"People go to a pharmacy to get well, not to die a slow, agonizing death from lung cancer."
Let's see. 85 % of lung cancer patients are ever smokers.
100 % of lung cancer patients go to pharmacies.
Oops - pharmacies 'cause' lung cancer. Better close them all.
The problem is that the city has overstretched the bounds of regulation based on direct public health protection.
I know, jeepers, stepping on these private businesses and their abilities to cater to their customers. Wow, what has this country come to?...
According to TC or the TC hired parrots of their own well paid for opinions. Nicotine is a more addictive drug than heroin. So what is the problem with providing this drug to those that wish it in the form they prefer at a DRUG store. No script needed for nicorette, nicoderm etc...tobacco should be OK. Darn, I keep forgeting Big Pharma, TC and their ilks want to control the market! Doc forgets to mention that reasonable is of ones or the TC collectives opinion based on fraud. Free choice and property rights be damned!
Why not put all your efforts into presenting reasonable proposals, where people who smoke can socialise
So far people are paying the price and it is getting higher everyday.
Is your aim purely to turn around AT so they 'legitamately' achieve the same ends? Is that all?
west
----
"The problem is that the city has overstretched the bounds of regulation based on direct public health protection." Why not remove the Public Health regulation,or leave it where it is used to be,regulating communicable diseases ? Why do half a job Dr Siegel ?The true problem lies with Public Health's belief that it should be interfering in peoples lives ?
Now that we're knee-deep in the muck of the 'rational basis test,' I wondered about the argument of Walgreen's attorneys. They called the ordinance “anti-competitive” and “unconstitutional” because it “prohibits tobacco products sales at some pharmacies, but not others, favoring some retail establishments that have pharmacies but not others.”
Thank God I'm not a lawyer; otherwise, I'd think that made even legal sense. (Rational basis: "The application of the law in a just and reasoned manner.") Maybe the appeal will bring along a little sanity.
And Walgreen's take on it (from September):
"[Walgreen] Representative Tiffani Bruce wanted to explain the chain’s position: “Our position is based solely on being fair across different types of retailers. Our pharmacists are trained to counsel smokers on smoking cessation products and how to go about kicking their habit. This ordinance will discourage smokers from coming to a place where they can have this type of access.”
.
I already see the next study. Places that do not sell ciggerettes increase their sales of NRT's. So that must mean more people are quitting! And big pharma is getting richer by the day. Maybe this will be the one to put AT over the edge??
Despite San Francisco's ineffective feel-good ordinance, there is excellent news from India (where a nationwide smokefree law went into effect today)
http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/02/
...00259430100.htm
And picture warnings now appear on cigarettes sold in the United Kingdom http://www.cnn.com/video/#/
video...tte.warning.cnn
Also, New Hampshire's cigarette tax increased by $.25/pack yesterday
http://
hawk.heraldinteractive.co...ticleid=1122622
Is your aim purely to turn around AT so they 'legitamately' achieve the same ends? Is that all?
West....yes, that is exactly what the doc is hoping and praying to do. He has NO interest in fairness, reasonableness, tolerance or "live and let live" style liberty....he is ONLY interested in achieving his goal of a "smoke-free" world (regardless of his denial of this fact). With TCs lies being more transparent and outrageous, public health is looking more and more the fool and that is what bothers him more than anything else.
Liberty and freedom be damned.
Doctor Siegel, - "This highlights why I argue that the ordinance represents an arbitrary and capricious application of government regulation, rather than a rational one."
Well,...hmmm lets see,..where to begin....
That would be the same as regulating (re; banning) all smoking in truly "Public Places" (as in Tax supported through "public" tax dollars) and then redefining "Public Places" to mean anywhere the public congregates so as to extend the reach of government even further.
Banning Smoking in "Public Places" as in TAX SUPPORTED; Courthouses, Post offices, Libraries, Schools, Police and Fire stations, and all other "Publicly OWNED" places is fine, ...go ahead, I have little or no issue with this. EVERYONE (Smokers and Non-Smokers alike) has to use these same facilities in one manner or another, or at one time or another with typically no "Publicly owned" alternative for the services available, or provided by these "Public Places"
In this instance, I agree with "majority rule" since EVERYONE is picking up the tab through tax dollar support for these places.
These places exist for the "Public Good" and are built, maintained, staffed, and funded by the "Public" through often exorbitant taxation for that specific purpose.
My restaurant however, is owned solely by ME.(and Mrs. Lightning)
The cost of maintenance, the cost of stock, the cost of insurance, and cost in general of keeping the doors open is borne by ME,..NOT THE PUBLIC.
Unlike truly "Public Places", the Public has plenty of alternatives to MY restaurant. There is NO RATIONAL basis to FORCE me to provide an environment that alienates my core patrons in favor of a public that has ample alternatives available to them.
It is in fact, capricious of TC to demand that "Public Places" be so redefined as to include Private Property that happens to be Open to the Public.
Smoking Bans have nothing to do with the health of Non-smokers since the Non-smokers choice of hospitality environment remains, as it always has been, A CHOICE. By calling it “help” rather than punitive coercion, and in order to “help” those that have made the unapologetic choice to smoke, and specifically to "help" the Private Property Owners that allow it, to surrender their right to make those choices, they deceitfully claim “it’s for the workers.”
A decidedly socialist propaganda slogan if ever one existed. As previously stated elsewhere, “Stalin would be proud”
Nonsmoking patrons and employees (THE PUBLIC) enter a private establishment as a privilege extended by the owner,
not as a constitutional right. This does not automatically confer any entitlement to special consideration of individual preferences for a smoke-free environment if it is not in the business owners’ interest to provide this environment while acting only as their host. There are other restaurants available to meet those personal preferences. The private business owner’s right to allow his patrons and/or employees to engage in a legal activity supersedes the intolerance of that activity by those who would patronize, or accept employment in the establishment by that privilege.
IF before the liberty choking grip of pharmaceutically funded “concern” had wrapped it’s socialist fingers around the throat of small business, there had been NO CHOICE in hospitality venues available to patronize, or in which to be employed, then a blanket Smoking Ban based on the less than credible evidence of SHS danger would be far less questionable than it certainly is. But that simply isn’t the case.
Smoking Bans rational?,.....I think not.
Antismoking reformers propse outlawing drugstore tobacco sales as an incremental step to banning tobacco sales everywhere. They would then allow pharmaceutical nicotine only to be available. Reducing smoking rates is not their rationale for this proposal.
Boston Public Health also hopes to outlaw smoking on bar patios and in private hotel rooms and to close down the city's cigar bars. Officials want this to be a model regulation to be implemented nationwide.
Please email your comments before 11/3 to boardofhealth@bphc.org . There will be two public hearing October 8th (see http://www.bphc.org/board/regs_main.asp).
Please email me shelfer@gmail.com.
Bill, doesn't it disturb you that the only time you are gleeful is when other people are being trampled on? Talk about perverted joy!
LightningBoy.....you are talking rationally to a tobacco control person. Don't you know that "reason and rationality" are unknown to TC? Didn't you get the memo that only a total perversion of the Constitutional founders goal of "freedom and liberty for all" is the only thing they understand and know?
The doc is TC, regardless of how "logical" he might appear on rare lucid moments, he is hard-core TC and won't be happy UNTIL WE ARE ALL IN PUBLIC HEALTH SHACKLES!
I refuse to go down without a fight....in fact, I've adopted Patrick Henry's quote for myself:
"GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH"
"
And of course, the corollary of that is that anyone who opposes such a regulation is pro-tobacco and most likely a front for Big Tobacco. So merely by publishing this piece, I am going to be viewed by those in the field as a tobacco stooge. That would be a price worth paying, if only these groups started to actually analyze and defend their proposals against criticism, rather than simply exhibiting knee-jerk support for any policy that is ostensibly "anti-tobacco.""
With talk of a looming recession TC is starting another campaign gearing up to destroy another business sector. They stuck their heads in the sand while declaring the hospitality industry would be enhance with smoking bans and still deny after watching the level of bankruptcies that any damage was done. Just bad management as they say. In Ontario we watched as the "no safe level" killed off by bankruptcy 25,000 primarily family owned tobacco farms, producing among the highest quality product on the planet, with plans to shift the 10% which remain, to other crops.
We watched as the ban in drug stores resulted in the virtual extinction of mom and pop pharmacies, in favor of drug mart chain stores.
The largest of which was in a growth spurt opening stores at record speed after the cigarettes were banned? they stopped building and started shutting down stores in smaller communities leaving them with no drug dispensaries. We saw for the first time lineups in drug marts and filling fees which drove the cost to pensioners beyond what many of them could afford.
What the TC crowd with their heads deep in the sand once again don't recognize, is what a draw cigarettes provide for marginal businesses, few who go in to buy cigarettes come out with just cigarettes and dispensing prescriptions has never been a profitable venture. It is the other products they sell which allow them to exist at all. If you want to target businesses don't complain later when it is impossible to fill a prescription in less than 2 hours and 12 dollars over the price of the drugs, which is the norm, since they took the cigarettes away from the pharmacies.
Not one person I have ever talked to said they quit because they could not buy them in a drug store and I have yet to meet anyone who quit because they couldn't smoke in a bar, although I know many who haven't been to a bar since which is the real crime in all of this.
Yes you can go to a bar anytime you like and there is no problem finding a seat any more, but if you sit back and watch; something is missing and people are not enjoying themselves as they used to. The mood for the most part is subdued even on a Friday night. House parties have become the norm lasting well into the night with no closing time or bouncers to keep people in line.
It almost seems like someone dragged the heart out of many of the best places we used to visit if they are still there at all.
Now what part of public health instructs anyone in how to run a business? Or makes them more knowledgeable than people who have run those businesses for generations in some cases?
As more people put are out of work and TC continues to "help smokers quit" I seriously hope the finger pointing they teach continues and they finally get exactly what they deserve when people start to realize the damage they caused and how much it costs to chase windmills.
If the number one killer is eliminated do we not still have a number one killer? If smoking is number one, where do you find aging, or [dare I say] natural causes?
Bill are you suggesting that by sticking an image on a cigarette pack in the UK ,the effect is going to be more successful than it has proved to be in Canada ? Is this REALLY a feel-good factor for you ? What image accurately informs me that a particular scenario won't occur should i quit smoking ? Can i choose the mortality one,and live life eternally like all the goodie non-smokers do ? The bad news is that Public Health and the TC mob never got me to quit purchasing pre-made cigarettes,the damned Tobacco Companies did that for simple economic reasons by dropping every cigarette brand i enjoyed and then going along with the Government and EEC by capping the tar content of a cigarette making it taste like shit.It's just a perverse way of ensuring tobacco is placed under the counter,so as not to offend the majority of tossers who would complain if they weren't.Through being forced to switch to RYO i've discovered real tobacco makes real cigarettes.I am eternally grateful for this occurrence.Now MY feel-good factor would be a top notch Belgian Ale,followed by pleasurable female company,ending with a cigarette made of world class tobacco.Gratuitous pleasure from a tiny little image stuck on a fag packet......each to their own Bill,but really.As to India's smokefree law and even a 25c tax hike in New Hampshire....if it gives you food for thought in your bansturbation,good luck i say,i think you need it.
Lynda,
I understand completely.
My position is both, I believe logical and rational.
Doctor Siegels position is one of a spoiled child that the other kids in the gang will no longer listen to.
Kudos to you though Doc for the velvet glove approach in choking the life out of your opponent (Smokers), and for your always less than credible backpeddling explanations of the slight, small, severe, and extreme hazards of exposure to SHS.
(Depending on your mood on any given day)
But you are still one of the bullies whether the other less subtle and clearly far less intelligent bullies in the TC gang will let you play in their backyard (GLOBALINK) or not.
You hate smokers, but don't want to admit it publicly,....ok, that's fine,....I feel the same way about biggoted "Health Professionals",..... except I have no trouble in verbalizing my distain for such freedom hating treasonous behavior.
People like Godshall make me nauseous.
Your Nazi buddies are far less concerned about keeping up any pretense of civility than you are, and thats the only difference between you and them. You pretend to care too much to be believable and they could care less to be believed.
It's not about smoking and you know it. Whats more,..We know it, and we know that you know it too.
Ultimatley it doesn't matter if cigarettes are sold in Pharmacies or not. As long as there is a vote to be gained and a SmokeNazi there to tempt a politician with that promise of improved "public health",......nothing you or we say say matters. The TC poison has infected all levels of government.
Common sense is non-existent, and the end of the country is just over the horizon.
Ban in India fails to deter smokers
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.c...how/
3553731.cms
No crackdown on first day of Indian smoking ban
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.c...how/
3554177.cms
PATNA: Scene I: Two youths are discussing terrorism sitting at a bus stop near J D Women's College. One of them is smoking freely. When reminded about the rule imposing a ban on smoking in public places, the two glared at this reporter and left the place in a huff.
Scene II: An elderly man is smoking at the government bus stand while waiting for a bus to Ara. He refuses to throw away the cigarette even when shown newspaper advertisements stating that smoking in public places is now banned. "I care a damn about such rules," he says before taking a long drag.
Scene III: A class IV employee of Patna Medical College and Hospital is smoking standing outside the emergency ward. There is none from the hospital to stop him.
This was Patna on the first day after the Prohibition of Smoking in Public Places Rule, 2008, came into force on Thursday. The city, in fact, offered no resistance to smokers with no one from enforcing agencies present at any strategic point to punish the offenders who were supposed to pay a fine of Rs 200 for violating the rule.
Incidentally, those supposed to enforce the rule appeared totally confused when TOI approached them. "We have sought certain clarifications from the Centre regarding rank of officers who can be authorised to penalise the offenders. Guidelines have also been sought regarding mode of collecting fines," said C V Subba Rao, joint food controller. The food control administration has been made the nodal agency for implementing the rule by the state government. Rao also said that a drive would soon be launched for making people and other government departments aware of the new rules. Dr Jitendra Kumar Singh, director, Mahavir Cancer Sansthan (MCS), however, feels awareness drives cannot motivate smokers to give up smoking and there is a need to offer some alternative to them for overcoming their dependence on nicotine. "There are medicines like Bupripione and Codeine, which if taken in combination, can help smokers in a big way," he said and added that forcible denial would only force them to look for safer places to satisfy their nicotine urge. Dr Singh also sought to know from the authorities concerned what if someone refused to pay the fine if caught smoking inside a private hospital. "We do not have punitive powers to deal with such offenders," he said.
City hotels, some of them, on the other hand, were seen making preparations to comply with the new rule. Hotel Chanakya, said its assistant general manager Yogendra Singh, has earmarked an open space as smokers' zone.
You'Ll Never Shock a Smoker
Posted on: Thursday, 2 October 2008, 00:00 CDT
By Sophie Morris
WILL THE anti-smoking hecklers never give up? They have already banned smoking in all public places (a move with significant merit) and now they're trying to sneak their browbeating way into the most private of places, our handbags.
As of yesterday, all cigarette packets carry gruesome images of the effects smoking can have on your health. Black lungs mottled with sticky tar, a throat resembling an open wound infested with a swarm of wriggling leeches, sperm too puffed out to swim for victory. Not the sort of holiday snaps I wish to glimpse as I'm searching through my purse for a lighter.
As anyone who smoked five years ago will remember, covering a third of each packet of cigarettes with the warning that smoking clogs the arteries and smokers die younger (than whom, exactly?) quickly morphed into nothing more than a fertile source of pub small talk. Is there any reason why adding these pictures to packets won't have the same effect? Or do people start smoking before they can even read, and need the dangers of smoking spelled out in a photograph?
According to the Department of Health, smoking is still Britain's biggest killer, netting 87,000 victims a year. The Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, hopes that the new strategy will maintain the quitting momentum propelled by last year's ban. The NHS says that 90,000 people called its smoking helpline after the written warnings were introduced in January 2003. But don't most smokers spend January trying to quit anyway, whether there are annoying warnings on packets or not?
In Brazil last summer, where the picture system is already up and running, people soon began collecting the different images, desensitised to the morbid illustrations by the end of their first packet. In Brazil these pictures include one of a dead foetus in a jar and another of a young girl using a mask as a breathing aid. There should be nothing at all funny to be found in ill health, but these images provoke gasps and sniggers in equal measure.
Humour is a tried and tested way to deflect fear, and most smokers are at least a little afraid of suffering the habit's side effects at some point in their futures. These arresting images will force gulps from all shoppers though, not just smokers. Everyone who sets foot inside an off licence or newsagent's, or approaches the tobacco counter in a supermarket, will see them, as will their children.
An associate of mine has a fairly bullish approach to the Government's attempts to coerce smokers into quitting. If smoking is really so bad for our health, she says, it should be outlawed altogether. She smokes herself, but can't see the logic in the draconian lengths the Government is willing to travel to dissuade people from committing a legal act.
Other fatal health threats hang over the British public - obesity, diabetes and alcohol-related illnesses, but I doubt you will find pictures of George Best adorning your bottles of pinot any time soon.
Are we going to see a public health official walking into Tesco with a loudspeaker, yelling: "Can the obese man in aisle 14 please step away from the custard creams. Your BMI is clearly well above the recommended 25!" Of course not, because that would be invasive and ineffective behaviour.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/
hea...source=r_health
mpact of graphic anti-smoking photos burning out
Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News Service
OTTAWA - Graphic health warnings on cigarette packages are failing to move the majority of smokers to quit, a new government survey has found.
Over the last five years, the percentage of smokers who say the warnings are ineffective at getting them to try to kick the habit has increased, according to the newly released Health Canada poll.
More than half - 57 per cent - say they are unmoved by these graphic warnings, up five points from five years earlier. Among potential quitters - smokers who are seriously thinking of quitting - the percentage who characterize the campaign as not very effective or not at all effective in getting them to try to quit has also increased in this period, to 43 per cent from 40 per cent.
A health warning for cigarette packaging. A July 2008 government survey found these graphic warnings do little to move hardcore smokers to quit.
A health warning for cigarette packaging. A July 2008 government survey found these graphic warnings do little to move hardcore smokers to quit.
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Only 14 per cent of smokers and 20 per cent of potential quitters said the health warnings are very effective at getting them to try to quit smoking, also down from five years ago, when 18 per cent of smokers and 25 per cent of potential quitters described the campaign in these terms.
Health Canada commissions the annual Environics poll to track the effectiveness of health warning messages on cigarette packages.
In 2001, Canada became the first country in the world to require tobacco companies to put photos of cancerous lungs, diseased hearts and mouth cancer among others on cigarette packages with text messages such as "Cigarettes Cause Lung Cancer" and "Cigarettes Cause Strokes." The photos and text must cover half of the package, both front and back.
But the campaign hasn't been updated in seven years, and the Canadian Cancer Society says these new survey results show the warnings are "becoming a bit stale," according to senior policy analyst Rob Cunningham.
"That's an indication of the importance of Health Canada refreshing the content of the messages. You're not going to see a major consumer product company leave their television ads unchanged for seven years."
The most recent poll, conducted last November, shows near universal recollection among respondents of seeing health warning messages on cigarette packages, with 93 per cent of smokers reporting having seen warnings on their main brand of cigarettes.
http://www.canada.com/saskatoons...eb-
b30cd396f11e
sorry for that double post
"People like Godshall make me nauseous."
Wrong reaction! How can such an insignificant twit as this infant is make you nauseous? When a five-year-old keeps pissing his pants to get attention, does that make you nauseous? Naaa -- it should make you laugh. (Especially when you're not his mommy or daddy!)
Can’t help but notice, though, that this great humanitarian and champion of the little guy is applauding a 25-cent hike in the NH cigarette tax, which will fall most heavily on those least able to pay, of course. Tough love, he calls it. For the smoker’s own good.
Don't feel nauseous; this guy is nothing but a joke. And a sorry one at that.
.
More on those miscreant Injuns:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/0...cse&
oref=slogin
~snips~
"According to the State Department of Taxation and Finance, those [bootlegged] cigarettes amounted to nearly one-third of all the cigarettes sold in the state of New York, where cigarette taxes are the highest in the nation.” ( Can’t help wondering if all that is included in the official figures of those who have quit.)
“Dr. Donna Shelley ... says the bootlegging of cheap cigarettes to low-income neighborhoods ... “undermines the smokers’ ability to quit and their motivation to quit.” (Gee – unintended consequences.)
“New York’s Indian tobacco trade is a boon to cigarette companies.”
“Smuggling actually increases market share and boosts the industry’s bottom line.”
Reynolds American: “More than 4.2 million cartons of the company’s brands ... were shipped to New York reservations last year.” And 7.2 million cartons of Philip Morris cigarettes.
The Poospatuck reservation: “more than 10 million cartons of various brands were sold last year.”
“The traffic and congestion have increased since June, when the State of New York raised cigarette taxes by $12.50 a carton.” (The Godshall effect.)
Who says we don’t live in fun times?
.
Spiked's take on the new UK photo campaign.
http://www.spiked-online.com/ind...e/article/5775/
The effect is to reinforce the image of smokers as the lowest of the low, the imbecilic ruiners not just of their own lungs (and hearts and teeth and throats and skin) but of others’ health, too. The proximity of these images to pornography proper is striking. If pornography objecitifies women in terms of the male gaze, turning them into objects for a very specific mode of consumption, then this pictorial addition to the anti-smoking crusade provides similar relief for the anti-smoking lobby. It transforms those who choose to smoke into objects of moral and not-so-moral masturbation. And just as it is argued that in objectifying females, porn influences women’s self-perception, so this set of images aims to transfer the image of smokers as revolting, selfish imbeciles to smokers themselves. Sin becomes guilt; disgust becomes self-disgust.
While it is debatable that these images will make much of a difference to those who smoke, they will inflame the zeal of those who would have them stop. More broadly, they will further stigmatise the smoker, pushing him even further beyond the social pale. Already huddling outside Britain’s pubs as the objects of politically subsidised sanctimony, these mocking images will only elevate the smoker’s standing in the constellation of social pariahs.
It is this sanctimonious climate that differentiates the anti-smoking crusade from the public health campaigns of old. There is no practical message in this latest campaign; it is purely moralistic. This is not about access to clean water or the need to get a certain jab; it is about submission to moral instruction. ‘People ought to be living a healthy life’ is the message; every last one of the disgustingly unhealthy infidels must be converted to the cause.
In committing itself so fully to the pursuit, not of the Good Life but of its pale imitation – the healthy life – the government renders each citizen’s body as the effective property of the state. To not dispose of it as one ought is to bring down society’s wrath upon oneself. Whittled down to objects of lifestyle diktat, you either conform or enjoy a lifetime of state-inspired persecution.
Nicely explains Bill's glee, does it not? Remember to stock up on tissues Bill.
GreatScot
Now if this is true, it all makes sense.
"He said 152 countries had signed a WHO-supported international agreement to ban the production of tobacco products in a phased manner"
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.c...how/
3553096.cms
Because I'm not a fan of pesticides, I do this in my own garden.
Change the environment!
If a bug likes warm, dark places, you make them cold and light.
If acid turn alkaline.
If there is a particular plant the bug shuns, plant it next to the infestation.
It works beautifully and you don't need to resort to poisoning your own garden.
Smokers were very comfortable in pubs and coffee shops, so change their environment!
Obviously you have to have a thin veneer of respectability to do this, which is where the "science" comes in.
No one really believes it but its a useful figleaf.
Very stubborn these pests, so a touch of nasty pictures,to make them even more uncomfortable.
For the few that still cling on, its time to make their food unpalatable, I would use dilute washing up liquid, but RIP cigarettes will work just as well.
What few are left after that, are easily rounded up and squashed.
Talking of which.
Unintended consequences
Soil Association urges ban on pesticides to halt bee deaths
"The Soil Association has urged the government to ban pesticides linked to honeybee deaths around the world."
"The pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, are approved to kill insects on a range of crops in the UK including oilseed rape, barley and sugar beet. Their use on oilseed rape is of particular concern to beekeepers as the crop's yellow flower is very attractive to honeybees"
"Germany suspended sales of the pesticides in May after 700 beekeepers along the Rhine reported that two-thirds of their bees had died following the application of clothianidin. In France, imidacloprid has been banned on sunflowers since 1999 and as a sweetcorn treatment since 2003, after a third of honeybees were wiped out"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
enviro...pecies.wildlife
Collateral damage
On the subject of bees
Use of tobacco smoke against parasitic mite syndrome
"Hives in two apiaries were treated with tobacco leaves. 15-20 g of leaves were burned in the smoker with the material used for making smoke. It was used during routine examinations every week or as needed, in March, April and May. These colonies were shown to have greater populations and to yield more honey compared with two control hives kept near the apiary of 50 colonies."
In early August there was a check up and comparison between the colonies that had been treated with tobacco smoke and those which had not. There was a great difference in honeybee populations; those which had been treated being more populous. The bees were more active in foraging and collecting nectar.
CONCLUSION
Whatever the disease, I believe that tobacco smoke had beneficial effect on the colonies. We know that nicotine in tobacco smoke has some anaesthetic effect on insects in general, and it might have some lethal effect on mites and therefore some beneficial effect against the condition.
We believe now that the immune system of the bees is in some way diminished. By using tobacco smoke we are either hitting the primary target, or we might be curing a secondary pathogen. In either case we are helping our bees to get better!
http://www.beesfordevelopment.or...moke-
agai.shtml
This question is way off topic, but does anyone know what has happened to Callous Cowbell and James Austin? I miss their comments.
Bill,
The article that you linked to on the 25 cent increase per pack in New Hampshire. Did you happen to read the entire article? The last paragraph says it all. If you need help in understanding what it says, I will be more than happy to disect it for you.
This just in...UNBELIEVABLE
Malaysian couple killed in stop-smoking ritual
Pair beaten by relatives with broomsticks, motorbike helmets, police say beat a Malaysian couple to death in a ritual apparently meant to help the man to stop smoking, police said Friday.
The couple died of head injuries after being beaten with broomsticks and motorbike helmets during a family gathering at a Kuala Lumpur home Wednesday, said Ku Chin Wah, head of the city's crime investigations department.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27005325/
One of the couple's sons and three other relatives remain in custody. Four other detained family members have been released, Ku said.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
According to those detained, a nephew suggested the beating ritual after the man said he could not stop smoking and the woman complained of a liver ailment, Ku said.
Reports: Nephew convinced relatives to beat each other
It is not clear who was responsible for the deaths, but local media reported that the nephew convinced all the members of the Muslim family to beat each other.
The couple's 15-year-old niece, also injured in the beating ritual, has been hospitalized, Ku said. Several others, including the couple's children, who are 14, 19 and 21 years old, also suffered injuries.
Police are still investigating the case. Local media reported the families are believed to have joined a cult recently, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
Can people who smoke now be expected to be targeted by the loonies of PETA now that we are tarred as animal abusers?
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/
ho...00810012240.htm
Ban smoking in zoos, says Peta
New Delhi (PTI): Noting that health of captive animals is affected due to smoking by visitors to the zoos, a prominent animal rights group on Wednesday sought a ban on smoking in such areas as well.
The demand has come in the wake of the health ministry's notification imposing ban on smoking in the public places.
People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has written to the CZA, an autonomous government body, to implement the notification in the zoos as well, as "passive smoking is injurious to the animal's health too."
The Authority must follow the progressive steps of the health ministry and ban smoking in zoos which are public places, Chief functionary of PETA India, Anuradha Sawhney said, adding "animals who are incarcerated in the zoos suffer equally due to passive smoking".
She pointed out that visitors have been found deliberately smoking on the face of animals.
"It has also been found that monkeys were handed cigarettes to 'smoke'. The mischief-makers would even try to stub animals with the burning cigarettes just for 'fun'," she added.
For reference
http://www.courttv.com/news/2007...8/
PETA_ctv.html
GreatScot
So just to be clear: Where do you stand on exemptions for cigar bars? How does your answer reflect on the need for strict logical consistency, particularly with regard to you (new) claim that governments have no business defining a private business's mission statement?
Harry, - "Don't feel nauseous; this guy is nothing but a joke. And a sorry one at that."
I agree that his moral compass is out of alignment, but that has more to do with his own obvious guilt than it does with his equally obvious distain for my personal liberty.
No, I get nauseous at the sound and more specifically at reading the sanctimonious diatribes of these weak willed little girls that want me to stop living MY life the way I choose, and start living MY life they way they think I should.
It's some vicarious, voyeuristic thrill of forcing others to surrender their individuality, their liberty, their property, and their livelihood for the benefit of what?,....to reduce the statistically insignificant number of deaths unbelievably attributed to a wisp of tobacco smoke that was, is, and would always be completely avoidable by these same prissy social snobs. It's childish, ...but screaming children (TC) routinely get what they want if they scream, cry, whine, and stomp their feet loud and long enough.
The Parent or guardian (government) will eventually give them what they want, or a close facsimile of it in order to shut them the hell up.
Every ban implemented, undermines the core principles this country is founded upon. It makes me nauseaous that those behind them are too stupid to recognize this, or worse, are completely aware of it (Doctor Siegel), and are as giddy as schools girls in knowingly bringing it about.
TC equals socialism.
Back on topic, Tobacco sales in Pharmacies.....is it wrong?, ..of course,...but seriously,...so what?
It just reduces the profit margin of those pharmacies that TC has arbitrarily decided THEY get to define the purpose of thier existence for. No real harm done right?,...it's all for the "greater good"
TC knows whats best for every individual and now, obviously they know whats best for every type of business as well.
Damn LightningBoy...........THAT was good!
Bill, New Hampshire hasn't raise their cigarette tax.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/a...0029855/-1/
news
Si inquired:
"Bill are you suggesting that by sticking an image on a cigarette pack in the UK ,the effect is going to be more successful than it has proved to be in Canada ?"
No. But if the effect in the UK is as successful as occurred in Canada (which began requiring graphic warnings on cigarette packs in 2001), there will be a huge decline in the smoking rate (and especially among youth and young adults) in the several years following that law.
Following are the smoking rates in Canada since 2000, according to the
Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS) at:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/tob...tc_2007-
eng.php
Smokers (%) in Canada
Current Daily
2000 24 20
2001 22 18
2002 21 18
2003 21 17
2004 20 15
2005 19 15
2006 19 14
2007 19 15
Current Smokers (%) in Canada
Age yrs
15-19 20-24
2000 25 32
2001 22.5 32
2002 22 31
2003 18 30
2004 18 28
2005 18 26
2006 15 27
2007 15 25
AND THOSE WHO PURCHASE CONTRABAND ?
Sam asked: "Where do you stand on exemptions for cigar bars? How does your answer reflect on the need for strict logical consistency, particularly with regard to you (new) claim that governments have no business defining a private business's mission statement?"
I do not have a problem with an exemption for cigar bars, since the function of the cigar bar is for people to smoke cigars. I would also not have a problem with a cigarette bar, where the function was to have a place where people smoke cigarettes.
This has nothing to do with regulating the consistency of a private business's mission statement with its actions. The exception strictly has to do with whether or not the hazard in question can be eliminated without automatically destroying the existing business. That's the one exception that I think is perfectly reasonable in promulgating health regulations.
I definitely see where Sam is trying to go with this and I understand his reasoning. But I don't think the analogy is exactly right because the exception here is based on not automatically destroying an existing business.
This is the exception that Sam has had lots of problems with in the past. He doesn't understand why I would not close down every auto racing track or eliminate logging and window washing and boxing.
What I hope Sam will consider is that this is a very simple and clear criterion for health regulation: reduce or eliminate workplace health hazards that are preventable - and by preventable, I mean that can be regulated without automatically destroying the business.
Whether Sam and others agree with that criterion is up to them, but what I hope people will see is that based on that criterion, the exceptions that I have outlined above are rational.
Interestingly, I would like to see someone like Sam debate a colleague of mine in tobacco control who takes a harder line position and does not see any reason for an exemption for cigar bars or anywhere else (and there are plenty of them out there - we wouldn't have trouble finding one - the trouble would be finding someone willing to talk to a smoker!!!).
In such a debate, I think Sam would indeed have a very strong argument, because if the anti-smoking advocate was unwilling to draw any exceptions for allowing smoking then how would he or she defend the kinds of risks that Sam calls attention to - including logging, auto racing, boxing, etc.?
I am able to defend those risks because I do not believe that government regulations should destroy the existence of an entire line of a business.
But how would other anti-smoking advocates who take a harder line justify those risks?
If Sam has had conversations with any harder-line antis than myself, I'd be curious to hear his impressions.
Thanks, Sam, for this important line of questioning.
Si inquired:
"AND THOSE WHO PURCHASE CONTRABAND ?"
The CTUMS didn't inquire about the type of cigarettes smoked, but rather whether or not they smoked any cigarettes.
Bill,an Australian advert on utube showed the image of a "lung" presumably having 150ml of "tar" poured over it to resemble x fags worth.It was incredibly stupid when you consider that if even 75ml of the liquid was poured into a functioning lung,you would presumably immediately die since there was little room for any form of respiration to occur.It simply does not relate to scientific fact,much like the planned images.The sale of cigarette cases and humorous stickers is already increasing.Perhaps the seller should be obliged to record showing the image to the person purchasing the packet ? Where should this stop,on alcoholic beverages be it bottles,cans,even glasses in a bar ? On your MacDonald's happy meal box ?On your tin of fish warning of toxic mercury etc,on your car tyre warning that speed kills ? It's a load of bollocks.There is only ONE visual image that is desperately needed,and that is on the foreheads of Public Health and TC who need to be identified as being named Richard.
"but rather whether or not they smoked any cigarettes." So was there a REDUCTION in number of smokers,OR an INCREASE in the number of smokers who won't disclose they smoke ? It could be one or the other,or even both.Just because a survey SAYS.....remember DEATH cigarettes,with the skull &crossbones they became a fashion icon.
"I mean that can be regulated without automatically destroying the business."
But ONLY IF the government is in the business of actively defining the mission statement.
That's the rub. To do what ytou want to do, the government HAS to make that assessment. And act accordingly.
But in the case of this California law, you state, explicitly, that the government has no interest in making that kind of definition.
If LightningBoy defines his mission as providing "a place for people to drink and smoke," then banning SHS, by definition, destroys that business.
You say it doesn't, because he has used a bad definition. But to do that, again, you have to have a government in charge of defining mission statements.
Which is exactly what these people in California just did. They decided that a drug store is in business to make people well, and that selling cigarettes is not sufficiently wedded to that mission.
The store owners disagree. They say, "That's NOT what we do."
And you are siding with the store owners, insisting that the government not engage in that kind of activity.
But YOUR OWN POLICIES require the government to do the same thing.
SO it seems that your objection is not that government is defining mission statements. Rather, that in this case, it is using the wrong definition.
Which is a huge distinction.
Dr Siegel wrote:
What I hope Sam will consider is that this is a very simple and clear criterion for health regulation: reduce or eliminate workplace health hazards that are preventable - and by preventable, I mean that can be regulated without automatically destroying the business.
If the business mission is tp provide a place for people to smoke and socialise
and
If a workplace only employed smokers, would SHS still be considered a health hazard that needed to be eliminated?
If you believe 'The public' needs to be protected from SHS, then this puts everyone into the same group. 'The public' is not 1 but 2 groups Smoking and Non-Smoking. So it is not possible to protect all 'the public' at all since the part that smokes will always have exposure to SHS unless they stop.
Coercing people to stop is not on. If adults freely wish to smoke then (and many TC advocates say this) that's up to them.
So why aren't businesses able to cater for smokers?
(I know what I mean but am having a little brain fade when expressing it, hope you get the jist though).
Also, thanks Lynda F.
west
----
I might add that, quite conveniently, you want the government to define mission statements when doing so supports your preferred policies, but do not want the government to do define mission statements when doing so supports policies you oppose.
That's a lot of things. But it's hardly consistent.
At the heart is this, and I don't see how you can deny it logically or reasonably: One of the pillars of your support for SHS bans is that they are "easy." That is, you can "simply" ask patrons to step outside and voila, you have eliminated the threat of SHS.
But that is not easy at all if you define your own business mission as providing place for people to drink, smoke, ogle strippers, watch football, take a bath in Wild Turkey, or what have you. When you ban smoking, or stripping, or football, you destroy that business. Or at least hamper it significantly.
You have readily admitted this. You seem to take great pride in being one of the few people in TC who "admits" that real businesses suffer because of these bans.
But in making that admission, you are basically admitting that the bar owners in question are correct: That part of their business IS providing that atmosphere.
What stikes me as odd and almost bizarrely inconsistent is the idea that you are STILL willing to offer exemptions for cigar bars.
So... if LightningBoy says his bar is a place to drink and smoke, you say, "Sorry. Nope." Which clearly violates the premise you make in this post, which is that governments should not define mission statements.
The only logical thing to infer, again, is that you want the government to do that when it suits your ends.
BY the way... What about those poor cigar bar workers? Why not protect them? If you are willing to put Smokey Joe's Grille out of business, why are you not willing to put Smokey Al's Hookah Bar out of business? And why, if Smokey Al decides to get a liquor license people can drink beer while the smoke a hookah, would he suddenly have to get rid of the hookahs?
It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Uness you are arguing that a hookah bar could, in fact, serve beer.
In which case I wonder: Why can't a beer place allow people to smoke? If it just stopped calling itself a beer place that allows smoking, and called itself a smoking place that allows drinking, you would be all for it?
Fine. Problem solved.
Doctor Siegel, - "The exception strictly has to do with whether or not the hazard in question can be eliminated without automatically destroying the existing business. That's the one exception that I think is perfectly reasonable in promulgating health regulations."
Wrong, ..again.
It seems to come down to semantics with you and a myriad of alternate definitions for some very commonly used English terminology.
First, - HAZARD, ...since the majority of smokers don't buy into the slight, small, severe or extreme hazard argument, but the clearly less informed, and ultimately far more impressionable Non-smokers easily do, then the answer is simple.
Don't smoke?, - don't come in. Please feel free to visit any one of the other fine establishments in town. I promise,...I'll get over it.
Don't smoke?,- don't apply for employment in a position that, where you know going in you're only going to piss, and moan, and whine, and complain about it. In short, grow up!
If you think you possess the skills to work in a restaurant with a Smoking allowed environment, then surely those same skills would be in demand in a Non-Smoking restaurant as well. AND ...clearly since Non-Smoking venues, according to all accounts, were already outnumbering Smoke-friendly establishments by a margin of 5 to 1 PRE-BAN! Your chance of successfully finding gainful employment in a business that suits your PERSONAL PREFERANCE is significantly improved.
Second, - AUTOMATICALLY DESTROYING THE EXISTING BUSINESS,
What the hell are you talking about?
Using my own place of business as the only example I can absolutely vouch for...
If you impose a smoking restriction on a business that has maintained a friendly, hospitable atmosphere specifically welcoming smokers to be patrons, and where every single member of the staff are active smokers, ...how is that NOT destroying the existing business?
In an area where the majority (90%) of local restaurants had already, VOLUNTARILY enacted smoking prohibitions in their establishments, MY PLACE was a welcoming haven, a retreat from the discrimination imposed by those less tolerant venues. FORCING me to adopt an environment that is not at all conducive to attracting the customers that I specifically had sought to attract in the first place could be construed as nothing less than destroying the business. Menu choices aside, you are attempting to DESTROY the business by eliminating the environment that set it apart from the non-smoking alternatives.
Now if your definition of "Destroying" means bankruptcy,...well that's a real possibility since a business that has no draw to set itself apart from the local competitors (thanks to the "level playing field" bul"**t) and is then just breaking even, ..Or worse, begins to lose money as a result of its core customers now feeling as unwelcomed here as anywhere else...then it's just a hobby. It's not a business any longer...so why bother?
Third, - PERFECTLY REASONABLE...Are you kidding me!!?
Reasonable to who?...the people that were not coming in to begin with?
The people that already had 90% of the local venues available to choose from? Or, ...Reasonable according to the SmokeNazi's that will not settle for anything less than 100% smoke free, and maintain a Zero tolerance policy, whether such a policy is openly promoted or not?
Reasonable in terms of the same SmokeNazis deciding how much of a profit margin I am entitled to?
Reasonable to complete strangers in the state capital, or hospital boardrooms that have never heard of my business, don't know where it's located, and will never in their wildest dreams ever be anywhere near the vicinity of my business?
Reasonable to whom exactly?
Fourth, - PROMULGATING HEALTH REGULATIONS. You're not promulgating health regulations; you're setting paternalistic conditions of operations that must be met by business owners for people that are under no obligation to be there in the first place. Hospitality Business owners are HOSTS. You don't have to accept the invitation, and certainly not under the condition that if you do accept of your own free will, that it is somehow the HOSTS responsibility to second guess your decision by eliminating the environment that they specifically prefer to have in place AS THE OWNER.
Business owners are also employers, but you don't have to accept the job offer either, as I already stated, if you have the skills, they are applicable in any similar business ...you have the same choice.
It must be difficult to lift that massive ego out of bed each day.
From the BBC laugh a day.
Sick leave 'link to early death'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/healt...lth/
7648460.stm
Starts off promising and then....
The highest mortality risk was seen in those who had been off work with heart disease, stroke or related conditions who had more than four times the risk of premature death than those who had no long sickness absences.
No shit Sherlock, seriously ill people have a higher risk of dieing!
and lets not forget the plea for more cash.
However he added more work was needed to determine how occupational health services could identify those at high risk and what interventions they would then use to prevent early death.
I am sure that in years gone by this type of twaddle would never have attracted any kind of funding let alone national media coverage.
Before it's too late and the world realises that there are far too many "scientists" with far too few genuine, meaningful, worthwhile things to study,I will apply for a few million bucks to finance a study to determine if active alive people have a more active lifestyle than inactive dead people.
BTW just how many ways can the infamous "Whitehall Study" cake be sliced?
GreatScot
I suspect that you would not support that last proposal because... why?
Because, by your definition, a drinking establishment does not exist to cater to smokers. And a smoking establishment does not exist to cater to drinkers.
But, of course, that requires you to get involved in the same process you decry in this post: defining business missions.
We allow movie theaters to serve soda pop. We allow rodeos to sell pizza. We allow restaurants to feature nice views. And we allow places with nice views to sell food.
We also allow pharmacies to sell candy and lawn chairs and windshield wiper fluid.
You are all for this. And rightly so, in my mind. Because it is not up to the government to define what businesses are for.
Only... you suport the government doing this in one case and one case only. SHS bans. WHich just so happens to be the onte thing to which you have dedicated your entire professional career. Weird, no?
I mean, it's not even as if you are against smoking in all places. You think someone should be allowed to kill workers with SHS as long as he is operating a smoking establishment. As long as he doesn't serve beer.
So tell me: Would the cigar bar be allowed to sell... water? Would it be allowed to sell food? What about napkins? Souvenir T-shirts?
None of those things are critical to the cigar bar mission. So I guess you would ban them?
Again. Weird.
Also... if the standard is "automatically destroy the business," which is a new one, you have a lot more bans to propose.
Use your own window washing example. Can't we force restaurants in high buildings to compete in terms of food quality and service? A good view is obviously not part of that. It is ONLY part of the atmosphere.
Washing those windows kills workers. Clearly. We can name them if you like.
So banning the window washing would not, in fact automatically doom the restaurants. If they serve better fod, the survive. And it would save many lives. So... ban?
Why not demand a complete segregation of business mission? Yes, allow places meant to sell a nice view. But do not let them serve food. And allow places to sell food, but do not also allow them to feature nice views.
Nonsense? Yes. I agree. Unfortunatley, that is YOUR position regarding SHS.
Unless of course you are willing to admit that atmosphere is an important part of what a restaurant sells. In which case I refer you to LightingBoy.
I do not have a problem with an exemption for cigar bars, since the function of the cigar bar is for people to smoke cigars. I would also not have a problem with a cigarette bar, where the function was to have a place where people smoke cigarettes.
Doc, if I recall correctly, you have NO objections to cigar or cigarette bars allowing smoking....providing they are NOT ALSO SERVING FOOD AND DRINKS
I distinctly remember that argument because I recall asking you WHY smokers were NOT allowed to eat and drink in the same cigar/cigarette bar they could smoke in.........and you in your usual fashion never did answer that.
Actually, this is not an issue of the government defining a business' mission. The business defines its own mission. It does so based on what financial transaction it offers. If an establishment was charging money for people to smoke and that was the primary source of its business income, then fine, let them smoke. But if the primary source of income is from food and beverage sales, then you're simply not going to convince me that the business is actually a smoking establishment. That's complete crap. These establishments are in the food and beverage hospitality business, not the smoker service business. They are making their money from food and beverage sales. They don't really care who comes in, as long as they make money from food and beverage sales. If business when UP due to smoking bans, they wouldn't be complaining. What they are clearly concerned about is not that their opportunity to be a place to have smoking is being lost, but that their profits are going to go down because they are going to lose smoking customers. What you're doing is re-defining the point of these businesses after the fact because you don't like the smoking bans.
I've never seen a bar or restaurant market itself as a "smokers' lounge." If it did, then it might be a different story.
But the real concern here is not the loss of the ability to have smoking, it's the loss of smoking customers. That's completely different.
Mr. Godshall, about your statistic of smoking prevalence in Canada.
Let’s examine what went on around that time period.
Since I am mostly aware of the Quebec law, I will use that province as an example of what went on, on or around the year 2000.
In 1998/99 the first real smoking bans became law. You could no longer smoke in the workplace except for designated areas. You could no longer smoke anywhere indoors except for designated areas in the hospitality industry. Strict advertizing laws came into force and the graphic warnings became mandatory in 2000 as you mentioned.
You didn’t hear much protest from smokers because these restrictions were still considered reasonable since the public still believed that these legislations were designed to protect the non-smokers and they weren't too coercive for the smokers who still had some choice.
Now look at your statistics. Smoking prevalence had in fact decreased from 2000 to 2004. Was it the graphic contents that caused that or perhaps the much more aggressive campaign against tobacco as a whole when millions poured in to fund it. I tend to think it’s a combination of factors, the graphic warnings having made a brief impact at first that quickly wore off once people got over the initial shock.
Now let’s look at your statistics from 2005 on, when the two biggest provinces (Ontario and Quebec) followed the trend of municipal and other provinces’ bans and implemented comprehensive smoking bans in 2006, (so called consultations started in 2005) including the hospitality industry, private clubs and even private halls, with the result that the only indoor spaces where you can now smoke, is your home and now they’re even going after that. As you will notice, the smoking rates remained stable. Why? A very logical reason is that it is because TC has crossed the line between what’s reasonable and what’s barbarian and totalitarian with their latest comprehensive ban, which have made it more than transparent that smoking regulations have absolutely nothing to do with others people’s health . TC has lost all respect from a great number of smokers and nons who no longer believe the propaganda even if some of it might be true.
So what has TC gained by their greed? Nothing, except for creating a huge contraband problem that they now have to deal with by pouring in millions and millions to counter it, money that will no longer be available for honest programs that have worked right up to when TC lost all sense of integrity and reality.
As for the decrease in smoking for the younger generations in your other statistics, drug abuse has increased accordingly. Common sense: If they can no longer smoke in bars and all night parties, and can no longer smoke pot since they can't hide the smell, they'll pop up smokeless pills! Speed and ecstacy are a serious problem with the young here in Quebec. Again what have we gained?
But if the primary source of income is from food and beverage sales, then you're simply not going to convince me that the business is actually a smoking establishment. That's complete crap.
Even though the food and beverage sales are from the smokers who cannot smoke in any other establishment?
YOUR logic is crap. If I own a bar or restaurant in a town where all the other bars and restaurants are smoke free, why can I NOT have MY private property bar/restaurant cater to the smoking population that is now being told they have to stand out by the dumpster in the alley to have their after dinner smoke and NO they cannot take their coffee or drink with them.?
In such a scenario, the business owner has chosen to cater to smokers. IF non-smokers enter that is THEIR CHOICE.
YOUR way is Hitler's way. Sorry doc, read your history and you'll see it.
But the real concern here is not the loss of the ability to have smoking, it's the loss of smoking customers. That's completely different.
Not when those smoking customers WERE your customer base, because you were the ONLY restaurant in town that allowed smoking.
So no, it is NOT different. The reason so many places cried for a level playing field is that even though the non-smoking venues out-numbered the smoking venues, everyone wanted to hang out with the smokers.
They chose to go smoke-free and didn't find that business increased at all, and in fact might have dropped off some. So to retaliate for their own choice, they start demanding state-wide "level playing field" bans.
THAT is pathetic.
A few comments on the exemption for cigar bars debate. Cigar bars don't just allow people to smoke, they sell a wide variety of cigars. That is a significant portion of a cigar bar's business. The type of cigars available at a cigar bar can not be purchased at numerous retail stores in the area. Before purchasing these cigars, people like to try them. If you ban smoking indoors in these places, they will lose cigar sales. That dollar amount can be documented, and it’s enough to force the businesses to close.
Conversely, restaurants and bars do not profit directly from smoking. They do not sell cigarettes, and they do not charge people money to smoke. If smoking is banned indoors at bars and restaurants, one can not directly prove any lost sales. Those lost sales can be attributed to numerous other factors that are open to interpretation. Yes, some restaurants and bars in certain areas of the country have seen a drop in sales after a smoking ban went in place, but other restaurants and bars in those same areas have seen an increase in sales after the smoking ban went in place. Nothing is proved one way or the other.
Neither speculative, anecdotal nor comparative reasoning is going to win this argument. There are too many flaws in the logic and too many possible scenarios. I would stick to the libertarian, slippery slope, private property rights arguments. They’re much stronger.
Dr Seigel wrote
I've never seen a bar or restaurant market itself as a "smokers' lounge." If it did, then it might be a different story.
FYI --> Boisdale of Belgravia - Cigar Terrace
Is this ok?
west
----
"then you're simply not going to convince me" It shouldn't be a case of having to convince you Dr Siegel,you're TC however way you look at it.It should be a case of IGNORING you and returning things to the way they were,where people made their own minds up,rather than got somebody else to legislate for them.Public Health are NOT ELECTED,politicians are but follow the money it seems,rather than do the job they were elected to do.
About cigar bars.
You perhaps have a point Fleawarhol, but the inconsistency in the rhetoric is still astounding.
I did forget to mention in my earlier comment that cigar lounges are in fact the only places exempted in Quebec as long as they were operating prior to the anti-tobacco legislation and as long as they don't allow cigarette smoking god forbid ! When asked why public health didn't care for the health of the employees of these cigar lounges, the spokesperson for the health ministry explained in all seriousness that these people had the choice to work there or not!
Now that's what I call talking from both sides of their mouths!
Do these cigar bars allow cigars filled with pipe tobacco ? or cigarettes made with cigar leaf ? Or does public health not understand the stupidity it happily portrays.
"If an establishment was charging money for people to smoke and that was the primary source of its business income, then fine," Does a bar charge for the drink ? or the act of drinking the contents of a drink ? Dr Siegel have you ever considered sub-atomic physics as a means of explaining your ability to split hairs ? You have never studied the finite detail as to what bars receive in remuneration for providing a convivial atmosphere have you ? Desperate measures require desperate arguments it seems.
Whether Sam and others agree with that criterion is up to them, but what I hope people will see is that based on that criterion, the exceptions that I have outlined above are rational.
It has a rational basis. This distinction, rational basis vs. rational, was made in another thread. But when you see businesses closed down, people standing outside in alleys or the rain at 1 AM, etc., you think THAT could certainly be logically preventable. And pretty easily.
But apparently if you're a smoker, a place offering you hospitality needs to give you even LESS value for your money.
Dr. Siegel, you mentioned there seem to be no problems with the smoking ban. Have you ever been around at 1 AM around some of the bigger bars? People are out a lot, in alleys, etc. It's easy to see what you want to see, or ignore what you want to ignore.
So tell me: Would the cigar bar be allowed to sell... water? Would it be allowed to sell food? What about napkins? Souvenir T-shirts?
None of those things are critical to the cigar bar mission. So I guess you would ban them?
Again. Weird.
Sam, I'd argue *drinks* certainly are. It's close to physically impossible to smoke a whole cigar without anything to drink. It's like eating jalapenos, while not so immediate. And water doesn't work. I imagine the same thing for cigarettes, if people stay in one place and smoke several in a row.
I've never seen a bar or restaurant market itself as a "smokers' lounge." If it did, then it might be a different story.
But the real concern here is not the loss of the ability to have smoking, it's the loss of smoking customers. That's completely different.
What about a restaurant with a smoking lounge on the side, well out of the way and even upstairs? A few of them had them, deliberately advertised as for smoking a cigar. With humidors and everything. I'd say a bar/restaurant with humidors makes up a pretty huge percent of their business with cigar smokers. People rent the humidors -because- the bar welcomes them, their cigars, and their business. And anyone who hates cigars is free to run screaming from the establishment, pre-emptively coughing and waving their hands or what-have-you.
As it was, in some of these places, people still made comments about the cigar room--though apparently they didn't comment until they were *in* it, so the smoke didn't drift too far.
This is just the cigar side of it. I hope others can cover the cigarette angle. But Dr Siegel does seem to say there's no relevance when he probably hasn't seen it.
I have to wonder why you and others in your movement is so concerned with the health of people you have never met nor might ever meet. I say this in all seriousness, seeing that you are a Doctor who I assume once held a private practice of your own. I assume this due to your remarks about entering the tobacco control program due to patients you seen sick or who died due to smoking. I understand the one rule of working in the medical profession is to not get to close to your patients, as there will be heartbreak when you can not save them all.
Is this why you left the private practice and moved on to a job with the CDC? While I am in assumption mode, should I assume that you could not save any so you moved to a pay check where you could calculate the others that couldn't be saved and write studies with made up science to justify your patients who passed on. You wrote studies that totaled numbers of whatever you typed in. I can do that without a medical degree so is the CDC hiring?
From there you move on to teaching a behavioral class and you start a blog. Is this blog used in your classroom and students learn what makes a smoker smoke? Why they won't quit? If anyone answers with because they enjoy it and they don't want to be told how to live, then give them an "A" as they got it right.
I am sure your professional path has taken you on roads you never thought you would travel, yet there are people like LighteningBoy, my in-laws and many others who has always wanted to own their own business to be run as they see fit. They did not ask for an intrusion from anyone as to how to run it or who to serve. If they prefer the company of a smoker, they chose their business just as you chose the medical field. I am sure that if the business across the street were totally nonsmoking and LighteningBoy seen people entering their establishment, he would be pleased to see that everyone was happy. If he seen his once loyal customers entering the business across the street and empty tables at his, he would then make the choice of removing the ashtrays and posting his own no smoking sign without being legislated to do so. Like you closing up your private practice and moving to a paycheck with the CDC, he made that choice. No one needs 7 years of school, an internship and a residency to decide for themselves. It is simple.
What you do not understand as a Doctor with no economic education is the fact that when LighteningBoy and his employees are no longer making money, they spend less on products that needs to be sold to keep this country surviving. If I were a waitperson and was no longer making the tips I did a year ago, I will not be buying a new Ford or Prius. Ford Motor company reports sales are down 37%. Whirlpool, Maytag, GE, and all the other brand name companies loses revenue when the Ford employees are no longer spending. Mortgages are foreclosed on when a waitperson has to decide to contribute to the mortgage or buy groceries. In some cases when they lose their job and their homes they find themselves at a food pantry and that is where the Ford people will be soon too.
To think, this all started from a restaurant/bar owner who could no longer afford to keep his staff, who could no longer buy a car or pay their mortgage. Just last month alone, 160,000 people lost their jobs. That does not include the thousands from months past. Maybe someday soon a politician will wake up and see how this all started and realize that the health of this nation is as important as your healthscare program. Don't worry though, as with the banking industry, they will be offering you a golden parachute lump sum payment when they finally close you down.
Doctor Siegel, - "But the real concern here is not the loss of the ability to have smoking, it's the loss of smoking customers. That's completely different. "
More semantics, and Wrong again.
It's not about losing customers (which certainly does occur) as much as it is that YOU and the rest of the Health Gestapo think YOU know more about MY business and MY customers than I do, and YOU are DICTATING to ME that I can't grant my customers the privilege to smoke on MY property, with MY complete approval in the presence of employees that ALSO smoke, specifically because those smoking employees would be at some aledged increased risk of some undetermined malady some 40 years from now due to the exposure to SHS.....talk about complete crap!;
And then there's this;
"But if the primary source of income is from food and beverage sales, then you're simply not going to convince me that the business is actually a smoking establishment. That's complete crap. These establishments are in the food and beverage hospitality business, not the smoker service business."
This is BullSh** and you know it.
You're missing the point, ..or avoid ing it again as usual, so allow me to point out the obvious to you... again;
"These establishments are in the food and beverage hospitality business, not the smoker service business."
HOSPITALITY BUSINESS Doc. It means being hospitable to the guests that accept the invitation to enter of their own free will and provide them the comforts and SERVICE they seek.
That may or may not include smoking, but it's not YOUR call to make is it?
The decision to allow smoking or not belongs to the OWNER, the HOST, the FINANCIALLY LIABLE INDIVIDUAL that makes that hospitality available to be accepted, or declined as a matter of personal choice for each and every individual.
But, it's not about patrons,....right?
The Smoking employees have no issue with smoking guests, the guests have no issue with smoking employees and the owner has no issue with either of the other two,....hmmmmm,...now I wonder who does have an issue, and what could the motivation possibly be? Zero tolerance perhaps?
This is not even a little bit rational Doc, and I honestly don't know how you could think that it is.
Your position smacks of a petit dislike for smokers, of predjudice toward property owners, and a total disregard for the personal preferences of anyone that are different than your own.
Is this what TC is really all about?
Your way or the Highway?
It certainly seems that way.
Bill Godcomplex - in relation to the picture warnings, the only one which remotely bothers me is the picture of the man with a disfigured throat riddled with cancer.
Until I realised that the man's cancer probably advanced to that stage due to lack of anything remotely resembling medical treatment. Was he marooned on one of the poles?
Fleawarhol expressed much more eloquently than I could a major differentiation between cigar bars and bars that happen to allow smoking. The economics are completely different and I think Fleawarhol has demonstrated my point that there is indeed a rational basis for considering these two types of establishments differently.
"Cigar bars don't just allow people to smoke, they sell a wide variety of cigars." So THIS is the ideology BEHIND forcing internet companies to cease trading ? Tobacco outlets do sell singles,actually Dr Siegel,unless i misunderstand Fleawarhol's ending comment,was suggesting LEAVING the decision to the OWNER.YOU HAVE NOT DEMONSTRATED YOUR POINT,MERELY FUDGED AS USUAL.
I've been watching some old Star Trek reruns and I noticed that there will be no smoking in the future.
No one has any pockets either and no one ever goes to the bathroom. (restroom, water closet, loo)
I'm waiting for Public Health to ban public restrooms.
I also think that people with communicable illnesses, (colds, influenza, strep throat) should be denied service everywhere, not just in restaurants, and they shouldn't be allowed to work with anyone else.
I think that we could develop signage that would indicate that no ill people are allowed on the premises.
To protect the health of pharmacy workers sick people should be banned from pharmacies too. Why? Because it's easy.
The list goes on. Feel free to add to this and become part of the "new cutting edge" of Public Health.
(The anti-smoker cartel thinks that smokers are "sick" anyways. So let's ban sick people wherever they are, from everything.)
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
"economics are completely different"
It has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the usurpation of my rights as a property owner. Lets see now, who else confiscates property or dictates how it should be expressly used for "the greater good"?
Oh yeah, ..now I remember, ...I believe they're called Socialists.
You still have no case Doc.
Si,- "Desperate measures require desperate arguments it seems"
Ain't that the truth.
Lynda F. is right,...it's pathetic.
SuperCallousSi: ..an Australian advert on utube showed the image of a "lung" presumably having 150ml of "tar" poured over it to resemble x fags worth.
They're claiming its the dirt from one years worth of smoking. Can you imagine what would happen to a pair of lungs if all the 5 mio litres of air you breathe in a year were to be pushed into the lungs at once? Why didn't they show that....?
"But the real concern here is not the loss of the ability to have smoking, it's the loss of smoking customers. That's completely different.
Michael Siegel | Homepage | 10.03.08 - 3:27 pm | # " So WHAT are you actually saying about the the loss of Public Houses in the UK,or the loss of bars in Eire ? The loss of the ability to allow smoking is leading smokers to turn their backs on going to these places,and therefore the lack of custom is forcing closure.Smokefree policies are closing these places and throwing people onto the dole.You can convince yourself about your rationality,it appears to cut little ice with anyone else.Great idea to save barstaff from SHS,BUT AT THE EXPENSE OF THEIR JOB AND LIVELIHOOD ? DOGMA NON ?
The longer this goes on, the angrier I get. I will share with you my reply to the gag reflex posting of an anti on Topix.
Get rid of all laws then wrote:
S
I welcome new codes, laws and ordinances if it makes my life and my family’s life nicer, safer and healthier. It's not about losing rights its building a better society for ALL. Ain't this a GREAT country?
I am SO excited to hear you say that. As a high school teacher, I have been working in unhealthy environments for over 30 years. Once I worked in a school where I could hear rats scampering behind the walls. Sometimes, they would come running out through a crack. Then, there were the giant cockroaches that littered the floors after they had sprayed. There was also that tunnel area connecting the old (150 years old)building to the "new" building. Students and gangs loved to congregate there, gambling and selling drugs. Once a young man was shot in the back outside my room for not paying his gambling debt. Then, there was that little incident where students shot five times at a coach and a mother pulled a gun on the principal. To get out of classes, some little jokesters liked to set tiny fires in various corners of the room, so we would get to stand outside for a couple of hours while they checked the building for damage. That was even worse than standing outside to smoke since we were not allowed to get our coats before going out. BRRR. Winter is COLD in Cleveland. Let's see. There was that little armed robbery of the cafeteria incident, a riot that shut down school for a couple of days. You would be amazed at the things resourceful kids can make into weapons. One teacher made 3 emergency room visits one year for trying to stop some girls from smoking in the girls' room. Oh, and there was the kid who playfully attacked the shop teacher with a machete and the three young men I had in class who had to leave our school and attend GED classes in prison after each of them had MURDERED someone during failed holdups. Did I mention that my room had no windows because they kept getting broken out by the mischief makers. I had to lock my doors during class because gang members liked to roam the hallways and burst into the rooms with class in session. Many of them found ways to bring weapons to school. BUT, now I can rest easy because YOU are going to provide a safe workplace for ALL workers, not just those poor barmaids who chose to work in smoking allowed bars, but ALL workers, including teachers who are still plugging away in schools like the one I taught in. Thank you for finally voting for that levy you voted down before, for volunteering at your local inner city school, for raising money to buy cell phones for teachers and for hiring more than one armed guard in a school with 2500 students. THANK YOU. The teachers will be so excited to have security at the door and a building with no rats and roaches to make things icky. When will all of these miraculous changes begin in schools across our nation? When will you stop focusing on barmaids and begin focusing on ALL worker safety?
I've never seen a bar or restaurant market itself as a "smokers' lounge." If it did, then it might be a different story.
But the real concern here is not the loss of the ability to have smoking, it's the loss of smoking customers. That's completely different.
Michael Siegel | Homepage | 10.03.08 - 3:27 pm | #
Proof positive that you need to stick to medicine and leave the hospitality industry alone, as you obviously KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT.
I know nowhere near what Lightning Boy knows about tha industry, but I have worked in, for, and around it enough to know that you are so off base and so out of your league when it comes to that that it makes even my head spin.
Please answer the questions Doc --- WHO, or WHAT gives YOU the right to determine the clientele of a private business? A straight answer here please - no weaseling around claiming that is not what you are doing, as that is EXACTLY what you are doing.
Why do you have to have it all? Prior to the smoker ban in Washington, DC 90+ percent of bars and restaurants were already smoke-free, yet you insisted that it had to be 100% --- WHY? Not a single non-smoker ever had to set foot in the less than 10% of establishments that permitted smoking. WHY was that not good enough?
WHY DO YOU INSIST ON HAVING IT ALL?
If you answer none of my other questions, which you usually don't, I would like an answer to the last question, and I will repeat it to make sure you understand exactly which question for which I want an answer -
WHY DO YOU INSIST ON HAVING IT ALL?
Joe Louis once said of his opponents, “They can run but they can’t hide.” He obviously never met the likes of Dr. Siegel in the ring.
“Sam asked: ‘Where do you stand on exemptions for cigar bars? How does your answer reflect on the need for strict logical consistency, particularly with regard to you (new) claim that governments have no business defining a private business's mission statement?’
And the doctor replied: “I do not have a problem with an exemption for cigar bars, since the function of the cigar bar is for people to smoke cigars. I would also not have a problem with a cigarette bar, where the function was to have a place where people smoke cigarettes.”
Doctor, what’s the rationale behind this bit of flatulence? You keep sinking yourself deeper and deeper into stagnant waters and then do a lot of frantic splashing about like a 5-year-old in an attempt to extricate yourself, when you could simply have stuck to your “belief” that secondhand smoke poses a long-term serious health risk which required no-exceptions laws imposing smoking bans in places of business. Period. Instead, you got yourself into foolish exceptions and mumbo-jumbo crap about “functions,” as in “the function of the cigar bar” is for people to smoke cigars. What in the hell does “function” have to do with a “serious health risk” that requires the draconian measures you’ve championed and seen legislated into law -- or anything else, for that matter? Absolutely nothing. What do “functions” and “mission statements” have to do with anything? The people here are talking jobs and livelihoods and freedom of association, and what are you talking about? Why you’re palavering on about “functions” and “mission statements”! But on what moral grounds? What ethical grounds? What grounds of sane governance? Who set up “functions” and “mission statements” as some kind of god-endorsed benchmark for the passing of laws in the first place? Why should we look upon it as anything but a concept you either adopted or concocted and now include in your overall argument in order to flummox us into thinking it has some kind of substance and backs your case?
So first things first: HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY THE USE OF IT? WHY HAS IT ANY SUBSTANCE? FROM WHAT DOES IT DERIVE ITS LEGITIMACY IN EITHER RATIONAL OR MORAL TERMS OR IN TERMS OF GOVERNANCE?
As has been pointed out, there’s no logical consistency when you start making exceptions for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with a primary concern. With all these pathetic arguments of yours, I’m beginning to wonder if you’re not, on the sly taking lessens from Bill Godshall.
.
“What you're doing is re-defining the point of these businesses after the fact because you don't like the smoking bans.” Michael Siegel
I think your protecting your bans based on poorly conceived business practices. Practices which were known by TC not to be directly in play (not that they could not be in play) prior to the bans.
Prior to your bans what business actually felt a need to directly charge a smoking fee? And for what? TC always knew that smoking, at least in some bars, was considered the norm.
A business could no more imagine re-defining their express purpose of operation to included (the norm) smoking, than you could envision the mass influx of money poured into antismoking by big pharma today as compared to when you first started in the business of TC.
Now you rail about how money has corrupted TC, how the original mission has changed or has become misguided. Surely had you have known this from the start you would have taken steps to correct it. Your trying to take such steps even now. Good for you.
No one is trying to redefine the point of these businesses. Your forgetting that many establishments, prior to your bans, invested substantial sums of money into protecting normal everyday business operations by installing ventilation systems which in every conceivable way defines a will to continue allowing what obviously was conceived as a normal, accepted, and highly compatible business practice; to allow smoking. (no re-defining needed) It was you that set out to re-define those accepted practices.
Just as big pharma could care less about your crap the bed movement, your movement could care less about trampling the will, the rights, the liberty, of others.
It seems to me that people are NOT saying they don’t like smoking bans, but that we don’t NEED smoking bans. Again your trying to re-define that obvious premise also.
"Interestingly, I would like to see someone like Sam debate a colleague of mine in tobacco control who takes a harder line position and does not see any reason for an exemption for cigar bars or anywhere else ..."
At least such a discussion would, I imagine, be along clean lines, doctor, not the muddle you continually bring to a debate.
"If an establishment was charging money for people to smoke and that was the primary source of its business income, then fine, let them smoke. But if the primary source of income is from food and beverage sales, then you're simply not going to convince me that the business is actually a smoking establishment. That's complete crap."
What's the point, doctor? There is no point -- at least none that has any reference outside of its own narrow terms. So what's your justification for any of it? You're acting like a high school debater, but that's nothing new. Here, you're simply doing your little thing, categorizing and putting things in tidy little boxes so you can name this one Tweedledum and that one Tweedledee. And God forbid there should be any hanky-panky going on between the boxes, which you've taken such a great deal of time and effort to store and label.
You're in the wrong racket, doctor; you should have been a bookkeeper wearing a green eyeshade and sleeve garters. Or worked in an office as Keeper of Categories with a ring of jangling keys as a badge of office.
.
In other words, you know what you can do with your categories, doctor. And let me repeat what Jacob Sullum once wrote:
"Imposing one smoking policy on everyone is valid only if property rights, freedom of contract, and freedom of association count for nothing."
Those are things you never speak of, doctor. No use getting in an existential swamp, I guess. One swamp is enough.
.
The Doc's logic...defies logic. And sure enough...
"But if the primary source of income is from food and beverage sales, then you're simply not going to convince me that the business is actually a smoking establishment. That's complete crap. These establishments are in the food and beverage hospitality business, not the smoker service business."
..Voila! we're back full circle and the Doc is... defining the purpose of a business! And note the "convince ME." Clearly, it's not even the government that's the Definer, it's the Doc his very self. See the line of petitioners outside his door, begging for a favorable Definition....
FWIW, there was a bar/restaurant here in NYC whose name was The Smoke Inn-- specifically because the owner was aiming for the patronage of cigarette smokers. Didn't help him. When the full ban came in, all he was allowed to keep was the name--and quickly went out of business. So the argument here on this board is academic. Really doesn't matter if Doctor Definer would've graciously allowed him to allow folks to smoke; the Mayor wouldn't.
The Mayor is also about to ban-or greatly reduce by fiat-- the use of salt in restaurant foods. (No, not kidding.) I suppose we could make the case that restaurants are in the food business, not the salt business, that they're selling Nutrition, not enjoyment. After all, restaurants are in the Healthy Nutrition Business, and serving salt is, by those standards, contrary to their mission. Banning meat (not yet contemplated, but wait-- the Li'l King wants another term) would also not really be such a big deal. If restaurants, after all, are simply in the Food business and already serving lots of chicken-and-fish Food, then a legislated loss of meat per se would be strictly beside the point; they'd just be losing customers who like to eat meat but they're not in the meat-eaters service business.
And just BTW, cigar bars are places to smoke cigars while you drink and talk to your friends or entertain clients. They're not primarily cigar stores, so the premise that you go there to "test" cigars that you might later buy in quantity (from somebody else) is mostly beside the point. Nor, at least till the bans came in and forced them to justify their "cigar" status by selling their cigars at exaggerated prices, did you necessarily have to buy their cigars; you could just buy their liquor.
"I've never seen a bar or restaurant market itself as a "smokers' lounge." If it did, then it might be a different story.
But the real concern here is not the loss of the ability to have smoking, it's the loss of smoking customers. That's completely different."
------------------------------------------------
Looking back the traditional professor used to wear a jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a pipe used to enunciate his points.
That jacket gave the impression of a cut from the staunch restricted highbrow robot, representative of a more relaxed and conducive attitude found in reflection and interaction.
Did they ban these people on University campuses too? You never seem to see them any more.
In a view of the most popular profs and those most effective in producing well rounded grads, to move forward in life; it seems the highest level of intelligence and confidence seen among the profs, was the guy with a flare for style and substance with an ability not to dominate, but to interact with his students at their level. The pipe and the Jacket encapsulated the appearance of confidence and intelligence. Today they are just "ignorant smokers" or so we are being told.
Have times gotten better?
I know grads out of the University of Toronto today, who cant spell or write a simple report that is legible, without the help of a computer. Simple math, let alone calculus, or knowing what to expect by estimation before the calculations, are completely beyond their comprehension.
I have talked to political science majors who's interest is wealth and not public service or political leanings, simply because they are being taught if your good enough at developing a personality, or if they can afford a spin doctor to touch up around the edges, politics generates the highest short term monetary potential of all the post secondary degrees, with the least amount of effort or responsibility required to achieve a diploma.
There was a time not so long ago, when strong diversity of opinions were cherished not attacked. When governments were not competing to prove they were the same, with a Soviet Socialist, as the bar set for excellence. McCarthyism developed with nothing to balance his campaign. Today nothing balances the socialists he hated, as his name now enables the socialist campaign.
Moderation is a notion of the past, despite its strength in developing strong social values. The TC movement is identical in nature to McCarthyism because there is no balance. What will be the eventual conclusion to McCarthy type extremes? Will everyone be smoking soon, just to prove a political statement in opposition to the developed stereotypes and the hatred required to grow them?
In the past Global warming and the dangers of ETS would have been debated properly and would never have survived scrutiny, much less enticed legislation. Those purchased campaigns originated from a corrupt and nepotistic United Nations.
Intelligence defined without opposition, by political patronage appointees no less, with no knowledge or education to develop the beliefs being taught in politicize Universities. McCarthyism finds it revenge. Fire with fire.
Too bad we got rid of all the pipe smokers who took the time to ponder the results of an action or support, before jumping on the purchased bandwagons. Are we truly better off with politics dominating the education systems today, in place of a time when minds were developed to think, and those minds defined politics.
It certainly is working well for some people being handed a trillion dollar gift, in gratitude for their incompetence, however for the rest of the population below the Forbes top 500, the future looks pretty bleak and judging by the quality and substance of their education, they certainly are not going to bear it out very well.
Nicely done Gabz!!!
Please answer the questions Doc --- WHO, or WHAT gives YOU the right to determine the clientele of a private business? A straight answer here please - no weaseling around claiming that is not what you are doing, as that is EXACTLY what you are doing.
And no throwing in it is about the health of employees for we all know that is nothing more than a B***s**t cover for the real agenda.
Why do you have to have it all? Prior to the smoker ban in Washington, DC 90+ percent of bars and restaurants were already smoke-free, yet you insisted that it had to be 100% --- WHY? Not a single non-smoker ever had to set foot in the less than 10% of establishments that permitted smoking. WHY was that not good enough?
WHY DO YOU INSIST ON HAVING IT ALL?
And again, the employees have/had the same choice to work there as the clientele have/had to patronize there. The situation here in Phoenix was pretty much 90% of the restaurants were voluntarily (as in by popular demand) smoke-free. I can't speak for bars and/or clubs as I didn't go to them because I can't stand crowds or drunks (see how easily I made my choice without feeling deprived or demanding my preferences be met?). And both the non-smoking and smoking venues flourished and profited nicely living side by side peacefully and ALL were happy.
So kindly answer the question (which many of us have been asking you now for at least 2 years now and you have never answered). WHY DO YOU NEED 100% SMOKE-FREE HOSPITALITY VENUES? WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE ABSOLUTELY "ZERO TOLERANCE"?
Someone posted this over at the Smokers' Club International. Nice to see some here in Phoenix still have functioning brains:
Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) October 4, 2008 -- Congratulations were offered today to the Arizona Court of Appeals for its ruling Sept. 30 against the Arizona Department of Health Services in favor of a Phoenix tobacco shop and bar. The kudos came from the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association in behalf of its more than 2,000 cigar store owners and premium cigar manufacturers.
Phoenix-based Magnum's Cigar Wine and Liquor Emporium, a member of IPCPR, sought an exception to the 2006 voter-approved smoking ban when it constructed a bar on the premises. Magnum's was initially denied the exemption by the Health Services Department but the Court of Appeals reversed that ruling.
"I never met a smoking ban I didn't oppose, but at least the Arizona Court of Appeals shed a ray of reason and reality on the Magnum case," said Chris McCalla, legislative director of IPCPR.
McCalla explained that IPCPR opposes smoking bans because they are usually based on what he called "over-reaching concerns regarding secondhand smoke and they deny business owners their constitutional rights to decide themselves whether or not to allow smoking on their premises."
Although the Arizona smoking ban in public places was voter-approved, McCalla believes voters were misled by unsubstantiated and erroneous data fed to them by over-eager anti-smoking lobbyists.
"The truth about secondhand smoke is that the Surgeon General's 2006 Report says that the evidence is inconclusive regarding the health aspects of secondhand smoke. That explains why the Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not regard secondhand smoke as an occupational or environmental hazard," he said.
Read the full release here:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/
20...rweb1417824.htm
Imagine that Doc......a cigar business WITH a bar can still allow smoking. What a concept! Whatever will they think of next?
Lynda and Gabz,
Should the good Doctor decide to finally try to answer, you have to know that somewhere in a paragraph will be that old, "there is nothing in the Constitution that says that smokers has any kind of rights". To which I would have to reply, "bull" as I have gone through that document with a fine tooth comb and can not find anything that says that anyone has the right to a smokefree air either. Nor does it mention zero tolerance by anyone, let alone tobacco control.
From the Constitution, I changed my reading material and turned to the Bible, where neither in the old or new Testament does it say that anyone is guaranteed a smoke free area either. I did see where we are all create equal though. There is nothing that states that one group of people is superior to another nor does it say we all bow to them.
My hopes are that when their day comes when they pass on to better pastures, the founding fathers will be standing next to St. Peter at those pearly gates and tells each and everyone of in tobacco control which express elevator to take to get them to hell in the quickest time.
Diane,
I am in agreement with you on that. Every time some weak a$$ed being tells me that there is NO Constitutional right to smoke, I point out that there is also NO Constitutional right to "clean air" or "smoke-free air"....and on top of that, there is also NO Constitutional right to never feel offended (that one's for the PC crowd). I then point out that the Constitution was designed to set us up as a Republic, where the rights of ALL (got that doc?) are respected and that the majority CANNOT TRAMPLE THE SAME RIGHTS OF THE MINORITY (as would happen in a real democracy which equals "mob rule").
While the Constitution may point out that the "health" and "well being" of all are guaranteed, that refers to deliberate acts of harm NOT to any possible increased risk IF you are already ill. It also protects our "God-given right" (you are NOT God, doc and it is NOT our job to boost anyone's poor ego to make them feel good about themselves) to think for ourselves and make our own choices in life.
All of this escapes the anti-mentality though as they don't believe in freedom or liberty. They only believe in dictatorships as they don't know how OR are just too damned lazy to think for themselves.
I think the best way to describe my criterion for considering an exemption (i.e., for cigar bars) is to answer the question: is allowing smoking critical to the business - in other words, if there were no smoking, would the business essentially no longer exist?
For a cigar bar, one could make an argument that its primary function is as a place where people try various cigars in order to decide which ones to purchase and that if one bans trying the cigars, you essentially are eliminating the business.
For a bar, you can't argue that if you get rid of smoking, you eliminate the business. We know that's not true. Thousands and thousands of bars are thriving despite having no smoking inside.
THIS is the essence of the distinction I am making. Is smoking critical to the operation of the business? For a bar or restaurant, it's clearly not.
This isn't to say that there are not individual bars or restaurants that lose business if smoking is banned. It just means that as a business entity, these places do not cease to exist by virtue of a smoking ban.
As far as regulating the clientele of an establishment, these smoking bans are not doing that. They don't regulate who can come into the establishment, they just regulate whether the person can smoke inside the establishment. If a bar or restaurant barred smokers from coming in, I would oppose that and condemn the establishment.
GAWD, YOU HAVEN'T HEARD ONE DAMN WORD THE POSTERS HAVE SAID, HAVE YOU? What a fish you are!
.
Hmm interesting i never even knew that theyre selling tobacco in pharmacies.After all you go to a pharmacy to get better not to get worse...
Celia Vistica
Celia Vistica, Andover, Maine 4216 - SSN, Credit Records, Arrest Records, Court Records, Criminal Records ..
Want help to quit smoking? Here is a new, novel,simple cure and guaranteed 100% success! Not yet approved by public health authorities but may be soon.
Malaysian couple beaten to death in bizarre quit-smoking ritual
http://afp.google.com/article/
AL...pdPFvezGq3jX5ig
GreatScot
"I think the best way to describe my criterion for considering an exemption (i.e., for cigar bars) is to answer the question: is allowing smoking critical to the business - in other words, if there were no smoking, would the business essentially no longer exist?"
What you fail to recognize in your claim only all inclusive smoke free bars currently exist which do not specifically seek smokers business.
Within the description of "hospitality" you have to see "accommodation" to the needs of your targeted clientele.
Making them comfortable is the core business activity which allows then to sell alcohol and food. Atmosphere is the enticement which brings people in the door, allowing you to sell them a grilled cheese sandwich for ten times the price it would cost to make it yourself, or to sell you a beer for similar markups. If an owner only allowed tuxedos to be worn he has targeted the clients he wishes to serve similarly a roadhouse would be looking to attract the blue jeans crowd. When comfort deminishes understandably so does the client base. The argument a cigar bar is any different, is purely nonsense, they seek to attract people who smoke cigars and are likely to buy more of them which, also allows them to sell other things such as alcohol to improve, again, the "atmosphere" of the whole purchase experience.
You are attacking the freedom of a business owner, to provide the atmosphere he would like to provide, as a specialized service only he can define, Win or loose that is a choice as the investor, he should be free to make.
Your restrictions do not allow for a smokers bar to exist, and I cam assure you if the so called "leveled playing field" was put aside, many would open within hours as you are probably already well aware.
Are people getting sick of seeing their smoking friends being persecuted?
Workers suspended over Cat smoking ban
http://www.aggregateresearch.com...e.aspx?
ID=14009
Excerpts
PEORIA —
Threats of wildcat strikes against Caterpillar Inc. intensified Monday after the company began suspending union employees who defied its new ban on smoking on company property by lighting up within Caterpillar gates while on break.
Scott said he was surprised by how many did it. “We even heard from non-smokers who lit up just to show solidarity. It’s one thing to talk the talk; it’s another to walk the walk,” he said.
GreatScot
GreatScot Please don't give them any new ideas. These people are self serving radicals, any example of success, results in new research promoting that action in the news. They are killing enough people already.
"For a bar, you can't argue that if you get rid of smoking, you eliminate the business. We know that's not true" Eerr Dr Siegel,would you like to explain that to the large number of Public Houses and bars that have gone out of business because of the ban OR will you try to extricate yourself by blaming the people for not going,rather than the smoking ban ? You are rapidly losing your integrity,however that is YOUR choice,you are doing just fine on your own.
“I think the best way to describe my criterion for considering an exemption (i.e., for cigar bars) is to answer the question: is allowing smoking critical to the business - in other words, if there were no smoking, would the business essentially no longer exist?”
Exactly how are we supposed to read that, doctor? When you say “business” are you talking about business as a category, or are you talking about individual businesses? Because clearly a whole lot of individual businesses have been destroyed by your bans. Good work!
“For a bar, you can't argue that if you get rid of smoking, you eliminate the business. We know that's not true. Thousands and thousands of bars are thriving despite having no smoking inside.”
Now it’s clear. And the field littered with the corpses of all those individual bars you’ve destroyed and the people you’ve thrown out of work. Is this the same Dr. Siegel who once lamented the fact that jobs aren’t that easy to find when it was suggested that bar workers could always find another line of work?
“For a cigar bar, one could make an argument that its primary function is as a place where people try various cigars in order to decide which ones to purchase and that if one bans trying the cigars, you essentially are eliminating the business.”
Please answer the question, doctor. What has “primary function” to do with any real-life situation? Do you really expect us to let you get away with bureaucratic gibberish such as that, gibberish that has no feeling and no connection to real-life situations and real people?
You should have been a lawyer, doctor.
.
I know everyone in TC is going to love this one, although It may just be the step too far which brings them down a few pegs.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/Articl...0929?
hub=Health
Dr Siegel wrote:
For a bar, you can't argue that if you get rid of smoking, you eliminate the business. We know that's not true
We do? Then explain why the ban in the UK has eliminated businesses?
The thing is you have 2 groups not 1. By not allowing smoking in a bar, you eliminate the bars serving that part of the public that smokes. The other part survives. It is probably on this basis you make your claim.
Let's have 2 other groups. 1 that drinks vodka and another that drinks beer. If you ban vodka from bars, the vodka drinkers will no longer go to bars and some will close.
You could then make the claim that banning vodka did not eliminate the bar business, as a whole.
In both cases only one of two groups is directly affected.
You seem to be suggesting that if only one group (the najority) are unaffected, then a ban, on a product that a business sells, does not lead to the elimination of that type of business and therefore was not an essential part of the business.
A hospitality business is not just selling tangible products though, it is also selling intangibles - atmophere if you like. It is this intangible aspect of the hospitality business you fail to address.
west
----
Seriously Siegel,....you are one bizarre prude.
You just don't get it, or refuse to acknowledge it and I'm betting big on the latter.
It's no wonder you deliberately avoid discussing the loss of liberty that is a direct result of Smoking Bans, because just like the "evidence" of alleged SHS harm....you have no case.
Your Don Quixote like quest for equality in every aspect of life for every person, place and thing is at the very least,...surreal, and at best,...incredibly naive.
You couldn't possibly demonstrate any more clearly how out of touch you are with the real world, and how completely misinformed, or how clearly uneducated you obviously are with regard to the hospitality and leisure industry.
Non-Smokers don't care......period, but unfortunately a large percentage of them will routinely "go along to get along" Such is the nature of our mostly lazy culture.
Your clansman on the other hand, Anti-Smokers,.. really don't give a rats ass when it comes to smoking in offices, mechanics garages, Dry Cleaning stores, or even welding shops,...none of that really matters and those places are included in the "for the workers" propaganda only for the sake of appearing "fair" to all, ...but make no mistake, it's only for appearances sake.
Nope, ...nobody cares, and Bans are routinely ignored in all of those places as well.
It's all about the gathering places where people can congregate and discuss their opposition to the creeping socialism that is taking hold of the nation. Bars, Restaurants and certainly Private Clubs are points of resistance that could easily spread the dissent among the public and throw a big fat wrench into the plans for your new world order.
You and your SmokePolice buddies simply can't allow that to happen. Organized resistance to the new socialist TC "movement" must not be allowed. As a result, any Pro-Liberty movement is labeled Pro-tobacco and demonized acordingly.
But by all means, don't let a little thing like treason get in the way,..feel free to continue to decide whats best for everybody that doesn't share the same clear view you obviously have from atop that ivory tower.
It's good to be the king,.....at least for a while.
The link was only put on the website a couple hours ago although it clearly sets the article existence updated Sept. 29. Look at the comments, which appeared along with the article.
Now that says something about corruption and propaganda and the ability to create new realities.
You should see the visual report with numerous examples of smokers, all seedy looking or homeless people, not one of them even resemble normal everyday people, being forced to smoke out side.
Kevin,i can see my next door neighbor claiming the same about my smoking (in a conservatory),affecting their daughter in her bedroom.The mother happens to be a low grade Public Health moron who thinks she knows everything.But both she and her husband drive diesel powered cars with total unconcern and abandon.It's just an extra factor to shore up any failings on the SHS panic mongering.With parents like these society seems doomed.
Kevin
The bias of the media is disheartening to say the least.
They will publish a trash study such as this one with OR's as low as 1.0 -1.4 based on a questionnaire filled out by 10 - 12 year olds who diagnone their own symptoms, yet they will ignore news that point out to the many serious unintended consequences of the smoking bans in Canada no matter how often we report them to the media.
This study had one and only purpose. To push car smoking bans as the conclusion makes it more than transparent:
SHS exposure in motor vehicles may be associated with ND symptoms among young never-smokers. If replicated, this finding provides support for interventions that promote non-smoking in motor vehicles.
(Sorry the link to Science Direct where I got it from no longer works)
Just a thought. If the study on children is accurate and there was more exposure in the past and nicotine is so addictive, shouldn't everyone be smoking or addicted to NRT? If not why not!
west
----
Doctor Siegel - As far as regulating the clientele of an establishment, these smoking bans are not doing that. They don't regulate who can come into the establishment,
Doc,
you presume too much. Bans may not "exclude" smokers but they do severely reduce the attraction for smokers to go and spend their hard earned cash. Catering for specific patrons is part and parcel of the hospitality industry. Sports bars play big screen sports 24/7. Music bars play ear bashing 24/7 music to attract their preferred clientele and subsequent staff efforts to make their entire visit experience friendly, welcoming and pleasurable ensure they come back, become regulars and spread the word. Neither music nor sports are inherent to selling alcohol or food, would a bar that reputedly wants sports fans to frequent, attract sport fans if they had to stand outside in the rain to watch sports? No? Then why would a bar that "Welcomes" smokers but sends them into a back alley to smoke huddling in the cold expect smokers to frequent their establishment?
Here in the UK we have bars with signs saying smokers are catered for, my arse, as usual as not this means a stinking corner out back, under the kitchen extracts and surrounded by trash and empty beer kegs. Care to join me?
GreatScot
"Doctor Siegel - As far as regulating the clientele of an establishment, these smoking bans are not doing that. They don't regulate who can come into the establishment,"
But they do limit who will be allowed comfort when inside. If comfort brings you in the door, and none is available, The time you stay will be limited if you stay at all.
HOSPITALITY, get it?
Smokers relax with a beer and a smoke TOGETHER to maximize the effect and the level of comfort. A non smoker could never understand that as a reality, so they simply make other things up, to counter what should be feelings of shame or at best embarrassment. In the neglect of respect they install with smoking bans.
Has a smoker ever told you what days you will be allowed to make love to your spouse, or how many children you will be allowed to produce? or even what temperature you will be allowed to choose in your hot tub? Your smoking bans are exactly that intrusive. The concerns of harming others are well served with a sign, and you have no credible explanation of why that was never an option.
A sign such as we see protecting people with allergies at doughnut shops or pacemakers around microwave ovens.
"If a bar or restaurant barred smokers from coming in, I would oppose that and condemn the establishment.
Michael Siegel | Homepage | 10.04.08 - 11:46 am | # " Condemn it all you like Dr Siegel,the owner should be allowed to ban non-smokers if they so wish.Your tenuous grip on protecting barstaff went out of the window when they lost their job when the business failed.Stick that scenario in your pipe and smoke it.
You still have not answered the questions Gabz and I asked. No surprise there, you're too busy trying to defend your "zero tolerance" stand that you claim not to have.
A friend of mine says that if you have to start out justifying something....you already know you're wrong.
Another fine example of what will be considered a triumph for public health, once that milestone is achieved. Marketed and grown using TC as the model for success.
Clearly no one can be trusted to think or choose for themselves, especially not parents, who are the most uncaring and heartless vermin to walk the planet, all are now seen as willing and able to do the most harm possible to their own children.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ng-
surgery.html
"Tam Fry, a member of the National Obesity Forum's board, will tell a key conference that young people who are overfed by their parents should be treated as victims of abuse, just as malnourished children are.
He will argue that authorities should take obese children away from their families and into care, and that those whose health is at risk should then undergo stomach-stapling operations.
Mr Fry said parents should be allowed to visit their overweight children in hospital, but they must first be "frisked" to ensure they are not trying to smuggle them junk food or fizzy drinks."
Rose, what were the symptoms of Green Tobacco Sickness again?
Birmingham schoolgirl collapses after trying nicotine patch
A number of Year 11 girls at the school have been issued with patches as part of the scheme to help them give up.
One girl, who was not involved in the stop smoking programme, asked a classmate if she could try one of her nicotine patches.
A source close to the school, who did not want to be named, said
the pupil began to feel ill within an hour of applying the patch to her bare skin.“She went pale and started to feel a bit woozy. She went to the toilet where she apparently began to vomit and passed out,” the source said.
Idlex,
I only wear the patch when I have to fly, which for my likeness is to many times a year, but when I do I always feel like I am flying higher than the plane. I really don't think it is "just me" either, seeing that commercials for the patch will say that women who are pregnant should not wear the patch as it may harm the fetus. I can see why this poor girl got sick! Sue the bastards!
Diane;
"seeing that commercials for the patch will say that women who are pregnant should not wear the patch as it may harm the fetus."
In Canada they are still saying it is absolutely safe to wear the patch while pregnant. The major media groups are still quoting research on rats by a Calgary researcher who has a say about a lot of media campaigns promoted by "Public Health Experts". At the same time tests among 75,000 real women demonstrated significant risks for the baby including malformations similar to the thalidomide blunders they promoted in the past.
It is really disgusting how these drug companies are being allowed to sell their poison time and time again, with a "Public Health Expert" seal of approval.
And they have the nerve to point fingers at tobacco companies...
To repeat the most apt comment to date:
GAWD, YOU HAVEN'T HEARD ONE DAMN WORD THE POSTERS HAVE SAID, HAVE YOU?
Please review my definition of/ experience with/ cigar bars. They're not primarily stores, they're bars. They don't pass your definition (ie YOUR definition, not the owner's or the customers'), therefore, really, they need to be banned.
Besides, if they're bars, they can simply adapt. Instead of allowing smoking, they can offer, say, lap dances or afternoon readings of Winnie the Pooh and attract a different crowd.
Your hair-splitting (side-splitting) semantics are also wearing thin against anyone's bottom line (the financial one and the "end results" one).
If smokers stop going to bars and the bars, therefore, lose considerable business (have to fire staff; become barely profitable) or go out of business entirely (check the stats from the UK), what the f*** difference does it make if this happened because the smokers were directly vs. indirectly banned.? The results are the same: smokers stopped going and the business went under. Insist all you like that smoking wasn't inherent to the business, the hard facts say otherwise. Smoking and those who do it were inherent enough that w/o them the business lost money, fired workers, or ceased to exist. The rest is just remote academic parsing.
Then, too, to claim that banning smokING doesn't literally ban smokERS (which is literally true enough) is directly in line with saying that banning the wearing of yarmulkes or turbans doesn't literally ban Sikhs or Orthodox Jews. They're quite allowed to enter; all they have to do is remove their headgear, feel uncomfortable, feel unwelcome, and not be themselves.
The article Kevin linked to about taking young children away from their parents, throwing them into hospitals on enforced diets and/or against their or their parents' will, stapling their stomachs is the clearest evidence of the brutal totalitarianism that Public Health has evolved to, thanks to the pioneering of Tobacco Control. The levels of nightmare are 6 stories deep. Somehow, in the name of avoiding a possible future risk, Public Health sees to fit to incarcerate children, punish them (and their parents) by removing them from their homes and the people who give them comfort, throwing them into a cold institution, instilling them with warped attitudes about food, or directly and permanently affecting their health (bariatric surgery for growing bodies in need of nutrition? and check the complications from the surgery itself) as well as permanently affecting their lives (never to be able to eat normally) not to mention their psyches ("I'm being punished because I'm fat" "The government at any time can do whatever it wants with me; I'm no longer autonomous, I'm no longer safe").
And, yes, Doc, this IS the natural next step in the process you defend. Public Health and its doctrines uber alles.
:
What gets me is after the Snaps study with much fanfare set with a million dollars in pocket in 2004, to prove "patches were safe" during pregnancy.
You can't find any record what they found. The one significant study you can read, suggests a huge risk is evident.
Yet this one ignorant ass hole who was financed by the anti smoker movement as a drug patch salesman, still has the same advice for rats provided to real women on his web page today.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/uofc...n12-07/
nicotine
This so called researcher should be sued by every new mother who read his trash and jailed for any damage to a baby he caused.
Still a media darling though, and they still refuse to retract the statements they made in his praise. In spite of the danger discovered the same week among 75,000 real mothers [not Shabih Hasan's dozen Rats].
If I hear of a lawyer suing this jerk and/or the University; I am ready and willing to provide documents and email exchanges which implicate; the three major Canadian news agencies, The OMA, the CMA, and Health Canada. Which should sweeten the pot and the level of embarrassment substantially, when calculating the compensation, for their inexcusable and reckless endangerment.
Indictable even in the level of disregard shown, before any baby sees defects. All in the name of Public Health who somehow claim to be serving the "Greater good." by their absence.
It appears Harry was the first to get, and jump on, an important fine point in the debate that I think Dr. Siegel for the first time made clear which is, in my opinion, an "aha!" moment.
Who would have thought that when we argue that smoking bans cause bars to close -- INDIVIDUAL bars that is -- that anyone else could be defining "bar" in any other way?? But aha! Dr. Siegel stakes support for his position -- that smoking is not inherent to the bar business and that many bars survive -- on the COLLECTIVE "bar" (as in the use of the collective "you").
In other words, and to simplify it for clarity's sake, Dr. Siegel approaches the debate from the position of defining the discussion of "bar closing" as an INDUSTRY. Now I get it! Ban smoking in a cigar bar and the industry known as Cigar Bar ceases to exist everywhere. But if smoking bans don't wipe out the industry known as Bar then we haven't made our case because it's not on the same level as HE'S been viewing it. But who knew we were arguing Individual versus Collective?! That's a whole new spin that is worthy of a whole new line of disgust.
Collectivism versus individualism. Where have I heard that war of ideologies before? Hmmmmmm.... (Though at least Dr. Siegel stops short by at least having some regard for defending private -- as opposed to nationalizing -- individual Industries).
So I guess I get it now. If one bar or one hundred INDIVIDUAL bars close due to a ban then it's not enough or no proof enough that smoking is an important enough ingredient (inherent?) for the bar's bottom line (ignoring the private choice matter for now for argument's sake). But if ALL bars -- aka the Industry -- were to close then it would be proof he demands that "if you get rid of smoking you eliminate the business."
To translate his point of view even more: Individuals who lose their bar due to the loss of customers due to a smoking ban have no meaning to him.
I expect he'd say (looking over the anti-smokers' list of excuses and picking...) "they just didn't manage their business well."
Walt said, "this IS the natural next step in the process ... about taking young children away from their parents"
The end game here is to relieve adults of the burden of child rearing and letting the children be "educated" from birth in institutions supervised by professionals. Why? Because raising children is too important to be left to amateurs. Most of society's problems are caused by people who were raised by biological parents who didn't know what they were doing and "mis-educated" them.
This used to be science fiction but there is a big push on right now in the US to establish tax payer funded "pre-schools" that would require the attendence of children as young as 2 or 3 years of age. Today, working parents rely on private day care facilities to "baby sit" their children while mom and dad are at work. The savings to mom and dad make this proposal very attractive.
I expect that in two or three decades, when the 2 year olds who attended these "pre-schools" begin families, it will be seen as "natural" to extend the service to include newborns because it will free the biological parents to pursue other things while assuring themselves that the children will be even better cared for then they could care for them themselves.
What does any of this have to do with "Public Health"? How about this: no smoking, no obesity and no complaints. (Maybe no alcohol or cavities either. Pick your own Utopia.) There won't even be a need for elections anymore because everyone will want to choose the same candidate; who will just happen to be one of the administrators of the institution that raised them.
Everything will be better when "intellectuals" run the world.
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
Well, ladies and gentlemen, there is only one conclusion to draw here in regard to Dr. siegels continued refusal to answre our absolutely diect questions.
The conclusion is that he can not answer the questions without admitting that we are correct and he and the rest of the TC cultists are wrong. At no time can they ever admit they may possibly, no matter even how remotely, be even the slightest bit wrong.
One thing Dr. Siegel has admitted, albeit unintentionally and mostlikely unknowingly, is that he knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about any aspect of the hospitality industry. His double standards regarding the environment in which people work just further proves that he is a bigoted, selfish, tyrannical zealot who insists that it will be his way or no way, no ifs, and, or buts about it.
ANSWER THE DAMNED QUESTIONS DOCTOR.
They are simple, straight forward questions which only need simple, strait forward answers. Why do you refuse to answer them?
I can not, and will not, speak for anyone else, however it would not surprise me if many of your readers and posters here are getting just as fed up as I am with your evasion, semantics games and your refusal to discuss/debate these issues.
Personally I am beyond fed up with your refusal to answer questions.
There had been something starting to bug me about Joe Biden (US Senator from Delaware, VP nominee) that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Granted, I do not like the man and I have known him for 25 years, but there was something more getting to me about him recently and watching the debate Thursday night, I finally figured it out. He reminds me of the TC cultists. He he insists on lying to get his "message" across. The man lies so much that it has become nearly impossible to believe anything that comes out of his mouth. He spoke eloquently Thursday night about walking to a restaurant in his neighborhood, and invited the auudience to go with him, where veryone knows he's just a regular Joe. The problem is, he hasn't lived in that neighborhood (if he ever did) in over 20 years, and the restaurant he spoke of has been closed for over 10 years.
But just like the lies of TC, he knows the lamestream media will cover his butt and not make any mention of the lie. And just like TC, it wasn't an oversight, it was an outright, baldfaced LIE. A lie that was totally unneeded, unlike the other 10 or so he presented that night, which like TC, he had to make and knew bloody well the MSM would cover for him.
It's time to start facing facts, Dr. Siegel and stop hiding behind your lies and semantics. You are a bunch of arrogant, elitist, power hungry tyrrants who will do or say anything to get your way.
I would love for you to prove me wrong --- and you can easily do so by answering straight forward questions with straight forward answers.
I think Gabz and Lynda asked two questions that I haven't addressed here.
First: WHY DO YOU NEED 100% SMOKE-FREE HOSPITALITY VENUES? WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE ABSOLUTELY "ZERO TOLERANCE"?
The answer is that I am simply not aware of any ventilation/filtration system that will quickly enough remove enough of the smoke to adequately protect the workers in that establishment.
Second: (paraphrasing) Why is it not enough to have, say, 90% of establishments be smoke-free?
I understand that solution would give non-smokers plenty of choices of where to dine. However, my concern is with the workers, not the customers, and the workers who are employed in those 10% of smoke-allowed places will be exposed. I think they deserve protection. So that's why I believe all workplaces need to be smoke-free.
To make my position clear, it is quite simple: I believe that ALL workers have the right to a workplace that is reasonably free of significant, easily preventable hazards. Since there is no known way to prevent the hazards from secondhand smoke short of eliminating the smoke, this essentially translates into: All workers have the right to a smoke-free workplace. As I've said above, the ONLY exception would be if an entire line of business would be eliminated (collectively, as JTF notes).
The fact that some individual businesses have suffered as a result of these laws is regrettable, but business interests can simply not be allowed to take precedence over the public's health.
I know many readers do not like my position on this issue. But I am trying to answer the questions in as straightforward a way as I can. I feel that I've made my position as clear as
I can. People may not respect it, but at very least they know where I am coming from.
Finally - I respect people's opinions on the other side of this issue. I don't think that the positions being argued here by many are irrational or without reason. Many of my close friends and colleagues and some of my family members feel the same way and we argue these points all the time. It doesn't diminish my respect for these individuals and it does force me to continually re-examine my own position and arguments, which is healthy and important.
Gabz;
"I would love for you to prove me wrong --- and you can easily do so by answering straight forward questions with straight forward answers."
Sorry his religious beliefs would never allow it.
Haven't you noticed?
How many votes can we get submitted for financing Forces or the Smokers Club? Even if they don't win they get to occupy a place on the published list. LOL
http://www.membersproject.com/
While I appreciate your attempt at answering the question Dr. Seigel, it doesn't cut the mustard.
Who are you to determine what a worker wants or doesn't want in the way of protection? When the vast majority of establishments already prohibit smoking on their own it is not like any worker, just like any customer is FORCED into a smoking permitted establishment. What about those workers who do smoke? What about the owners who smoke? Why are they not being given the same consideration as your non-smokers?
Your ventilation/filtration arguement is bullcrap and you know it. The ventilation/filtration systems are capable of removing deadly toxins from the cooking processes used in kitchens and those are by far more concentrated and hazardous than any amount of SHS in the rest of the establishment.
The air you breathed in an airplane was safer back in the days of smoking than it is now because without smoking they don't have to exchange the air as often, thus, supposedly, saving fuel. Now you don't have to worry about SHS, just colds, flu, and TB. Real safe, ain't it Doc?
You have a double standard and there is no 2 ways about that when it comes to smoking. EVERYONE MUST BE PROTECTED is your mantra, yet when it comes to REAL workplace hazards your attitude is that it is up to the person to decide if they want to take the risk. Sorry, Doc --- real like doesn't work that way. It might in your ivory tower of academia, but not in the real world.
That is your problem, Dr., your life revolves around Academe and TC, it does not function in the realm of real people and therefore you have absolutely no grasp of real life. In that you are like the politicians in Washington, you claim to be for the people, but have no concept or understand of the people. At least we, the people, can vote the bastards out in Washington, we can't do a damned thing about you self-appointed busybodies who are intent on destroying our livelihoods and our lives.
Dr. Seigel, did you really say this? If not, what do you believe to be the
equivalent non smoking bartenders inhale.
http://www.junkscience.com/news/...ws/
amherst.html
On August 19, 1997, the Board of Health for Amherst, Massachusetts voted unanimously to impose a total smoking ban in town.
Siegel claimed his research shows bartenders who do not smoke themselves inhale the equivalent of one-and-one-half or more packs of cigarettes a day and that "220 bartenders working in the state today, if they continue to work for 40 years, are going to die from their exposure."
I would like to ask the Good Doctor a question for the sake of real babies.
Which advice would you recommend to pregnant women? The TC rendition or the shelved study no one ever heard of? The former was released not once, not twice, but three times in anti smoker news releases over the past year to the international press, all presentations were made after the one which actually studied women with opposing results. The study was not found where it was announced it would be published and this parred down description is no where near the promotions of absolute safety he claimed in the first go around.
Human research
http://www.motherisk.org/
JFAS_do...FAS_6003_e4.pdf
Children born to nonsmokers, but who used nicotine substitutes, had a slightly increased risk of congenital malformations, relative rate ratio was 1.61(95% confidence interval 1.01-2.5
and when the analysis was restricted to musculoskeletal malformations, the relative prevalence rate ratio was 2.63(95% confidence interval 1.53-4.52)
Their conclusion was that their results showed no increase risk for malformations in women who smoked during pregnancy
-----------------------------------------------
Rat research
http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/uofc...n12-07/
nicotine
"The research team of Dr. Shabih Hasan, associate professor in the Department of Paediatrics and a specialist in the care of newborn babies"
Pretty busy guy; a specialist in the care of newborn sheep would be a more accurate description, however for TC purposes you can call him anything you like, as long as he rubber stamps the propaganda.
http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/sea...iratory+time%
22
http://www.tobacco.org/articles/.../category/sids/
Dr. Siegel,
I might not agree but I respect your right to believe that SHS can be hazardous to workers’ health and as a public health practitioner that it’s your job and responsibility to protect them. But then you’re not being consistent when you say that you’re willing to exempt cigar bars, much like the spokesperson from the Quebec health ministry who argued that an employee in a cigar bar worked there by choice when asked why their health was not important.
If indeed the only reason you stay firm on your position is the workers’ health and safety and not the patrons, and if forcing smokers to quit by making their life miserable is not part of your personal agenda, the only thing that would make your position consistent is that you would agree with smoking exemptions to any private establishment that does not employ workers, whether a cigar bar, a resto, a pub, or even a store. In other words owner-operated businesses of any kind. How do you feel about that?
TC Smoking Ban advocates are killing 9 out of 10 SIDS babies;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/healt...lth/
7045230.stm
I understand that solution would give non-smokers plenty of choices of where to dine. However, my concern is with the workers, not the customers, and the workers who are employed in those 10% of smoke-allowed places will be exposed.
Excuse me doc, but those employees also have the number of choices of where to work as the general public has where to dine. So this excuse of yours is the b***s**t!!!!
And please, don't try insulting the bar and restaurant staff by claiming they are too stupid or lazy to be able to find another restaurant/bar to work in.
The rest of the world manages just fine, actually so do all the smoking hospitality workers........so how come your non-smokers can't?
What you are striving for is despicable beyond belief. You deny you are for zero tolerance, yet you consistently prove that is your goal....even when you argue for parental autonomy.
Kevin, that has to be one of THE most disgusting things I've read in quite some time.
How do these people get away with this crap?
Well, Lynda, we have now come back around full circle.
It is not the smokers that are too stupid to understand the risks, it is the non-smokers that are so freaking ignorant that laws have to be made to make sure they are not exposed to such SEVERE HEALTH HAZARDS as SHS.
At least the good doctor is making it abundantly clear that even he and the rest of the TC cultists acknowlege what the rest of us NORMAL people have known for practically forever --- non-smokers are fearful little wussies who need protection provided by big brother government to protect them from all the big bad wolvies of everyday living. Oh, and also that they are to f'ing stupid to read a freakin' sign that says smoking is permitted.
So, Doc, just what exactly is your first hand knowlege of the hospitality industry, other than working to destroy it? How long did you work in a bar or restaurant? I'm pretty sure my sporadic stints at it amount to a hell of a lot more time than any of you or your cronies ever did.
Gabz: Kevin, that has to be one of THE most disgusting things I've read in quite some time.
Want to be even more disgusted? Read this: http://cagecanada.blogspot.com/2...in-
america.html
And on the subject of NRT testing on pregnant mothers, in Canada it is confidential information between the makers (Big Pharma) and government! And I had to go all the way to the minister of health to find that out, after months of a merry go around from one bureaucrat to another!
http://www.cagecanada.ca/
index.p...ine_Replacement
The question was asked, Why do you need 100% smoke-free hospitality venues? And your answer was that you were not aware of any ventilation/filtration system that will quickly enough remove enough of the smoke to adequately protect the workers in that establishment.
I may have missed it the first time around, but is this “quickly enough” a new wrinkle in your position? Or is it essentially the same as one of your previous statements that went: “... in order to remove the health hazard, you would have to eliminate the smoke immediately after it left the cigarette but BEFORE it reached the nonsmokers in the room. I don’t see how that is possible.” (Your emphasis.) (And by nonsmokers, who did you have in mind exactly? Staff AND customers?)
So now with the ventilation/filtration equipment the air in the bar may actually be, overall, CLEANER AND MORE HEALTHY TO BREATH than the air out on the street (especially when its a bar either in a heavy urban setting or is one situated next to a highway), we have a not “quickly enough” condition, which therefore renders the equipment ineffective for your strict requirements. Again, even though OVERALL the air is cleaner. IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE SAYING? So if you had a bar with an outdoor patio, in a heavy urban setting, or that was situated next to a heavily traveled highway, and wlith ventilation/filtration equipment operating INSIDE the bar where smoking was allowed, then a waiter working the outdoor patio would actually, while he was outside, be in a healthier environment, even though the air inside was much cleaner overall than the air outside? Is that what you’re saying?
“Since there is no known way to prevent the hazards from secondhand smoke short of eliminating the smoke, this essentially translates into: All workers have the right to a smoke-free workplace.”
“No known way.” You hang on to that, doctor (we've heard it before), because if you ever give in on that point, your whole damn position collapses. Couldn’t have that now, could we.
“However, my concern is with the workers, not the customers.”
We’ll remember that, doctor. NOT the customers. It isn’t that you haven’t said this before, but now, whenever you tend to stray off of that (as you sometimes seem to), we can remind you of it. So when you’re worried about the health of the waiter on the outdoor patio where smoking is allowed, even though he may be outdoors only 10% of the time, then it’s not the customers who are to be protected.
“As I've said above, the ONLY exception would be if an entire line of business would be eliminated.” Now that we’ve got that straight, doctor, please tell us exactly WHY an entire line of business should NOT be eliminated if there’s a serious health risk? What’s your rationale? After all, you do say, “The fact that some individual businesses have suffered as a result of these laws is regrettable (sic), but business interests can simply not be allowed to take precedence over the public's health.” But business interests CAN be allowed to take precedence over the public’s health if an entire line of business is at risk? Explain, please. Are you for the public's health or are you not?
“Many of my close friends and colleagues and some of my family members feel the same way and we argue these points all the time.”
Welcome news! Thank God there is some balanced judgment and common sense in the Siegel family.
.
idlex
Green Tobacco Sickness in Tobacco Harvesters -- Kentucky, 1992
"Green tobacco sickness (GTS) is an illness resulting from dermal exposure to dissolved nicotine from wet tobacco leaves; it is characterized by nausea, vomiting, weakness, and dizziness and sometimes fluctuations in blood pressure or heart rate"
"On September 14, 1992, the Occupational Health Nurses in Agricultural Communities (OHNAC) project of Kentucky * received reports of 27 cases of GTS. The cases occurred among tobacco harvesters who had sought treatment in several hospital emergency departments in south-central Kentucky during the preceding 2 weeks. This report summarizes the findings of the investigation of these cases."
"Twelve (26%) case-patients were hospitalized for 1-2 days; of these, two (4%) required intensive-care treatment for hypotension and bradycardia."
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/...ml/
00020119.htm
"We put the tobacco on our skin and waited to see what would happen," Jarvik recalled in an issue of UCLA magazine. "Our heart rates increased, adrenaline began pumping, all the things that happen to smokers."
http://www.news.com.au/
heraldsun...5005961,00.html
NIACIN AND NIACINAMIDE IN FLUE-CURED CIGARETTE SMOKE CONDENSATE
Summary
Niacin and niacinamide were identified by microbiological and spectral methods in smoke condensate from South Carolina grade SFX tobacco.
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/a...pnx69d00&
page=1
Dr Siegel wrote:
However, my concern is with the workers, not the customers, and the workers who are employed in those 10% of smoke-allowed places will be exposed. I think they deserve protection
Are you concerned about 'workers' whole health?
I asked if some workers were smokers what are you protecting them from, yet no answer. An establishement could only employ smokers. couldn't it? The discrinmination argument is lost. Again two groups of 'worker' not one.
As for whole health and indeed 'public' health. This is a judgement. You are given a choice , in essence, smoke-free bars or for some unemployement and business failure. Are the risks to health of unemployment higher or lower than the risks from SHS?
You have protected some 'workers' at the expense of others. You have also endangered people not directly employed. The partners and children of those made unemployed. Is their health protected? It is wider than that with a more uncaring attitude to people who smoke with regard to healthcare in general. This is a systemic issue not a particular issue.
It is not enough to say 'it is unfortunate' that some businesses fail. It is a direct consequence of an action you endorse and therefore, from a poublic health stand point, must take responsibility for.
Of course you have shifted the argument about business mission onto protection of workers, a sleight of text that has not gone unnoticed.
So the questions are
1 In 'protecting' one group with a zero tolerance approach, have you inflicted an even more unhealthy lifestyle on former members of that group and an even wider group of people that you fail to acknowledge?
2 In general is it acceptable, from a public health point of view, to knowingly increase risks?
On this second point you may argue that it is only some people affected and on balance the najority are protected. This line is open to question.
I argue that alternative ways need to be found that do not increase risks to health (or life or liberty) while reducing, or in some cases, eliminating the risks you perceive. It is this failure or unwillingness to find a better way forward that is so damming.
west
----
So now it is not enough that you close down or put restaurant and bar owners out of business, you are also going after the companies that makes and sells ventilation systems? Gee's if they don't work, there is no sense in anyone spending the money to have them installed now is there? To all the owners of nonsmoking businesses, if you have in the past had a ventilation system installed to filter the air for your nonsmoking prissy customers, take note that it was money down the drain.
Sorry Marcus if we just put you out of a job. Though you are the expert in ventilation systems, it now seems that the good Doctor knows more than you.
If we want to return smoking to pubs and bars it will have to be done by force.Dr Siegel and the TC movement cannot, nor are prepared to concede any middle ground.To accept that in order to protect EVERY member of barstaff from a peril so hazzardous ,loss of employment can and will occur as a repercussion seems to most reasoned people a trade off that is too high a price to pay.Barstaff have NO SAY IN THE MATTER.We can argue until the cows come home,but the dogma that drives Dr Siegel will never waiver from his determination to (1) stop the TC movement from imploding upon itself (2) return the movement back to continuing its work minus the elements that are drawing it into such ridicule.Who is to say that Dr Siegel will not change his mind about banning smoking in cars,or even in the home,if and when TC return to the straight and narrow.Dr Siegel seeks nothing more than the TC position to re-align itself .His blog though outlining and ridiculing the vagaries of how far TC has deviated isn't a new way of thinking and addressing issues,it is merely how TC should be acting had it not gone off the deep end.Those of us who support freedom of choice are useful in condemning and vocalising the extremes that TC have gone to,but are never allowed to cross into the domain that forever remains hallowed TC territory.Many of us have used reasoned and economically sound argument ,but are brushed aside.The TC position must dictate whether it be via Dr Siegel or the more extreme Stanton Glans.Dr Siegel may appear moderate in his views,but so may have Mussolini when compared to Hitler.
Of course the reason that we don't know about niacin in the smoke is because it was a trade secret,they were going to advertise the fact, but decided against it.
Presumably because people enjoyed smoking, but if they knew about "ingredient X" they might just take the much cheaper niacin tablets instead.
Massive loss of trade.
COLLECTIVISM
vs.
INDIVIDUALISM
http://freedomkeys.com/collectivism.htm
GreatScot
SuperCallousSi your point is well made. Lynda F also reminded me of this.
Though having read the recommended 'Jonathan Livingstone Seagull' I still feel it worthwhile to at least ask questions.
Dr Siegel does attempt to put forward his reasons. The problem is these reasons are inconsistent.
Due to this, some tension is created which may at some time or other lead to a realisation that the end is unachievable and a rethink is required. One can only hope.
Even if tobacco were eliminated tomorrow the promises would not
come to fruition. Would the Utopia sought be found more eloquently expressed in 1984 or Brave New World than in Nirvana?
How anyone can ignore the images of people in distress (sometimes dieing as told by GreatScott and Gabz), being refused a cigarette as a result of these policies is beyond me.
I am sure that a health advocate and educator wishes to adhere to the premise, 'first do no harm', though as you have indicated, this belief maybe erroneous.
(Rose, if you are on F2C, can you PM me?)
west
----
"Dr Siegel does attempt to put forward his reasons. The problem is these reasons are inconsistent." Yes west2,you are perfectly correct,but i always seem to feel that the reasoned response is more for the perceived readership rather than an actual response to the points raised.In essence it's wooden.In real discussion if you ask a question,you wait for a response and then answer,it doesn't happen.It never happens.Yet we are always reminded that here ,we the opposition, are allowed to speak.Looks good,seems good even,but where's the warning sticker after all,these pinches of salt far exceed a safe daily limit.
Michael Siegel wrote: However, my concern is with the workers, not the customers, and the workers who are employed in those 10% of smoke-allowed places will be exposed. I think they deserve protection.
Perhaps we might try taking all Dr Siegel's various objections to smoking in bars at face value, and see if we can design some sort of venue which would meet all his requirements.
The first concern is to get the right name for these venues. They won't be the same as traditional bars or restaurants, because they will be primarily places where people can smoke tobacco, have a few drinks, and maybe eat some food. Let's call them "Smokehouses" for now, so there can be no shadow of doubt about what their prime business is. There'd be no saying that smoking wasn't an essential part of a smokehouse's business.
The second concern is about the workers in these smokehouses. So let's just get rid of the workers, and have all food and drink and tobacco delivered by vending machines.
The third concern is about public access to them. Dr Siegel will worry that unwitting members of the public, people with heart conditions, children, and so forth might wander in might wander in and drop dead. So let's ban them all too. No children. No pregnant women. No people with asthma or heart disease. In fact no unwitting members of the public at all. The smokehouses will be members only. Prospective members will have to prove their age, good health, sound mind, etc, etc, in a series of gruelling tests over several weeks. If they pass, they get issued with a membership card without which they can't get past the bouncer outside the single locked door to the smokehouse.
Ventilation? As much as the customers want. The main problem is what happens to the air vented from the smokehouses which might kill droves of people outside. Right, locate the smokehouses out of town.
About the only remaining problem (that I can see) is keeping the smokeasies clean, removing plates and glasses, cleaning floors and table tops, and so forth. At the moment I can't see a way to do this without cleaners entering the smokeasies and promptly dropping dead. Perhaps they'd be issued gas masks and oxygen tanks, and have their exposure limited like nuclear industry workers. I'm sure there's a solution somewhere.
What would Michael Siegel make of one of these smokehouses? I doubt if he'll even consider them, because they are at entirely imaginary venues, and quite unlike real bars and restaurants. But if he did get to think about them, my guess is that he'd probably start looking for some entirely new justification for banning smoking in them too. Antismokers primarily want to stop people from smoking, and the appearance of a whole archipelago of smoke-filled smokehouses across the country would be regarded as a 'retrograde' step that 'sent the wrong message' and was thus 'entirely unacceptable', even if it might take a while to think up a half-plausible reason why they couldn't be accepted.
I completely understand Dr. Siegels rationale for smoking bans. Dr. Siegel just has no understanding or appreciation for the work on first hand smoke that preceded his appearance on the stage of tobacco research.
Dr. Siegels original conclusions were based on labor law and not science. The question at the time may have been something like "what kind of smoking bans are possible given current labor law"? The science came later and it was twisted to support the bogus claims of risk to "worker safety" so that bans could be justified by abusing labor law. Any risk is too great and there is "no safe level" are what you get with this approach ... scientific leaps of faith.
Second hand smoke studies were ridiculed by first hand smoke researchers in the 1980's and 90's. The "new" research involved the use of data points that fell within the margin of error of traditional tobacco research. It didn't matter though because second hand smoke research was not a search for the "truth".
What was once a "Public Health" concern, first hand smoke, has morphed into a "fanatical and irrational passion" to irradicate the world of tobacco.
Dr. Siegel should not feel bewildered when he sees others making unscientific claims about the positive affects of bans or the benefits of restricting outdoor smoking or the retail distribution of tobacco.
He doesn't have any better science behind him than they do. He showed them how to do it and this will be his legacy.
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
Rose wrote (thanks): "Green tobacco sickness (GTS) is an illness resulting from dermal exposure to dissolved nicotine from wet tobacco leaves; it is characterized by nausea, vomiting, weakness, and dizziness and sometimes fluctuations in blood pressure or heart rate ... case-patients were hospitalized for 1-2 days; of these, two (4%) required intensive-care treatment for hypotension and bradycardia."
From my link : "...the pupil began to feel ill within an hour of applying the patch to her bare skin.“She went pale and started to feel a bit woozy. She went to the toilet where she apparently began to vomit and passed out,”
So all the symptoms of Green Tobacco Sickness appear to be there, fainting being caused by a temporary shortage of blood supply to the brain, often due to falling heart rate or blood pressure (going pale). The report also said that the girl had recovered within a week (maybe a lot less) of being taken to hospital.
What if she hadn't been found? What if she'd been riding a bicycle home when the symptoms came on? I wonder how many more such children are going to be hospitalised - or even killed - by GTS after wearing supposedly 'safe' nicotine patches?
GreatScot.....Thanks for that link on Collectivism V Individualism. I've got it bookmarked now!
I'm sure the Doc is far too busy to read the whole thing, so I found a few "quotes" he should read....which actually show that WE are coming from a position of "liberty" as our founders envisioned and are fighting to preserve the Republic they formed for us, and not the democracy they (the doc etal) want us to be....that is providing he has the guts and spine to choose to actually open his eyes AND mind to the despicable path he is on.
"Most modern intellectuals congratulate themselves for having achieved the allegedly momentus insight that capitalism and altruism are ultimately incompatible. Yet they're still too damned ignorant to realize, or too damned stubborn to acknowledge, that altruism is definitely NOT the only moral code available to mankind; it is, in fact, the bloodiest and most regressive one of all. Such stunted thinking on the part of the intelligentsia has resulted in their committing the intellectual atrocity of rejecting the capitalism and freedom instead of the altruism and coercion." -- Rick Gaber
"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816
"The Nazis are well remembered for murdering well over 11 million people in the implementation of their slogan, 'The public good before the private good,' the Chinese Communists for murdering 62 million people in the implementation of theirs, 'Serve the people,' and the Soviet Communists for murdering more than 60 million people in the implementation of Karl Marx's slogan, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' Anyone who defends any of these, or any variation of them, on the grounds of their 'good intentions' is an immoral (NOT 'amoral') enabler of the ACTUAL (not just the proverbial) road to hell." -- Rick Gaber
"The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism ..." -- Nathaniel Branden HERE
"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men."-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
"The right to the pursuit of happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own, private, personal happiness and to work for its achievement. Each individual is the sole and final judge in this choice. A man's happiness cannot be prescribed to him by another man or by any number of other men. ... These rights are the unconditional, personal, private, individual possession of every man, granted to him by the fact of his birth and requiring no other sanction. Such was the conception of the founders of our country, who placed individual rights above any and all collective claims." -- Ayn Rand
"The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others." -- Ayn Rand
"State-mandated compassion produces, not love for ones fellow man, but hatred and resentment. The breakdown of 'basic civility' and the rise of the welfare state occur concurrently." -- Lizard
This next one Obama needs to read, digest and remember:
"[Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships." -- Ayn Rand
Siegel, - "The answer is that I am simply not aware of any ventilation/filtration system that will quickly enough remove enough of the smoke to adequately protect the workers in that establishment."
Ummmm,.... BullSh**
The workers are there by choice. They very likely knew it was a smoking allowed environment before accepting the offer of employment and don't want or need your special brand of "protection". If they possess the skills required to work in a Smoke Friendly environment, then those same skills are in demand in similar Smoke Free environments as well. They have a choice. Your desire is to eliminate that choice pure and simple,... you don't want them to have a choice and clearly oppose any such liberty to choose.
Siegel, - "However, my concern is with the workers, not the customers, and the workers who are employed in those 10% of smoke-allowed places will be exposed. I think they deserve protection. So that's why I believe all workplaces need to be smoke-free."
Ummm,... more BullSh**
They are "exposed" by choice, or they wouldn't be there. Are they complete imbeciles?,...oh wait, ...according to TC, ...of course they are, whether they smoke or not. You apparently have no issue if those patrons are also smokers and that the workers at some point are also patrons. See previous response. You want to eliminate the choice and abolish any liberty that would allow it.
Siegel, - "I believe that ALL workers have the right to a workplace that is reasonably free of significant, easily preventable hazards."
I don't think anyone here would have any real or substantial objections to this if there were in fact any "significant" preventable hazard.
But that's the problem,.....SHS is not a "small", "slight", "significant", "severe", or "extreme" hazard that warrants the recision of the property rights of small independent hospitality and leisure business owners, or the individual liberty to make a personal choice of employment environment in which to be employed, or in the type of venue to patronize. (SHS having been previously described by Dr. Siegel using all of the above adjectives, ...depending on which assault on the constitution he was defending at the time) See previous responses above.
So,...once again,....BullSh**
Siegel, - "The fact that some individual businesses have suffered as a result of these laws is regrettable, but business interests can simply not be allowed to take precedence over the public's health."
Did I say this already?,...BullSh**!
Using the word "regrettable" is awfully charitable of you, but please don't insult our intelligence, and call it what it really is, ...expected, anticipated collateral damge of the Anti-Smoker policies.
What your proposing here is more of the same "dumbing-down" socialism of the nation that you have been advocating all along. Your chosen position here is that business owners should be expected to "protect" people from them selves. That People (not just Non-smokers, though they are clearly the dumbest among us) are just too stupid to think for themselves, too stupid to have achieved a third grade reading level sufficient to understand an internationally recognizable pictograph, and are so completely and totally stupid that it should be mandated by the government that the non-governmental, non-elected and self appointed guardians of the "public health" moral code of immortality are better suited to managing hospitality business operations than the owners that are actually footing the bills to maintain those places of busines to begin with.
You continue to advocate the "sameness" and lack of variety of options that is at the heart of the socialist society you are obviously quite enamored with.
Iro;
Perhaps you could add your link,
http://cagecanada.blogspot.com/2...in-
america.html
To these, and many more similar references and submit a definition to WIKI and Webster in defining "disease management" as propaganda based victim bashing campaigns.
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/a...e/index-
eng.php
"Social Marketing is "the application of marketing technologies developed in the commercial sector to the solution of social problems where the bottom line is behavior change." It involves: "the analysis, planning, execution and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences to improve their personal welfare and that of society."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle2689886.ece
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
s...al_gam_mostview
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/v...se-of-cot-
death
I have never seen a more apt description of TC as a Public health "disease management" strategy, than what is described here;
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images...82/
128291eo.pdf
Just because they have redefined their targeted groups to be more politically correct, does not make their actions any less repulsive or any more acceptable.
The targets of these campaigns are always found substantially in the lowest of socioeconomic scale, having no means of defending themselves, against the effects of the hateful stereotypes being promoted. The menthol issue is a perfect example of their promotional bigotry.
The largest populations found in this case are also traditionally the most stigmatized by racial profiling as well. How about that, a new way to keep the racist issues hidden in the numbers so everyone can join in, without fear of reprisals.
Is it any wonder they attract such an enthusiastic fan base of bigots in the media comments sections?
People need to focus on the one line;
"programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior"
How do you influence "voluntary" behavior?
The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates; that influence has been in targeted hate mongering to force compliance.
Michael is just a tool of the trade, who produced some of the required numbers which helped create targeted hatred. He is no longer producing what they want, so he is no longer needed.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/
t...icle4880902.ece I've binge smoked up to 3 packs of fags but ........YES smoking is definitely more of a problem,only 25% max do it,not close to 100% like drinking alcohol.Nulabor got it's priorities spot on,like it always does.
From Harry's post;
I believe the 220 number as Michael admitted himself when discussing his court testimony, exhibited the most extreme of exposures sustained for a full lifetime. Since any effect of ventilation will reduce the exposure which is required to produce 220 mortalities, he defeats his own credibility when stating his concern is for the employees and not the customers, especially when speaking in promotion of patio bans. Smoke diluted by how much ventilation?
If the exposure is diminished even slightly, his research fails to find a hazard. When witnessing the huge dilution produced with modern ventilation or by smoking out doors, he simply has no case.
Kevin,- "he simply has no case."
Introduce ANY objectively quantifiable (tangible) variable at all (outdoor windspeed), and he has no case.
Introduce ANY subjectively quantifiable variable (intangible) (Liberty, Freedom, Rights)) and he has no argument,.....unless advocating the socialism he seeks.
The emperor has no clothes.
What most fail to recognize is the large difference between a linear and non linear hazard. Michael's research is based in a linear dose response poison is in the dose. Glanz contends any level is dangerous in a non linear perspective despite the evidence he cites which is all drawn from the linear pool of thinking.
Michael plays both sides of the street as well, when he supports smoking bans, knowing full well they are sold in protecting the public and children from a risk his own research should demonstrate, that a hazard is unlikely to either.
Public health [as he is just starting to recognize although not fully admitting it yet] has gone well beyond the limits of what credible science can prove or even suggest. It is all about exaggerating the targeted hatred now, and the groups to be targeted will all feel the full force of what TC developed and made acceptable. Phantom diseases and pandemics which need to be cured.
In a more honest sense, people who need to be put in line; by moralist victim bashing and shaming campaigns targeting primarily minority groups with new restrictions and expenses.
AKA denormalization or bigotry depending on what side of the street you stand.
The new science?
Tobacco industry must not dump its high nitrosamine tobacco on poor countries.
http://
www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov...bmedid=11230082
No safe cigarette dumps them on us.
Even Bill G. Is getting screwed by the "no safe" process he is so enthusiastically promoting.
From the link above we see the reasoning behind the label on his product of choice. Indicating chew is not a safe alternative.
"Editor—In the late 1970s Hoffmann's group described the carcinogenic properties of the tobacco-specific nitrosamines including 4-(N-methyl-N-nitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-
butanone and N'-nitrosonornicotine in a series of experiments.1
These substances are formed during the curing process by a chemical reaction between nicotine and nitrate. They are present in cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and snuff.
One of the substances, 4-(N-methyl-N-nitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-
butanone, is of particular interest as it is a powerful lung adenocarcinogen in animals regardless of route of administration.
Adducts of N′-nitrosonornicotine and 4-(N-methyl-N-nitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-
butanone are seen in the lungs of humans and animals and are closely correlated with carcinogenicity.2"
Cathy Bell accused Michael of being a shill to big tobacco.
I wouldn't go that far however I will say they are definitely in the same camp in respect to the dumping of toxic waste, into the North American marketplace.
Eliminating all hopes of regulating the product and increasing the industries bottom line by selling whatever they damn well please. While no one is remotely concerned with the group most effected. The anti smoker hate campaign makes smokers expendable and deserving of their fate.
PM in 1989;
http://www.no-smoke.org/document...ment.php?
id=275
"Strategy: Increase awareness of the true nature of indoor air pollution. Promote improved ventilation as the best solution and a better approach than smoking restriction legislation."
-- Philip Morris (1989)
And now?
http://www.socialaw.com/slip.htm...d=16158&
sid=120
"both Philip Morris and the plaintiff agree that cigarette smoking is inherently dangerous and that there is no such thing as a safe cigarette. Because no cigarette can be safely used for its ordinary purpose, smoking, there can be no nonunreasonable use of cigarettes."
The other side of the non debate?
The Public Health perspective;
http://www.paho.org/English/AD/S...RA/
wntd2007.htm
Introduction: rigorous research leaves no doubt
"There is no doubt: breathing second-hand tobacco smoke (SHS) is very dangerous to your health. It causes cancer, as well as many serious respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in children and adults, often leading to death. There is no safe level of human exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke."
-------------------------------------------------
The question which determines the ultimate health effect and implies the most reasonable action, therefore has to be; Can they be safer?
The science implies they can absolutely be much safer. Which, once recognized, will form the most direct means to reduce mortality and morbidity, if that was ever an important objective.
Before TC destroyed the restrictions they were believed to be safer. Today we have no way to know, because they are able to import cheaper unregulated tobacco, from third world countries, manufacture them in third world countries and through free trade, sell whatever they please and call it cigarettes. Making more gains by cheaper labor, Selling what likely is best described as "dumping toxic waste" here, at a hugely grown bottom line profits.
We are living with an increased health risk even if that risk is only figurative. Risk increase and promoted with tax dollars to generate more tax dollars, at the behest of the incompetence demonstrated by Public Health and especially by TC.
Who collectively have declared the Tobacco industry; immune from any obligation or prosecution, in connection with any future products they sell, regardless of what they contain or what harm they may cause.
Consumers now carry the responsibility for all the blame.
Big tobacco conned TC and all of Public Health, with the "no safe tobacco" promotion. They aren't parroting you, you are parroting them, by embracing their best move yet.
If Michael or anyone connected with Public Health wish to reclaim their integrity, they need to look again at the FDA bill and demand restrictions of Tobacco products, by embracing the real science and lowering the health risk to everyone, smokers and non smokers alike.
Not by the impossible challenge of forcing everyone to quit, which despite your best efforts, clearly isn't happening, but by by denouncing the lobby hate campaign targeting individuals. This will have an effect of bringing both smokers and non smokers into consensus, and puts the opposing participants of the issue in their proper place beyond the currently weak political perspectives.
You see in the link I provided describing PMs infallible defense, there is salvation to be found. But only if science supports the fact "cigarettes can be safer" and the risk implied today is preventable to a significant degree. Demand that denormalization returns to scrutinizing the product and applies control over the more obvious defects.
http://www.socialaw.com/slip.htm...d=16158&
sid=120
"Back v. Wickes Corp., supra at 636 (manufacturer of motor home found liable in design defect case "relied heavily on evidence that the vehicle conformed to all product safety standards prevailing in the industry" when the vehicle was manufactured). The plaintiff need only convince the jury that a safer alternative design was feasible, not that any manufacturer in the industry employed it or even contemplated it. See Marchant v. Dayton Tire & Rubber Co., 836 F.2d 695, 699 & n.2 (1st Cir. 198 ("[t]he alternative [design] need not be in fact available . . . . The . . . test is one of feasibility." The "plaintiff's case is not automatically defeated merely because the alternative design was not being used at the material time"). To determine the adequacy of a product's design, the jury must weigh multiple factors, including "the gravity of the danger posed by the challenged design, the likelihood that such danger would occur, the mechanical feasibility of a safer alternative design, the financial cost of an improved design, and the adverse consequences to the product and to the consumer that would result from an alternative design." Back v. Wickes Corp., supra at 642, quoting Barker v. Lull Eng'g Co., 20 Cal. 3d 413, 431 (197. We have recognized that the balance struck by the jury is ultimately a judgment about the "social acceptability" of the design. Back v. Wickes Corp., supra"
Kevin posted a link on 10.05.08 - 3:11 pm
http://www.paho.org/English/AD/S...RA/
wntd2007.htm
"Neither ventilation nor filtration, alone or in combination, can reduce exposure levels of tobacco smoke indoors to levels that are considered acceptable, even in terms of odor, much less health effects"
Are these Pan Americans referring to the "smoke that you can't smell" that has people keeling over on outdoor patios in "just about 8 seconds"?
WOW! This is Fantastic! Just think about how much smoke there is in the world that no one can smell. It must be everywhere.
Is this what Dr. Siegel is talking about? Smoke that no one smell? Are we at the ludicrous parts per zillion gagillion measurements yet?
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
Who could have imagined such a despicable act was possible? The UN getting children involved in selling protections for the Tobacco Industry, with the no safe chant.
Because neither the UN, nor "Children" have any concept of Liberty, and both are historically easily manipulated.
WOW! This is Fantastic! Just think about how much smoke there is in the world that no one can smell. It must be everywhere. - EinsteinSmoked | 10.05.08 - 4:35 pm | #
Well.....according to the Physicians for a smoke free canada, smoke without smell is the worst kind.....
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov...i?
artid=2228338
Cynthia Callard, director general of Physicians For a Smoke-Free Canada, says the ads violate the Tobacco Act, which forbids promotions that are “likely to create an erroneous impression about the characteristics, health effects or health hazards of the tobacco product or its emissions.” In early December, her organization objected to the Mirage ad campaign in a written complaint to federal Health Minister Tony Clement. Health Canada is investigating the complaint.
“People will think that if there is less of a smoke smell, there is less smoke and therefore less harm,” said Callard.
Callard believes Mirage cigarettes will compromise non-smokers' health. When the smell is masked, people will unknowingly expose themselves to more second-hand smoke. The return of tobacco ads can only harm Canadians' health and by not issuing a comprehensive ban, the government is responsible for allowing it to happen. “I don't entirely blame the tobacco companies. It's their job to sell cigarettes.”
http://www.jointogether.org/news...p-noses-
at.html
Some Turn Up Noses at 'Reduced-Smell' Cigarettes
December 11, 2007
"The smell of cigarette smoke is part of what lets people know to get out of the way," said Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. Callard said that Mirage and the LSS technology violate a Canadian law that bans products that "are likely to create an erroneous impression about the characteristics, health effects or health hazards of the tobacco product or its emissions."
Hi Diane! And everyone else! Thanks for asking after me. I don't come around much anymore.
I've written off the doc as a lost cause.
He's not a man that came to his conclusions because of the reasons, he invents the reasons to suit his conclusions. Even if he has to contradict himself to do it.
Dr. Siegel has created a bizarro world in which I can take a job on an extraordinarily dangerous fishing boat, but not in a smoky bar.
I have read every word he has to say on the "risk," but I am still inadequately informed, because I have determined the risk to be a small one.
The doc says it's unfair to be forced to change jobs to be able to work in a non-smoking venue, but that's exactly what I would have to do to be able to work in a smoking venue when the bans come in.
Smoking bans are supposed to be for worker protection, but the bans also apply to venues where every employee smokes. These are the people that, by his very definition, are not harmed by tobacco smoke.
Why on earth do smokers need protecting from other smokers? At this point, his argument switches seamlessly to the customers.
Even more bizarre is the attitude toward cigar bars. Cigar bars grew in popularity in direct response to smoking bans.
My dad once told me that you cannot reason with unreasonable people. I've concluded that's exactly what I've been doing here.
Dr. Siegel only writes this blog to try and preserve a movement dedicated to stripping people of basic human freedoms.
I do have to thank Dr. Siegel, and the entire anti-smoking movement for one thing. I began this research to see if my habit was actually doing anyone any harm, even though their exposure to my smoke was purely voluntary.
I learned that not only is my exhaled smoke completely harmless, I learned that my own smoking isn't nearly as bad for me as I was led to believe.
Thanks to people like the doc and Billy G, I will continue to smoke without worrying about it.
Dr. Siegel: "The answer is that I am simply not aware of any ventilation/filtration system that will quickly enough remove enough of the smoke to adequately protect the workers in that establishment."
As we have noticed in previsous threads (in the context of your beloved pellet stove), you don't know much about ventilation systems at all. And you confirm it again.
But guess what? Nobody expects you to be an expert in SHS and in ventilation systems.
So what if I could show you an official certificat for air flitration systems that remove fine particulate matter, CO and VOC to levels lower than what you can even in a non-smoking venue?
Holding my breath for an answer ...
Ann W. said, "according to the Physicians for a smoke free canada, smoke without smell is the worst kind....."
So, "It's the smoke you can't smell that is the most dangerous."
Not too many years ago this kind of thinking would have required medical intervention by a mental health professional.
I think I'll drop Banzhaf and add this to my sign off.
Are these people allowed to play with matches?
Advocate for CASH
It's the smoke you can't smell that is the most dangerous.
"It is thus necessary that the
individual should finally come to
realize that his own ego is of no
importance in comparison with the
existence of the nation, that the
position of the individual is
conditioned solely by the interests
of the nation as a whole."
Adolf Hitler
Regarding smoking being an inherent part of an Industry in order to actually be able to recognize it as existing for the ability of its customers to smoke (like a cigar bar), thereby meeting Dr. Siegel's acceptable definition of what shouldn't be messed with, I offer this...
When there is not one drinking bar, not one restaurant, not annnnny place left in this country (I'd say the planet but the USA has different rules, so far argument's sake...) no matter what their "mission" is (drinking, eating, gambling, etc.) that is allowed smoking indoors and a bunch of entrepreneurs across the country decide they will open a bar or restaurant that -- in order to attract an unserved customer niche which makes it a business-minded act -- allows smoking while drinking or eating, would that not fit the definition of a brand new Industry where smoking is inherent to its ability to survive??
"Neither ventilation nor filtration, alone or in combination, can reduce exposure levels of tobacco smoke indoors to levels that are considered acceptable, even in terms of odor, much less health effects" -- EinsteinSmoked
What you and your ilk can't seem to understand and will NEVER understand is that it takes hurricane-force winds blowing through a bar to make the air safe. And the same goes for outdoor patios -- hurricane-force winds, sir!
Also, don't you know that Einstein DIED? What in hell do you think was the cause of THAT?
And here's another:
Norm Kjono: “Our system has HEPA filters and activated charcoal beds. The charcoal [addresses] gaseous constituents of ETS, as our study clearly shows. We wound up with indoor air at our facility that was superior to outdoor air on both a gaseous and particulate basis with smoking permitted at work stations.
“And, indeed ... facilities with comprehensive air quality systems to address ETS can be healthier than those without such capabilities. The same system that addresses ETS also reduces levels of carbon monoxide and many other gasses (such as off-gassing fluorocarbons), pollens, dust, airborne bacteria, and other harmful constituents while it addresses ETS.”
Is there no end of nonsense you anti-antis will peddle in order to poison the planet?
Sign me Disgusted.
.
Ooops, meant to add, at the end, to my comment above that IF that were to be accepted in that one way (defining a new Industry) I bet the new excuse opposing it would be, just as idlex said, "Can't have it. It sends the wrong message."
Doctor Siegel, knowing what you know today would you still come to the same conclusion you did back in 1992?
http://findarticles.com/p/articl...v26/
ai_13242552
Study: smoke exposure endangers servers; tobacco groups brand University of California's controversial findings as 'nonsense.'
Nation's Restaurant News, Dec 14, 1992 by Alan Liddle
Siegel, an advocate of banning smoking in restaurants and other public places and workplaces, said he did no research himself but analyzed several previously published studies to come up with his findings. The studies and works he examined touched on several topics, including environmental tobacco smoke - also known as ETS - or the smoke in the air inhaled by non-smokers when they are around smokers, and epidemiological studies of lung cancer mortality in restaurant workers.
Among Siegel's findings:
* The most heavily exposed restaurant workers inhale the benzopyrene equivalent of actively smoking one and a half to two packs of cigarettes
a day.
* In California waitresses have the highest mortality of all female occupational groups. Compared with other women, they have nearly four times the expected lung cancer mortality and two and a half times the expected heart disease mortality rate.
"I don't think the public understands the degree to which he [Siegel] was speculating," remarked Thomas Laurie, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute. "We had scientists go over his allegations - none of his claims is supported by scientific literature."
Laurie said some of Siegel's findings were based on the work of Dr. Stanton Glantz of the University of San Francisco. Glantz's work suggests that up to 53,000 non-smoker-s die each year from exposure to "secondhand" smoke: 37,000 from heart disease, 3,700 from lung cancer and 12,000 from other cancers."
Glantz's work, part of a compendium of research related to secondhand smoke solicited by the Environmental Protection Agency, has never been "peer reviewed" and was "rejected" by the Environmental Protection Agency, Laurie said. Glantz countered that a political appointee to the EPA, who "is not a scientist," "bottled up" the chapter on heart disease and secondhand smoke after being lobbied heavily by the Tobacco Institute. He also disputed Laurie's charge that the work has not undergone peer review, saying, that it was published in Circulation, a leading scientific journal on cardiology published by the American Heart Association.
Laurie said the Tobacco Institute also disputed Siegel's contention that some restaurant servers are exposed to the environmental smoke equivalent to smoking more than a pack of cigarettes a day. Using Siegel's own figures, which the Tobacco Institute disputes, institute researchers calculated that a server would have to be exposed to restaurant environmental smoke for 200 hours to "be exposed to the equivalent of [smoking] one cigarette."
TOXIC TOXICOLOGY:PLACING SCIENTIFIC CREDIBILITY AT RISK
Littlewood & Fennell - Sept 15, 1999
We have taken the substances for which measurements have actually been obtained – very few, of course, because it is difficult to even find these chemicals in diffuse and diluted ETS. We posit a 100m3 sealed and unventilated enclosure. For those of us who are metrically challenged, that is a room approximately 20-feet square with a 9-foot ceiling clearance. Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.
Our chart (see Table 1) illustrates each of these substances, but let me report some notable examples. For Benzo[a]pyrene, about which we heard so much last year, 222,000 cigarettes would be required to reach the lowest published “danger” threshold. For acetone, 118,000 cigarettes would be required. At the lower end of the scale – in the case of Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up simultaneously in our little room to reach a threshold limit. Toluene would require 50,000 packs of smoldering cigarettes – given 20 cigarettes per pack.
For Hydroquinone “only” 1,250 cigarettes are required. Perhaps we could post a notice limiting this 20-foot square room to 300 rather tightly packed people smoking no more than 62 packs per hour?
Of course, the moment we introduce real world factors to the room – a door, an open window or two, or a healthy level of mechanical air exchange – achieving these levels becomes even more implausible.
It becomes increasingly clear to us that ETS, as well as other spurious indoor substances such as asbestos and radon, are political rather than scientific scapegoats for poorly ventilated, hermetically sealed, energy-efficient buildings, with endlessly re-circulated and poorly filtered air.
I wonder if the collectivist ideology explains why the infamous cost / benefit analysis never changes?
Individual pain and suffering simply does not qualify for inclusion to the equation. It would also explain why the Doc has refused to answer Walt's question about the ratio of harm caused.
The Doc believes that ETS harms every non-smoker and bans and collateral damage only affects individuals. I suppose even if we demonstrated that every smoker was harmed, he would then fall back on the fact that there are more non-smokers therefore still worth the price for the greater good.
What a dangerous man he is. When you have no empathy, compassion or humanity for individuals any level of atrocity becomes not only possible but almost inevitable and scarily justifiable to the fanatic.
GreatScot
Harry;
All Norm has to do is present an analysis of the relative risk of outdoor air compared to the relative risk of second hand smoke by the same methods they used and the filter system will sell itself. The six cities study would be an excellent place to start as a data source.
The ban fans have been targeting the most expossed, with the worst case scenario representing exposure, acompanied by "could be as high as" descriptors to find their hazard.
Do the same with outdoor air without the "could be as high as" belly button gazing economics, examining a much larger "those expossed" and I can guarantee even if the illusion they created looks menacing, the hazard is much larger among total population and what they breathe 24-7.
This would allow the audience to understand what you mean when you say cleaner than outdoor air.
The doc writes:
"Finally - I respect people's opinions on the other side of this issue."
Earlier, he wrote:
"...crap..."
Ah, the doctor's iron commitment to consistency lives on.
In the meantime, what's crap is the doc's ridiculous agreement with fleawarhol's take on what a cigar bar is. I think you ought to actually go to one, doctor. The idea, in every one I have been in, is that there is a symbiotic relationship between tobacco, fine liquor and, usually, expensive food. namely, steaks.
Which is the same thing Smokey Joe's owner is going for, only he sees a symbiotic relationship between cigarettes, pub grub and cheap beer.
Which is EXACLTY what the owner of Joe's Restaurant with a View is aiming for. He thinks that a nice view is part of a romantic/dramatic atmosphere that will draw clientele.
And he is willing to kill wondow washewrs to get that atmosphere.
And so are you.
So much for consistency.
Maybe I would say you are full of crap. But you are aiming for a civil atmosphere that shows a lot of respect.
Uh.. I mean, you are full of crap.
Can you do an evaluation of these studies Michael I am really puzzled that "Public Health" pays them so little notice. Are they so flawed they are not worthy of mention?
If not, doesn't the public including all those uninformed bartenders especially, have the right to be properly informed? Just so everyone knows what they are being expossed to, and precisely why?
Every bartender in America should see this one; Just so they can better understand the whole picture.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov...59&
blobtype=pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubm...ogdbfrom=pubmed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubm...pubmed/
10064856
Dose response relationship? Linear cause and effect? or the poison is in the dose? Any way you cut it you are promoting callous indifference and butcher shop style medicine. All in search of media headlines to promote your cause at the expense of everyone else. Bartenders need to be educated? Not nearly as much as Doctors do.
Every doctor on the planet should be subjected to their own chemo treatments just so they can understand the risks they imposed on the rest of us.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubm...ogdbfrom=pubmed
Science indicates there is a linear dose response relationship between higher and lower levels of NAK in particular, which seems to oppose the view we need human experimentation prior to preventative measures being promoted.
This is not another rendition of Epi theories, which have been widely used as proof we need to take action in promoting smoking bans and fire safe cigarettes, this is real scientific measure, which indicates real risk, which exists only as a result of incompetence and indifference. In support of TC efforts to work as alarmists in place of more humane efforts, to eliminate the risk through relatively minor and very simplistic regulation.
How can something so basic as the restriction of tobacco products to promote selling what most smokers believe they are purchasing in any event, be wrong. Tobacco leaf without all the roots and stems and additives flu cured properly, produces a much safer cigarette. There is no disputing that as a fact. Are the toxic cigarettes to be considered a modern application of the DEATH CAMP OVENS as a population control measure? There is certainly no other logical explanation for the refusals to act on what science has known for over 30 years.
Only Public health stands in the way of our ability to purchase safer cigarettes or for non smokers to enjoy the comfort found in safer ETS.
The angst of non smokers who are being cultured to fear the smoke, much of those fears would be well below any level of concern, if Public health and TC valued safety beyond the power of sound bites.
Shills to big tobacco?
Every damned one of them.
Dr. Siegel,
If you wish to dispel the deceit of the TC cartel, why don't you post your recent blog posts on http://www.sourcewatch.org/
index...tle=TobaccoWiki
Anyone can edit the pages there, even me. Getting your assessment of the current movement out to the public and beyond this site would be an honest movement of an honest scientist.
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