that said kids with asthma with smoking parents were less likely to visit the doctor for asthma-related problems, but just as likely too see the doctor for everything else. The author's conclusion was that for some reason those parents didn't take their kids in when they had asthma problems.
However, there was nothing in their study to suggest that. In fact, if they were to make any honest guess looking at their data they'd have to say that SHS might reduce having to take your kid in for asthma problems.
Wow! You were FAST Doc! :> And I thank you for answering as thoroughly and carefully as you did.
BUT... while I agree with JTF that you should also spend some time on some of the others' questions, I still have a followup or two based on your answers:
You mention 16 million who "can" be triggered... the more important question is how many DO have their asthma triggered by the normally encountered levels of tobacco smoke in bars/restaurants where they work. And how many of those are actually having it triggered through no fault of the smoke or the smoker, but purely by the antismoking-engineered stress of expectation/concern/fear? I ask this because it truly is hard for me to believe that if there were even half that number (8 million) running around while I was growing up that I wouldn't have seen dozens of asthma attacks instead of virtually none. And I'm sure you're quite aware that an alien visiting earth and looking at the asthma vs. ETS exposure curves of the last 30 years might quite reasonably conclude that ETS exposure protects AGAINST asthma.
On top of the problem with "can be triggered" being considered as equal to "are being triggered", you quite openly make an "assumption" that is probably, once you think a bit about it, completely specious: If indeed many asthma sufferers suffer severe reactions to smoke exposure, VERY FEW of them would have gone to work in the bar/restaurant industry until just the past few years. Your figure of 114,000 might well be overstated by as much as 90% or more (I don't think either of us has real epidemiological data for b/r workers, but given the logic of my argument here I think 90% is reasonable.. maybe even 95 to 99%... there may very well be no more than a thousand or so workers in places not currently/historically under bans... and maybe not even a thousand.)
And if you restricted the argument to bans only exempting bars the number could conceivably be on the order of a hundred or two.... nationwide! Granted, that would leave those few but real workers in jobs where they sometimes suffer from the effects of smoke, but the alternative is the large amount of suffering, both economic and socio-psychological, that we see as a result of the bans.
I cannot argue the heart disease risk with you: I'll be quite honest in that I have simply not had the time to investigate that claim fully enough other than to have a VERY strong impression that the 50,000 number is completely spurious. Perhaps JTF or Walt or Sam or any of the other excellent folks here might be able to elaborate on that.
Finally, you addressed my cabdriver point with the necessity argument: that certain risks are necessary to certain jobs. That's quite true: BUT... the main point I was making about the cab drivers was in response to YOUR point about awareness of risks. I believe bar staff currently greatly overestimate the "severity" of their risk and probably feel they have a far greater risk of cancer from smoke than cab drivers have of murder from driving... when in reality the reverse is probably true. If we were to use the "necessity" argument regardless of numbers, then we'd have to ban patio dining since it is clearly not a "necessary" part of eating and it certainly exposes even well SPF'd workers to higher risks of skin cancer.
As noted, the heart disease # argument is one I'll have to leave to others... but I'm surprised at your dependence on the conclusion of the Cal EPA report: remember how much the Surgeon General himself fuzzed around in his "conclusions" compared to what was actually in the report, and how the report itself conveniently left out Enstrom/Kabat etc. CAL EPA is far more of a "hotbed" of antismokerdom than the Surgeon Generals' office: I would not be at ALL surprised to find that it would fall apart like a week old chicken leg left on a buffet table in the middle of July if it was examined closely.
Thank you for the detailed reply: I seriously feel that exchanges like that are at least as valuable as new blog entries on the "topic of the day" sometimes.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/
I appreciate JTFs offer of taking up a collection to send me on a retreat to address all of these questions I am getting, free of my other professional duties. Where do you propose to send me off to?
Now THAT is a loaded question! LOL!
Well, if you don't want any communications from TFKC, then my "ASDS treaments centers" are out because you know they'll be overrunn with those rAntis. Hmmm...I'm just guessing, but camping out in a cigar bar is probably not something you'll wanna do. Gee, I guess that leaves...
Hawaii? Bring back some leis for us--and I want a good one. (Would the MPAA give me an R-rating for that?)
A few things on asthma:
According to several sources I found, the number of Americans with asthma is around 18 million, not 30 million.
According to several (different years) ALA webpages:
"Secondhand smoke can cause serious harm to children. An estimated 200,000 to one million asthmatic children have their condition worsened by exposure to secondhand smoke." (from 2001)
"Secondhand smoke can cause serious harm to children. An estimated 400,000 to one million asthmatic children have their condition worsened by exposure to secondhand smoke." (from 2006)
According to kidshealth.org: "As many as 6 million kids in the United States have it."
If we take the above as somewhere close to the truth, SHS worsens kids' conditions in somewhere between 1 in 30 and 1 in 6 of them (3.3%-16.7%). If we take the ALA's latest estimate it's 6.7%-16.7%.
At least in children it's not 50% as Dr. Siegel has observed in his own (probably adult) patients.
And I would have to add that the ALA using the word "worsened" does not sound like triggering an asthma attack to me.
I appreciate JTFs offer of taking up a collection to send me on a retreat to address all of these questions I am getting, free of my other professional duties. Where do you propose to send me off to?
DTB's answer was funny
But I'll play it straight. The answer is somewhere with no phone (except at the desk for emergencies), no TV, and no newspapers. Radio is fine if you have to keep up with the world because it doesn't take you an hour to read the radio. You can bring a laptop because I'm sure you'd need it to help research/confirm your answers (and give us the references we normally ask for). But no reading anything else!
Interesting... what's coming to mind is an old episode of the Odd Couple. The one where a monk appears at their door collecting donations and sees both Oscar and Felix exhausted by life (mostly work). He fixes dinner for them and convinces them to go on retreat to his monastery for peace and quiet and reflection. It's so bland that reading is reduced to the content on a toothpaste tube.
Sounds about right. But no go until people pony up the bucks for your fare (accomodations would be cheap if not free).
JTF: But I'll play it straight. The answer is somewhere with no phone (except at the desk for emergencies), no TV, and no newspapers. Radio is fine if you have to keep up with the world because it doesn't take you an hour to read the radio. You can bring a laptop because I'm sure you'd need it to help research/confirm your answers (and give us the references we normally ask for). But no reading anything else!
Reminds me of a place I visited a few years ago, IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences http://www.ions.org/retreat.cfm ). And it's in Califonira, aka "rAnti Heaven"! There is some smoking allowed at a couple of "smokers' posts" outside, but nowhere else on the mountain because everybody's afraid of wildfires. Hmmm...in fact, see if you can get ahold of Dean Radin, who should be able to show the Doc how to do a funnel plot for meta-analyses. ahem
Okay, I'll hush now and let everybody respond to the Doc's last onslaught of posts.
Godshall, I found something to help you.
Peppermint Bandits.They are quite minty fresh.
No tobacco. You don't even have to find a spittoon.
Swallow all the minty fresh saliva.
Now you can take that step and walk over to the tobacco prohibition side, and finally sleep soundly at night.
I will say "you're welcome" in anticipation of your "thank you".
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