Op-Ed: I’m just trying to smoke my cigarette

Not being much older than yourself, as I just graduated slightly over a year ago, I sympathize with certain elements of your argument.

However, you are slipping past some important points. First, you claim that “I’ve seen the surgeon general’s warning” and “I fully accept my habit may someday kill me”. Then you follow by saying “My quit date is graduation this year, but the slew of regulations that have been in the news lately make me want to revert back to my 16-year-old self that says, ‘Spite the authorities. Keep smoking on the principle of personal freedom’”.

To this I must point out: health warnings in simple text saying something such as “this can cause harm” are not effectual in behavior change. Human behavior and health behavior, when faced with probabilistic events and chemical and behavioral addiction, are more complex than a sentence or two.

On another note, you display a lack of full maturity in your decisions. When you consider continuing a behavior that “may kill” you (make not mistake, it will almost surely shorten your life, increase prevalence of other health problems, and absolutely will show in your face and skin) to spite the “man”, it shows your cost-benefit considerations are not yet developed. The only person you’d be affecting is yourself, the public or society at large will not care, and you may end up potentially hurting loved ones if you end up suffering from disease.

I say these as a recent college graduate, who smokes (although I hate identifying as a smoker, I still say “I smoke sometimes” to hedge the admission).

The university has a mission to education, holistically, the student body. In no logical evaluation is smoking an intelligent decision to make. It provides minimal positive feedback (you can get positive feelings from less harmful products or replacement behaviors) and without question harms your quality of life (your appearance, your health, the smell, the stigma, and the money you spend on cigarettes).

The university should, without exceeding a fuzzy line of freedom, do what it can to encourage students to stop smoking. When you consider the fact that once you leave college, you enter a different world, this is their last chance to capture you and plead for your health.

Lastly, the FDA bill’s efficacy is questionable, but not due to restrictions. You can argue about regulation of the product itself as another issue (feel free to send me an e-mail, cohenza at gmail), but it certainly does not amount to a prohibition. We are yet to see, or really theorize, of black market cigarettes with different constituent ingredients. Right now, due to some tax increases and weak enforcement, we are, however, seeing black market cigarettes from criminals seeking a profit (this is more a tax evasion/interstate commerce issue).

I leave you with one last thought: You say your quit date is graduation. However, the addictive properties, the harm to your health and well-being are not connected or constrained to your college career. Why not stop next week? Why wait until the end of your college career?

Rhiannon,

I think the last person said it well with “I agree with most of your arguments”. However, as a UMaine Grad (1999), former smoker and living the “other world of Stigma” for many years…I now have some other views on smoking.

Not to sound like a father (although I am), butts aren’t the best stress relief out there….someday you’ll wake up, cough…cough…cough (then cough) and think, “there’s got to be a better way to deal with life, a job, family, mortgage payments, a bad economy, and realizing that there’s only 1 beer left in the house and two frazzled parents laying claim (happens way to often, if I ever go back, it will be one of these times).

I think of it this way…if a smoker has any negative impact on a non smoker…it’s too much. They have made the commitment to not smoke and it’s not your right to pollute their air.

At the same time, it’s a smokers right to purchase cigs and smoke’em. I smoked through college and I can’t imagine someone telling me that I can’t smoke after I leave a 2 1/2 hour class until I leave the campus property.

Has anyone explored designated areas outside for smokers? Sounds terrible but I wouldn’t have a problem with it…just put a big circle somewhere with a bunch of signs that say, “Smoke’em here – not there”.

Other than that, I think it’s a good idea.

I was where you are 10 years ago. Forget the butts, go to class, party hard and live life to the fullest while you have so little responsibility. Please do me a favor in October…the first cold weekend (Saturday night). Head to Pat’s with a couple friends, sit downstairs by the fire and toast college life.

Good luck this year.

Rhiannon,

Stand up for your right to smoke! These anti-smoking lemmings are just regurgitating baseless propaganda. Read the book “In Defense of Smokers” by Colby. http://www.lcolby.com/.

Disclaimer: I only smoke organic tobacco as it’s not laced with chemicals and radioactive fertilizer residue. While I don’t think tobacco is unhealthy – I do question all of those manmade additives (and the equally harmful filters)

The real reason “The Man” doesn’t want people to smoke is that smokers tend to congregate and talk to each other (which makes them harder to brainwash then non-smoking-mindless-television-watching-donut-eaters).

What’s going to be banned next? The Big Mac? Soft drinks? Both of these American food staples are worse for you than smoking (just look at the obesity rate in this country)

Anybody seen a spare copy of the Constitution? The anti-smokers seem to have trampled smokers rights…

Jeremy

College is a preparation for life. Allowing college students to go to class 15 hours a week and giving them unlimited smoking privileges the rest of the time isn’t a very good simulation. Most jobs expect you to work at least forty hours per week and often you must completely leave the property to smoke.

Once the student has spent four or five years freely indulging their nicotine addiction they are going to have a rough time adjusting to the real world. Students are fond of saying this class is nothing like the real world. Maybe you will be an independent artist and be able spend your days indulging what ever vices you care to, but most people have to work for a living. So you might as well get ready.

Jeremy:

She can still smoke with reasonable freedom of choice on where and when. Public health concerns are balanced with personal freedoms. Secondhand smoke is just one concern in creating restrictions.

And Jeremy, you need to do some reading on tobacco. It is not just the additives. Those organic American Spirits, or whatever they may be, are not necessarily any better than the chemical laced variety.

In fact, research has shown HIGHER level of tar and nicotine in organic American Spirits.

Similarly, studies of American cigarettes and Australian cigarettes have shown higher levels of tobacco specific nitrosamines. With this, cancer rates attributable to tobacco specific nitrosamines are much higher in the US than Australia among smokers. This is not a chemical additive. This has been attributed to strains used in American tobacco as well as production methods (such as how they cure/dry-out the tobacco) which are still used on organic tobacco.

Don’t fool yourself, organic, natural, roll-your-own cigarettes have never been shown to be even marginally better (less bad) than normal cigarettes. Heck, any reduced harm aspect with things like “light” cigarettes have showed no functional harm reduction (i.e. people smoking “lights” inhale more deeply, more times, and smoke more often – negating any reduction in harm).

That being said, tobacco control advocates are NOT trying to ban cigarettes. Cigarettes will never be banned. They are trying to counter the effects that a potent and well-planned advertising campaign (over the decades, established in the culture) for a HIGHLY chemically addictive product has on the population. If you look at data, lifelong smokers by and large start smoking in their early-mid teens. This is not an age where cognitive development allows for a truly rational, reasoned decision. And when the smoker reaches that age, it is habitualized and a chemical dependence has been established.

The reason “the Man” does not want people to smoke is that the externalized costs of smokers are borne by the government and tax payers via taxes. The tax collected from cigarette sales pales in comparison to the cost of treating tobacco related illness, much of which befalls the non-smoking population. It is also a public health issue. The government has an interest and a charged responsibility to protect the public’s health.

Your assertion that it’s because smokers congregate is actually kind of funny. Demographic data shows, in every study I’ve ever seen show that smokers have less education than non-smokers.

Again, and to hopefully compromise a point: no one is trying to take smoking away. Mitigating the effects of advertising and addiction is the goal. If you want to smoke, you will always be able to.

However, you are afforded no right to smoking. Similarly, you are not afforded the right to do crystal meth, heroine, cocaine, or even marijuana. The latter is even less harmful than tobacco, yet you are legally prohibited from using it.

Again, a prohibition of cigarettes will never happen. Economically and legally it is immediately known to be infeasible and tobacco, whether we like it or not, is in the cultural heritage of the US in many ways.

Smoke ‘em if you want to, just don’t expect to do it free of consequences. Just like free speech, you can say pretty much anything you want, and you are protected. However, you are NOT protected from the repercussions of what you decide to say.

Lastly, let me qualify my position: I do smoke.

HA! That was a great reply Jeremy…man I miss college!! My first thought about a smoke free campus…”How are all these college students going to congregate now???!!”

But you are right…we need to protect the rights of all people. We need to protect the right to smoke but we also need to protect the right for a “smoke free” life. Just because a smoker lights up, it doesn’t mean that his/her rights are any more (or less) important than the person next to him/her.

Here’s a similar scenario…

I have the right to own a lawnmower, and I can change my oil as frequently as I like (I wish I did it more often actually). But I don’t have the right to pour my oil in your drinking water.

Smoke till you turn green, but keep your smoke to yourself.

Zach,

Read the online book I linked to earlier. “In Defense of Smokers” by L. Colby. Also pick up a copy of “Health Benefits of Tobacco” at http://www.drtobacco.com. Until you have actually read both sides of the research you can hardly claim to be educated (in fact, you prove your lack of education with your blind repetitions of establishment propaganda).

Nicotine, naturally occurring in the tobacco leaf, in and of itself is not addictive. You can prove this by going and picking up a pack of organic smokes yourself. After smoking the pack, you will not have cravings for more tobacco. This is why many casual smokers can smoke occasionally without becoming pack-a-day fiends. (Note: I will concede that the super-concentrated nicotine additives in commercial cigarettes are probably addictive). Also, tobacco tar is not at all related to coal miner’s black lung disease so I question the anti-smoke propaganda regarding supposedly blackened lungs resulting from tobacco use.

At the end of the day, the question needs to be asked. Do smokers smoke because it’s addictive? Or do smokers smoke because for the recreation of the event? I.e. smoking a corn cob pipe for example is like having your own mini-camp-fire to huddle around while enjoying the outdoor scenery. Also, what incentive is there for a smoker to stop this form of recreation when the alternative is to join the TV-watching-donut-eaters vegetating on the couch?

I find your demographic assertion about smoker education levels to be quite hilarious. Einstein, who education elitists elevate to demi-god status: was quoted as stating that smoking stimulated his mental clarity. Who am I to believe? Einstein or some college-degree worshipping census taker? Do us a favor, please take a vacation to Japan or China and tell all their businessmen and scientists that they are a bunch of un-educated Neanderthals for still having the audacity to smoke like chimneys. While you’re at it, you can also remind the Japanese that smoking causes premature death and that they’d probably all live to 150 years old (instead of just 80 years old) if they didn’t smoke so much.

Jeremy

Justtech3,

You bring up a whole new valid issue. I agree with you that college by itself is not good prep for real life. This is why so many college grads in America are flipping burgers and working low-level administrative jobs instead of bettering the world. Many college students would have been better served by real life work experience or a skilled trade apprenticeship instead of wasting 4 years gaining a fluff-degree.

Of course, Zach will tell you that education equates to success so I’m sure he will say that it is better to be a life-time-loser with a college degree than a successful skilled tradesman or an innovative entrepreneur.

However, where you went off course is by equating college with 5 hours of smoking a day. The expense of 5 hours straight smoking would be astronomical and is just one more example of the many modern myths involving smoking. Ironically, it is far more likely that a non-smoker would spend 5 hours stuffing their faces with junk food while simultaneously watching TV and/or playing video games…

Jeremy

Cutting back on the junk food and TV is much easier than trying to quit smoking. Most people who have quit will tell you quitting smoking is the most difficult thing they have ever done.

If you are going into a career level job the pressure will be intense and many of the new hires will not clear probation. Adding quitting smoking to starting your career is definitely taking the hard road.

Quit now before you graduate, it usually takes several attempts, so expect it to take a while. If you aren’t strongly addicted and can quit easily, then it should be easy to quit now.

I randomly opened one chapter of “In Defense of Smokers” by Lauren Colby, and I can say that (1) there are spelling errors (I’m sure I have them too, but I’m not internet publishing a book), (2) his arguments are weakly prepared, and (3) he really doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Without invalidating his arguments, first you must consider that he is speaking from a lay-perspective, as far as I can tell. He is an attorney, not a researcher or scientist.

I just skimmed another chapter and he clearly doesn’t understand statistical modeling. Attorneys are not trained in this stuff.

His entire section on whether nicotine is addictive is fraught with assumptions, lack of scientific insight, and poor arguments. He presumes nicotine is not addictive because nicotine patches don’t work perfectly. Well, unfortunately smoking is both chemical and behavioral. You can reduce the chemical impetus for lighting up, but the behavioral component of going outside, hunching over to block the wind, hitting that lighter, and the burn and taste in your throat are behavioral and kinesthetic.

In another section, he talks about studies that failed….and only talks about a few, and not more recent that early ’90s. Check out http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ and just type in “smoking OR tobacco” and you will see over 180,000 scientific, peer-review journal articles published. How many does he actually mention?

The nicotine argument is ancillary to the main argument. However, there is a reason internal tobacco industry documents talk about manipulating nicotine levels and that people have cravings. Regardless, the argument is that smoking is an enormous cause of disease and death, and justifiably calls for the attention of public health considerations.

Just because something is recreation does not mean it’s justifiable. What about recreational marijuana use? What about justifiable cocaine use? And, for the record, I support legalizing both of those. But, in our present society, they are illegal. And, let’s remember, no one is trying to take away your cigarettes.

And it is not a demographic assertion, go look at any study of smokers that include a nationally representative sample. Smokers are more likely to have lower income, lower education, and a variety of other factors associated with low socioeconomic status. In no way did I say, would I say, or would I hope anyone construes this as a causal statement. However, I was pointing out the irony that you characterize smokers as more intelligent and educated, while demographic data shows that the larger proportion are not.

Let me reiterate: you have no explicit, protected right to smoke where you want and to do so for cheap, cigarettes are a luxury good (in the sense that it is non-essential, as a recreation). No one is going to take your cigarettes away.

You have to understand, the logic behind removing smoking from public areas is multidimensional.

Second hand smoke is an issue, although debatable to the relative impact. Studies have even started to look at “3rd hand smoke” (I know, dubious name) looking at cotanine in the blood of infants of smokers who only smoke outside. The findings were that the residue left on parents who went outside to smoke made it back inside the home and eventually into the child’s mouth. Is this going to harm the child in these levels? I don’t know, probably not, but for all of those protective parents, it’s information to be armed with.

Moving beyond the direct harm on others, there is a social component. By taking away the perception of normality of smoking, less people are apt to smoke or reserve their smoking for certain areas. This removes cues to smoke and acceptability of smoking. This does not prohibit you from smoking, if you want to light up, go ahead.

Lastly, it may give some people help in reducing or stopping smoking. It may be easier to continue a habit when you can light up in the office/restaurant, or step outside for a smoke break. However, when you are forced to wait until you are 20 feet from the building or off of a work/school campus, you may be able to restrict or stop smoking more easily. For those that want to keep going, well, you can easily go do that.

You can’t drink beer in public, but you can smoke a cigarette while walking down the street.

You can’t construe the attempt to denormalize smoking as a restriction of freedom. No one is guaranteed the right to smoke without repercussion. In addition to smoking, I also have a lot of tattoos. I made the choice to get them, and realize that some people view me different when they see them. If I want to appear a certain way, I wear long sleeve shirts. Same goes with smoking, I know there is a certain association with it, so if I go on a date or to a work function, I choose not to smoke as that image is more important to me.

It is so absolutely amazing to me that an industry is given free reign to lie to and seduce you when you are little (90% of smokers start as young teenagers – often as young as 9) into an addiction that, by the time you realize the deal and want to quit, is one of the most difficult to beat.

That industry has been doing so for so long, it is now considered part of American ‘culture’ (tobacco executives PAID Hollywood moguls and stars in the 1920′s-1940′s to smoke in movies – that’s why there is so much cigarette smoking in those old films often cited by smokers as ‘the gold old days…’)

The consequence of this ruse is that it is THE LEADING CAUSE OF PREMATURE DEATH in this country – more die of smoking each year than of murder, suicide, gun accidents, drug overdoses, and car accidents COMBINED.

And those deaths/diseases are gruesome if not inconvenient. Lung-mouth-throat-stomach-colon-pancreas cancers, heart attack, stroke, age related dementia, erectile dysfunction, infertility, COPD, multiple schlerosis and more are all caused by or associated with smoking and secondhand smoke.

So, you smokers have been heavily manipulated and used as pawns in someone’s money machine, with the cost being your quality of life at best…your early, painful death at worse (many, many lung cancer patents are around 40 years old…they have young kids). AND, you want to be mad at the institutions and individuals that want to protect you?

Who are you calling ‘the man’? ‘The Man’ is the one that gets all the dough out of this deal….it’s your tobacco producers and purveyors (your drug dealers), and your funeral director. I, for one, have seen a few deaths from lung cancer, and am incredibly grateful that the rest of this sleeping nation seems to be waking up. I wish you would.

I don’t believe (and I have no information to support this other than logic) that the University of Maine is trying to prepare you for the real world by not allowing smoking in certain areas.

They are likely concerned about student health and making an attempt to hopefully change behavior while you are a captive audience.

Where you get this assumption that I think education = success I don’t know, and I think it’s laughable you are making such leaps.

And you know what? Stuffing your face with junk food while living a sedentary lifestyle is absolutely a disease risk and there is a LOT of research in modifying this behavior and look at the contribution to disease.

Exposure, in the epidemiological sense, to junk food and sedentary lifestyle is not directly, hour by hour, equitable to smoking.

Saia,

What planet do you live on? Every single American under age 30 has been bombarded with anti-smoking information their entire lives. From DARE programs to cartoons and newscasts. Smoking seduction? Is that what you call all these pictures of decaying lungs and diseased elderly? Not to mention the near-blackout on information regarding the positive aspects of smoking.

You need to cross the line from indoctrination (when one parrots a point of view without questioning the facts) to education (when one intelligently analyzes all sides of an issue).

Here’s a start. Go look up your smoking death figures. More people die from hospital errors and medical quackery than die from smoking. Google “doctors kill more people than guns.”

Jeremy

I think one of the most incredible things is that tobacco companies are just not being forced to divulge full ingredient lists. What other consumable product has less regulation than this? Especially when one looks at the level of morbidity and mortality clearly associated with the product.

There is no doubt in my mind, that if tobacco was introduced today (rather than having been established so long ago), it would absolutely be illegal given the illegality of other substances based on harm concerns and protecting people from themselves.

The goal of most tobacco control advocates is not to outlaw smoking. Most of them aim to educate the public (which clearly has a ways to go), remove cues placed in our culture and environment that encourage smoking, and make it generally easier to choose not to and to stop smoking.

If after all of that, you still want to smoke, (at least for me) I have no problem with it. However, I also support including the externalized costs that smoking directly cause. That means you are actually going to pay the real cost of the decision, which is how most of real life works.

Jeremy,

What tobacco company do you work for? Your writing sounds like a direct lift from their playbook. I’ve heard it all before, from lobbyists mouths. Maybe you should start doing some of your own research….or find a more educated brain to mimic.

Saia,

I don’t work for a tobacco company. I’m just one who likes to smoke. Not because it’s addictive, but because it is actually fun. Why is it fun? A few reasons: 1) It gets me outdoors for a “breath of fresh air.” 2) Tobacco fulfills man’s primal cave-man fascination with bonfires and campfires. 3) It’s social. 4) I find the irony of smoking to be entertaining. I.e. having massively obese Americans tell me that I’m the one with a health problem.

When was the last time you honestly heard something positive about smoking from the pro-tobacco lobby? 1992? If you want to talk about money-chasing lobbyists – look to the anti-smoking Big Pharma lobbyists who have been making a killing on Nicotine patches, gum, etc.

You want me to find a more educated brain to mimic? Einstein isn’t educated enough? What about Mark Twain? Both of these creative geniuses were avid smokers.

Jeremy

There is pro-tobacco media (advertising over decades and decades) and anti-tobacco media (don’t smoke). DARE has been shown to be an ineffectual intervention. Advertising exposure to pro-tobacco media has been shown to be effective. It’s also more of an uphill battle for anti-tobacco messages.

The overwhelming (which is a severe understatement) majority consensus of scientists and politicians (that aren’t in the pocket of tobacco industry) does not mean “indoctrination”.

Education? You mean the thousands of PhD researchers in all fields and disciplines? Or the MD physicians doing research and practice? You mean THAT education? Or the education of the few fringe people who are on the opposing side? Or the companies that rely on these products for their existence and large profits? The same companies that have been legitimately caught lying, hiding, and deceiving the public (even illustrated in their own internal documents).

Let’s also not ignore the fact that people do risky and dangerous things all of the time despite knowing a potentially negative outcome.

You can’t reduce human behavior regarding a probabilistic event, such as disease down the road, with immediate rewards such as perception of social acceptance or stature as well as chemical and behavioral addiction.

If you talk to some people about smoking, they’ll respond “well, everything causes cancer” or “my grandfather smoked 2 packs a day for 40 years and lived until he was 98″.

This illustrates the circumvention of sound reasoning or logic that is inherent in a lot of smokers’ attitudes. They either turn to fatalism, which is seen as immediately flawed when the develop a health issue and realize they’re prefer to be with their loved ones without illness for longer, than to just say “well, we all day”. Or, these same people, will point of the exceptions as if they somehow are protective, to reduce the perceived threat of health issues.

If you want to smoke, go ahead, but there is nothing wrong with advocating the people be given the best possible opportunity to TRULY choose whether to smoke or not. The tobacco industry was able to operate unfettered for decades and establish a level of acceptance and denial of health implications. Only in the past decade has any true scrutiny been brought to bear. It is telling that only now, in 2009, does the FDA get any oversight for a product that contains acknowledged drugs and carcinogens.

Sounds like the topic has strayed a bit since I last checked in.

Funny you brought up Einstein and Twain though…both died of heart complications probably caused or aggrivated by smoking.

1) You can step outside and take stock in your life and have a nice breath of fresh air.

2) If that were really the function, you could light your lighter or set a fire in a fireplace. Cigarettes do nothing like this.

3) It’s social – it can be, but what stops you from talking to people without a cigarette in your hand?

4) It’s…”interesting”…that you base your decision to smoke on irony, especially since many people who are not obese or unhealthy will tell you the same thing. You are making a hugely flawed dismissal by attempting to discredit an argument by attacking the speaker. Unfortunately for you, the argument’s validity is still untouched. Additionally, you can risk reduction in quality of life and chronic disease (which can very well make you stop smoking, but still have the disease – all the detriment without the reward) with that obese person.

Honestly heard something positive? Well, I went on a tobacco company’s website yesterday…that all it was. Actually, pretty much any interaction with advertising I have with the tobacco companies are them trying to present a positive spin.

Wait, where did pharmacuetical companies come into this?

So remind me, what field was Einstein in? Now did he study addiction and behavioral health or was it an MD? I just can’t seem to recall is education or delving into health. Help remind me on that.

Mark Twain was a prodigious writer. So…uhh…why are you looking to a dead writer for a cue to smoke or not?

As I mentioned before, smoking is not causally linked to intelligence. So pointing out intelligent people who smoke does not point to the intelligence of smoking. If you want to look at the intelligence of smoking, you need to look at the real health risks, the social implications (in more than just a subculture of smokers), the opportunity cost of the money you spend and years of life you lose, and other assorted issues. In any logical, realistic, and honest assessment of smoking, it is not smart and does not make sense. Does that stop me? Not yet, but to deny it is ignoring reality.

See, seems to me, that looking to the people who go through a PhD or MD program that devote their lives to health are the people to listen to. Maybe that’s just me and my crazy logic though.

And again, I don’t get where this embattled stance you have comes from.

Catching up…..I’m with you Zach on the idea of stepping outside for a fresh breath of air. Something to keep in mind on that: smoking all cigarettes sold in a year produces the same amount of small particulate pollution as that generated by all cars driving in the US in 6 months…..

But I digress….I too wonder about your quoting two intelligent men, Jeremy….quoting men who may have died from smoking related conditions….who lived long before any research existed. I’ll start listening when you quote me some Nobel Prize winners who are alive today.

And even then, I’ll be looking for quotes from non-smokers. I don’t listen to arguments in favor of heroin from heroin addicts….don’t listen to arguments in favor of smoking from nicotine addicts. PS – I’ll get you started on that whole ‘denial and addiction’ thing. This is from an addiction recovery brochure in my office: “Denial is the PRIMARY psychological symptom of addiction. It is an automatic and unconscious component of addictions.”

Lets all take a Deep breath, cough _cough
and think about a couple of things here # 1. I live in the USA cigs are legal, I am of age, I have the right to smoke or not to smoke.
I am taxed as a smoker and the money helps you non smokers, and smokers the money also is used for Education…
I am addicted to Tobacco yet treated like a second class citizen, but those adddicted to Alcohol must be understood and helped!
You wear perfumes that offend me and aggravate my allergies, yet are you told not to wear the perfume? Do you have a seggragate area where you can splash on all that nasty perfume?
You are Fat yet keep eating those cream filled cakes that cost us tax payers tons of money, no pun intended in Healthcare costs each year
Are you seggragated, are you told your fat so go sit outside in zero degree weather and eat your cream filled goodies?
I say find a happy medium there is No problem that cannot be fixed if the other side is willing to negotiate and give Smokers a break, no matter how you feel about cig smokers we are US Citizens, We have Rights, and you should be willing to look at Our rights not just yours.
Do we pay for school? Do we pay Taxes? if the answer is Yes then give us a friggin Break!

How did this become Zach’s article?

Woops…I think you’re off on your argument a bit Nikki. It may not sway people to sympathize with you if you compare smoke to perfume and fat people eating cupcakes. I won’t state the obvious here.

Do you really think that fat people eating cupcakes have the same economic impact as “end of life” smokers?

Your age group isn’t the first that’s had to endure life changes as smokers. I was a smoker when Boston’s restaurants went smokeless, I was a smoker when the Mass restaurants went smokeless…etc etc. I work with people that were smokers when planes went smokeless, when offices went smokeless…etc etc.

My point, and I don’t know your age, but I’m guessing you couldn’t smoke in a restaurant when you first lit up. You knew that obstacles to this habit existed and I bet you probably could have guessed that more were coming.

I was very aware of my surroundings when I lit my cigs because I knew that my habit could potentially have adverse health effects on people around me. All of us know this stuff….so please don’t stomp your feet and say it’s me me me. Perfume and fat people eating cupcakes (your words) don’t hurt the people around them…you can.

No one is going to take away your butts, you’re free to smoke as you wish. Please remember…you chose to smoke and you have an addiction to cigarettes. The people around you chose not to smoke and they should not be inconvenienced by your habit. It’s no big deal to take a little walk to smoke a butt, its good exercise and it will make that first puff a little better.

If you do find yourself a little “bent out of shape” with all that extra walking…think of it this way. Your 2 year old niece is standing next to you and you want to smoke a cig. Do you light up right there, or do you look at your little buddy and say, “I’ll be back in a bit kiddo, gonna take a quick break”?

Treat the people around you like you care about them…take a walk.

First let me say I am 50 years old and yes I use to be able to smoke in a Resteraunt and a bar.
Second thing is I am a Veteran and guess, what?
We smoked in the military and in fact it was encouraged in ways!
No I would not smoke in front of any child (I do not happen to have any children? But, I am not stupid nor am I insensitive to other’s but, it has come to the point where I feel like My Rights are trampled on, not considered and I am treated un fairly and different because, i smoke, now tell Me this is not TRUE!
Why should I have Tolerance for fat people and people who wear too much perfume that does bother my allergies and yes, weight or over weight people do cost the healthcare system in the long run with many health problems
Tell me this is un True!
So let me suggest for their next cream filled goodie that they take a walk!
I am still in the USA and I feel that i should be able to smoke outside, inside where ever one thing is for sure I will not kill another person with my smoke as easily as someone behind the wheeel of an automobile with a beer in their hand!

Actually, Nikki, interesting to read you writing about your asthma problem AND your smoking addiction…..

But anyway, statistically, you actually do have more of a health impact with a cigarette in your mouth than you do behind the wheel of a car. In case you missed my earlier posting, smoking (including second hand smoke) KILLS more people than CAR ACCIDENTS, drug overdoses, murders, accidental shootings COMBINED. And these statistics do not include the number of people across the country who are killed by fires started by a cigarette.

Second, we do act to protect the population from the harmful health effects of drinking…it’s called a DUI. And, are sympathetic to the needs of alcoholics in recovery.

Efforts to provide non-smokers and smokers relief from the health effects of second hand smoke are perfectly in line with that legal logic. And I, for one, am very happy to be emotionally supportive and understanding of a nicotine addict who has entered a smoking cessation program.

Nothing about our nation’s laws have ever supported the rights of one individual to engage in an activity that injures the health and well-being of another. That’s what this is all about. It’s not about your smoking. It’s about the effect of your second hand smoke on the world around you.

Normally, this when I just step back and think, “everyone is entitled an opinion”.

I agree with you…smoking is inconvenient for smokers just as “traveling” can be inconvenient for drunks.

You wrote, “I will not kill another person with my smoke as easily as someone hehind the wheel of an automobile with a beer in their hand”.

The simple fact that your habit can kill people (whether it’s easy or not), means that you have to accept the inconvenience of smoking in a safe place for others.

I didn’t think the discuss would go to that extreme but I’ll use whatever you give me.

I may have been in the vast minority when I smoked. I understood that my habit was annoying (and possibly dangerous for others) so I was considerate.

I understand your still going to stomp your feet and I can appreciate that…but it won’t change facts and it won’t change the policies that will continue to make smoking less of a public threat.

All justified…by the fact that “you won’t kill another person as easily as someone behind the wheel of an automobile with a beer in their hand”.

Why is this such a hard point for people to absorb?

The fact remains: the 22% of the US population who smoke are MORE DANGEROUS to the population as a whole than the majority of the population who are drivers (whether they are drunk drivers or not).

SMOKING AND SECONDHAND SMOKE KILLS more people in this country than CAR ACCIDENTS, drug overdoses, murders, suicides, gun accidents….COMBINED.

SECOND HAND SMOKE IS A JOKE. Ask the anti-tobacco folks to tell you what truly is in second hand smoke…when it burns from the coal its oxygenated and everything is burned and turned into water vapor………………thats right water……….you ever burned leaves in the fall…know how the heavy smoke bellows off…….thats the organic material releasing the moisture in the leaves the greener the leaves/organic material the more smoke thats made……thats why second hand smoke is classified as a class 3 irritant by osha and epa as of 2006……..after that time EPA decided to change the listing of shs as a carcinogen for political reasons…….because it contained a trace amount of 6 chemicals so small even sophisticated scientific equipment can hardly detect it ……..they didnt however use the normal dose makes the poison computation when they made this political decision.
However osha still maintains shs/ets as an irritant only and maintains the dose makes the poison position…….as osha is in charge of indoor air quality its decisions are based on science not political agendas as epa’s is. We can see this is true after a federal judge thru out the epas study on shs as junk science………

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
British Medical Journal & WHO conclude secondhand smoke “health hazard” claims are greatly exaggerated

The BMJ published report at:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057

concludes that “The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer are considerably weaker than generally believed.”

What makes this study so significant is that it took place over a 39 year period, and studied the results of non-smokers who lived with smokers….. meaning these non-smokers were exposed to secondhand smoke up to 24 hours per day; 365 days per year for 39 years. And there was still no relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality.

In light of the damage to business, jobs, and the economy from smoking bans the BMJ report should be revisited by lawmakers as a reference tool and justification to repeal the now unnecessary and very damaging smoking ban laws.

Also significant is the World Health Organization (WHO) study:

Passive smoking doesn’t cause cancer-official
By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent

” The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The Telegraph, also states: ‘There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood.’ ”

And if lawmakers need additional real world data to further highlight the need to eliminate these onerous and arbitrary laws, air quality testing by Johns Hopkins University proves that secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations.

The Chemistry of Secondary Smoke
About 94% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a slight excess of carbon dioxide. Another 3 % is carbon monoxide. The last 3 % contains the rest of the 4,000 or so chemicals supposedly to be found in smoke… but found, obviously, in very small quantities if at all.This is because most of the assumed chemicals have never actually been found in secondhand smoke. (1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).

Most of these chemicals can only be found in quantities measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms. Many cannot even be detected in these amounts: their presence is simply theorized rather than measured. To bring those quantities into a real world perspective, take a saltshaker and shake out a few grains of salt. A single grain of that salt will weigh in the ballpark of 100 million picograms! (Allen Blackman. Chemistry Magazine 10/08/01).

- (Excerpted from “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains” with permission of the author.)

The Myth of the Smoking Ban ‘Miracle’
Restrictions on smoking around the world are claimed to have had a dramatic effect on heart attack rates. It’s not true. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/

As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:

“Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.”
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997

HarleyRider – you post is a joke. This research sounds like you got it off of one of those fake websites published by the tobacco industry. Who paid you to post this?

This sounds like someone who’s been paid to lobby for the tobacco industry. Did these statistics come from one of those fake websites posted by the tobacco lobby?

nope…….I am an individual fighting for the free right of choise………

It’s going to be inconvenient to go off campus to smoke and I wouldn’t be happy about it either.

If you state facts…be sure to state all of them. Hand picked arguments get “picked apart” quick.

Acknowledge all the facts and fight for designated smoking areas, I think it’s a reasonable request. Please don’t argue that smoke is nothing more than water vapor and some unpleasant odors…you’ll get roasted.

And don’t let this happen without your input, you’ve obviously put a lot of energy and thought into your arguments. If you’re a student here, you have the right to be heard, gather your buddies. If you don’t do anything, don’t complain about your ¼ mile walk to the campus edge to smoke your cigs between classes.

Your habit has responsibilities because it can have ill effects on the people around you. Accept those responsibilities, understand the consequences and above all else…enjoy that butt with your first beer early Friday evening.

I miss those days…but I got tired of smelling like an astray, waking up with a puff of my inhaler and having colds that lasted months instead of days.

sorry but our rights are not up to anybody except us.We pay to go to school and dropping new rules right now doesnt leave many with a chance to choose another school.I guarantee you when you find a place that starts passing bullcrap rules on one thing they will be just as nit picky on other things…….especially something as insignificant as second hand smoke..it may annoy you but it sure isnt going to harm you…….read up on burning organic materials…you will fall over in embarrasment……wet fire wood smokes,dry doesnt..tobacco is made to be moist for a fresher milder smoke…….thats why theres smoke…….and the coal end is in direct contact with oxygen and that means nearly every bit of the burn destroys everyhting in the smoke…….then you go thru a chemical chain reaction after the smoke hits the atmosphere within milli seconds……..why do you think osha says its not going to harm you…….its a stupid argument to even claim shs/ets will harm anyone….As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:

“Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.”
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997

osha and epa both had second hand smoke listed as a class 3 irritant only……until the democrats got into office and epa changed its position and made shs a carcenigen.not based upon science but politics where dose makes the poison…..do you realise if EPA applied the same standard to grill smoke in a restaraunt all restaraunts would be shut down……….oh but their vented to the outside air…again osha says if you dont like it open a window…….the joke is people who believe shs/ets harms anyone.

The problem is that you’re using a argument that goes half way to where you are headed, and pretending that it goes all the way there.

In the quote from Dr. Watchman (awesome name, by the way), you are missing out on the fact that the distinction is in dilution of the smoke, and that “it would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoke”. However, these situations do exist. Clearly, someone smoking one cigarette on the other side of a well ventilated room isn’t going to harm you.

Regardless of the secondhand smoke argument there is still substantiation for this ban: making it harder to smoke.

You may not like that, but some people do. By reducing the perception of smoking being normative or socially acceptable, it is likely that some students and faculty will reduce the amount they smoke or just give it up due to inconvenience. Others, however, will not change their use outside of the affected areas.

Smoking is legal, but as with alcohol, another controlled substance, it carries with it restrictions on use.

In the end, you can not deny that smoking carries with it an enormous economic burden in externalized costs and public health concern due to the incredible amount of disease and mortality.

The university is concerned for the welfare of the students, both while at school and beyond college. While you are a captive audience and it has the chance to attempt urging you to quit an addictive, deadly habit…it is not wrong to do so.

If you want to smoke, you certainly can and are free to do so. No, it’s not an absolute freedom, just as you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater.

Your time is probably better spent lobbying the school for better access to educational and career training resources.

Regardless of the secondhand smoke argument there is still substantiation for this ban: making it harder to smoke……………THATS PROHIBITION. a total failure.You seem to forget that these bans have set in motion student protests against such infringements on civil liberties and individual rights. All these bans are going to do is have a steam roller effect and a cry of liberty across this land the likes we have not seen since the civil rights proests…..its not just smoking bans.its the accumulative effect of all these new progressive movement actions and laws……..this is not the change people voted for………this is the outlawing of liberty that is happening now and inducing a new socialist order of government control…….This next election will show that outrage everyone is feeling about this new change we all got bent over with…..27 states had smoking and tobacco prohibition during the volstead act and before…..all were repealed by 1933……..you think thsi round of prohibition will be any diferent….human nature doesnt change and neither does disrespect for draconian laws and taxes…..the tobacco black market is growing to a size never seen even larger than alcohol bootlegging of the 1920s…….We now have more al capones than anyone can count……..but at least out of work americans can get a job with them……..you think you can actually enforce this ban……..without a campus full of NARCS…it aint gonna happen dude.

Oh well. I think smokers will fair much better if you don’t represent them.

UMaine and many other schools have been dropping “bullcrap rules” long before they considered a smoking ban…tailgating and dry frat houses come to mind (my time).

I don’t think a smoking ban on the UMaine campus will be the “steam roller effect” that will begin, “a cry of liberty across this land the likes we have not seen since the civil rights protests” (edited spelling on protests)..your words.

Since you assume that second hand smoke is simply “burned leaves” what’s all that stuff on the cig pack for? Is the surgeon general a buffoon? And what’s that stuff that comes off the end of your butt when you light it up? If that smoke’s not going into your lungs, whose lungs is it going into?? It’s the same stuff man, it doesn’t magically go away cause you think it does.

Enjoy the walk to edge of campus, beautiful time year up there. Head towards the credit union, they’re getting expensive uh?

You dont get or dont want to get IT.We wont be walking anywhere except to the nearest door to lite up. Bring your boyz on…………liberty is worth fighting for and if wish to be a narc then expect to be treated as such……..YOUR CHOISE and we will keep ours……..

No court in this country has upheld a charge that an individual has the right to engage in behavior that is damaging to the health, well-being and liberty of others. Our country was founded on the concept of protection from tyranny, even if that tyranny is at the hands of those who choose to engage in behaviors that damage the rest of us – especially if that population represents only 22% of the total population.

And this is not without cost. Just this week MORE research has come out that proves the immediate positive impact on the heart attack rate that smoke-free policies create. Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574426921442513660.html

Mr. Harley-Rider, I do not know if you are a student here. But, I have done some research in the past day, and you are posting on websites across the country. It looks like you’ve been at this for quite a while, cutting and pasting your argument from tobacco co. websites thinly veiled as ‘smokers rights’ sites into postings in several states. I do not trust your identity or intentions.

It is a prohibition in a very narrow sense. The school’s campus has bounds, and as soon you exit that property, you are no longer under that policy. Because it is narrow, not more restrictive (for the goals it aims to achieve) than necessary (for example, it does not prohibit even having them on campus, it does not prohibit other tobacco products), and the rights and concerns of individual freedom and weighed against public health.

You are you not allowed to walk down any street with a beer if you are under the legal limit and not causing any other issues. Why is this not fodder for your complaints? Considering this is a vastly wider prohibition on behavior, it would stand to reason that you’d rally against this first, and then address infinitely more narrow restrictions after.

Honestly, I don’t really know what argument you’re trying to make when you fly off the handle and start ranting about socialist regimes and Al Capone. Coherent arguments facilitate intelligent discussion, so I, for one, would certainly appreciate that.

For example, what theoretical connection are you positing regarding the University of Maine’s restriction of smoking on campus and the current cigarette black-market? The illegal flow of cigarettes is primarily due to the federal and state excise taxes. When the federal excise tax increased, the black-market increased. This is because there is money to be made in circumvention of tax laws and counterfeiting. Certainly there is a organized criminal element involved, although I would argue not to the magnitude of Al Capone, at least in the most part. If more effective procedures are created so that it is more difficult to counterfeit excise stamps, it could easily reduce some of that crime. This tax, however, is necessary to include a larger proportion of external costs of cigarette use. Some litigation has led to tobacco companies directly paying states for health care costs that their products directly affected. This is simply an economic issue.

If you want to try to have a slippery slope argument against your perception of a socialist regime, that is one thing, and likely better left to other places.

So I propose three things: (1) clear arguments for your points, (2) smoke when you get off campus, as inconvenient as it is, and then once you graduate forget this trauma to your life, and (3) use smokeless tobacco if you really need your fix on campus.

And this is not without cost. Just this week MORE research has come out that proves the immediate positive impact on the heart attack rate that smoke-free policies create. Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574426921442513660.html

Your phony heart attack study holds no water.it was a meta study of all studys that were debunked by pier review…..stanton glantz beign a co-author gave it the final nail before it was buried………
your so called heart attack studies have been debunked……….tell mt glantz his political boyz in power are going to be gone in 2010….

The Myth of the Smoking Ban ‘Miracle’
Restrictions on smoking around the world are claimed to have had a dramatic effect on heart attack rates. It’s not true. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/

The most recent reports are a case in point. Although The Sunday Times claimed a 10 per cent drop in heart attacks, nowhere in the 500 word article was a source mentioned and no one was quoted giving this figure. The ‘study’ the newspaper referred to does not exist, and the anti-smoking pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) – not renowned for downplaying the risks of passive smoking – went to the unusual lengths of posting a notice on its website the following day to point out that ‘the figures reported in The Sunday Times yesterday (and now circulating elsewhere) are not based on any research conducted to date’ (3).

Although the story quickly went around the globe, no one seems to know where the figure came from. It’s all rather strange. Basing journalism on anonymous sources is commonplace in the world of politics, but it is surely not necessary in the realms of science.

Why do you have to walk to a door? Why not light up right where you are!! It’s all about liberty right…so who’s making you go outside?

If this is a liberty thing, don’t let “the boyz” bring you down. Why are you okay with some rules but not others?

I take everything back. Don’t fight for designated smoking areas, you sold me on the health benefits of smoking.

Fight to repeal the bills that have banned smoking in schools, dorms, public building, restaurants, hospitals and nursery’s.

It’s all about liberty and I think you should be able to smoke in a room filled with other peoples kids. I don’t know if you’ll be able to convince those moms as easily as you have me though…cover up!!

I won’t do this anymore.

You can’t spell, can’t put a grammatical sentence together…it sounds like you are foaming at the mouth. This is not a rational argument.

James Lightwood and Stanton Glantz, tobacco researchers at University of California, San Francisco, conducted a separate analysis using most of the same pooled data, but with some differences in methodology. These researchers found the same 17% average reduction in the rate of heart attacks one year after smoking bans went into effect. But after three years, this analysis found an average reduction of 36%. The team’s findings are published in the Oct. 6 issue of Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association.

and in 6 years itll be 72% and in 12 years we will all have immortality………its all junk science there were no changes in rates.

the peublo study ,the scotland study all fraudulent……the last one in england was done by 2 nurses at smokefree london doing a phone survey of emergency room visits………two nurses
on the payroll of smoke free….what this tells me is the anti-tobacco lobby is going bust as the last trash they have trown out is garbage propaganda. Not willing or not able to pay a decent research facilty any moeny or decent name recognized research groups have decided to protect their good names by turning this outcome based study stuff from tobacco control out the window.

The Great Helena Heart Fraud

If They Had the Truth… Why Would They Lie?

In April of 2003 two local doctors from a relatively small town in the Midwestern United States unveiled the preliminary results of a study that made a truly astounding claim: A smoking ban in that town based upon the ?protection of people from second hand smoke,? lasting for only 6 months, had reduced the heart attack rate by 60%. Just as incredible, it was claimed that as soon as the ban was overturned by a judge and proprietors were again allowed ?to continue poisoning people? with secondary smoke, the heart attack rate immediately rebounded to pre-ban levels.

These claims were far beyond anything that had ever before been laid at the doorstep of secondary smoke exposure and activists and media outlets around the globe jumped on it and proclaimed it to be proof of the immediate and urgent need to protect nonsmokers from tobacco smoke.

The one big problem with this (among many other problems explored below) is that the study itself did not specifically examine the effects of the ban on nonsmokers!

Of course that information didn?t come out until a year later when the details of the study were actually made public for all to see, but by that time the incredible claimed findings had been used as the basis for hundreds of debates and laws throughout the country in the drive to eliminate public smoking. Note, the study itself was honest in not making such a claim, but the presentation of the study to the public by the authors, by activists in respected and high profile positions, and by a sympathetic media, all asserted that ?The Great Helena Heart Miracle? study had proven beyond all doubt that secondary smoke was felling tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Is it fair to title this Appendix ?The Great Helena Heart Fraud? when the study itself is not being accused of being fraudulent? Yes. The reason for this is explored below in two unpublished ?Commentaries? that I submitted to the British Medical Journal. The first was rejected after four weeks without explanation. The second (which had been submitted as ?fast track? for urgent consideration) was rejected after seven weeks with the explanation that two of the four selected reviewers had finally read it and recommended it be rejected. Follow up emails to the Journal were ignored.

I would also strongly suggest that any reader with online access visit the website of the BMJ itself to read the relatively short study and examine the Rapid Response comments made to it. It?s worth noting that although over a dozen significant questions and criticisms were made of the study within two weeks of its publication, it was not until two months later that the authors finally chose to respond. It?s also worth noting that that response ignored over 90% of the questions and criticisms that had been raised while taking an Ad Hominem slap at the most recent pair of questioners, accusing them of “following a well-established tobacco industry strategy…”

Reproduced below are the two rejected Commentary submissions, followed by an online Rapid Response submitted 100 days after the study?s initial online publication. Readers of the printed Journal of course never got to see any of this material and unless they make a special trip to the web site will never know the severity of the questions and criticisms that greeted this ?peer-reviewed? study. To the best of my knowledge none of these criticisms have ever appeared in the print or broadcast media outside of a letters to the editor page.

Commentary 1:

On April 5th, 2004, the BMJ published the “Helena Heart Miracle” study in its online version. Quite aside from several minor questions and quibbles (e.g. why the strict limitation of comparator periods, why similar changes have not been noted in prison populations with smoking bans; and why funding from organizations that openly push for bans is not considered a conflicting interest) there is one major and glaring problem with this study and the way it has been presented.

The problem is the lack of differentiation between those patients who smoked and those who did not and a presentation that clearly claimed the opposite. The terms “secondhand” smoke or smoking appear twelve times in the study while the overall tone of the paper itself, press statements by at least two of the authors, and further press statements by nationally prominent Antismoking figures all combine to give the strong impression that the study clearly found that exposure to secondary smoke caused heart attacks among Helena’s nonsmoking population.

In reality, in an obscure paragraph near the end, the authors admit that the study did not examine nonsmokers as a separate group, noting that small sample size would have made such differentiation totally meaningless.

Am I exaggerating the extent of the deliberate misinterpretation to the public? Not at all:

On April 2nd the American Heart Association paid for a press release headlined in big bold print: “NEW STUDY LINKS SECONDHAND SMOKE TO HEART ATTACKS,” where the AHA’s CEO, M. Cass Wheeler, stated: “Banning smoking is the only logical response to the scientific evidence concerning the dangers of secondhand smoke.”

On April 4th, Stanton Glantz, co-author and study guarantor, stated in another press release that: “This is not the first study to find a link between long term exposure to secondhand smoke and heart attacks.” His associate, the Director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, followed with: “The bottom line is simple. Secondhand smoke kills.”

Even Vivian Nathanson, head of research and ethics right here at the BMA, was quoted in an April 5th article on the study as saying “We estimate that second-hand smoke kills at least 1,000 people in the UK every year.”

Dr. Sargent himself, the lead author of the study, asserted in a CBS TV interview about Helena that business owners wanted “to be allowed to continue poisoning people even when we have demonstrated the immediate effect of it.”

All of this shows quite clearly the intended message of the study. And that message is not the likely truth: that when a smoking ban is introduced in a small community smokers smoke less and spend more of their potential heart attack time outside of that community while eating, drinking, gambling and smoking.

A final note of interest: A deliberately omitted data chart used in the initial presentation of the study clearly shows a drop in AMIs only during the first three months of the ban when it is most likely that angry Helena smokers deliberately went out of town for their fun during the warm weather months. However the chart also showed that for the last three months of the ban, when the cold Montana winter was approaching and angry smokers tired of boycotting local businesses or moved their drinking and smoking to their homes, the heart attack rate bounced back up to roughly normal levels. Not a bounce back after the ban ended as is usually claimed.

I offer apologies to Drs. Sargent and Shepard for being so harsh in my criticism, but I feel the harshness is deserved when one considers the enormous damage this study has done to people’s lives and livelihoods in communities where the “Helena Heart Miracle” has been held up as proof of the harm of secondary smoke in order to frighten nonsmokers and get extremist smoking bans rammed through legislatures.

Advancing a falsehood designed to implement social engineering goals amongst free people is never something to be taken lightly.

Commentary 2:

The BMJ is no stranger to controversy when it comes to smoking-related studies. A year ago, on May 17th of 2003, the BMJ published the landmark study on secondary smoke and spousal health by Drs. Enstrom and Kabat, based upon 39 years of medical records and interviews of 118,000 people. That study was begun with funding from the American Cancer Society, and when that funding was cut off, partway through, the authors sought other funding and eventually finished the study with funding from the Center for Indoor Air Research.

When the study was published it spawned a record number of 150 Rapid Responses. Sadly, only a small minority of those responses spoke to perceived flaws in the study or its data: far and away the largest focus of discussion dealt with the “undesirable” findings and their possible influence by the openly declared finishing funding from a ?Big Tobacco Front Group? and the similarly open admission by the authors of past connections to tobacco funded research.

Dr. Kabat weighed in twice during the exchanges to defend the authors? scientific integrity and to address the few scientific criticisms that had been raised. Despite the fact that methodological or data-based criticisms of the study made up only a small portion of the responses, local health boards today offhandedly dismiss the study as being based on flawed or inadequate data and as being “thoroughly debunked.”

Fast forward one year to May 5th, 2004 when the BMJ published a study based on the small town of Helena, Montana. Instead of 118,000 people and thousands of deaths over 39 years, the Helena study looked at about 25,000 people and a few hundred AMI?s recorded during periods totaling less than 39 months. The Rapid Responses to Helena numbered less than a dozen, and the clear majority of them noted significant flaws or inadequacies in the study, its data, or the presentation of its results.

Unlike the case of the Enstrom/Kabat study there were few Ad Hominem attacks on the authors for their funding, despite the fact that some of their sources are openly dedicated to supporting smoking bans and despite the fact that the authors failed to either define this as a competing interest or note the millions of dollars a co-author of the study, Stanton Glantz, has received in MSA-laundered Big Tobacco grants: money clearly and specifically targeted to promote Antismoking objectives such as bans.

And, unlike the E/K study, not only were most of the responses sharply critical of the methodology, data, and presentation, of the study, but the authors themselves have made, as of this date, not even a pretense at defense, despite the fact that some of the sharpest criticisms have been online at the BMJ site for well over a month at this point. This may also be almost unique in the history of the BMJ: scientists are usually quite willing and eager to defend the integrity of their work.

Also unlike the E/K study, while E/K’s news coverage was overwhelmingly peppered with background about its funding and challenges, virtually no mention was made of such funding and challenges in the news coverage of the Helena study. ?The Great Helena Heart Miracle? has been floated before the public eye as not only being virtually unchallenged but as advancing conclusions about secondary smoke and nonsmokers that were in fact never in the study proper or its data at all.

And what is the final result of this disparity in presentation and treatment by the media? Simply that an innocent public, trusting in the integrity of an institution like the BMJ, has been misled and unjustly terrified by extremist claims based upon nonexistent data analysis, legislatures have rammed laws through councils on the basis of that deception, and small businesses, as well as individuals relating to their families and friends, have had their lives and livelihoods injured as a result.

Is the BMJ to blame? Not in any way. They reported the valid results of a fairly meaningless but nonetheless hi-profile study and presented its data as reported by the authors. They also opened their pages to those outside the usually accepted medical establishment for responsible criticism of the study and its data. After a full year of secrecy in which the authors refused to discuss the details of their study after the initial press releases, publicity splash, and TV interviews, the facts were finally made public.

It is unfortunate that the public, or at least its supposedly responsible representative, the media, has proven all too willing to absorb and relay the misinformation given in paid press releases and advocacy statements about Helena rather than actually read the study and its critiques for themselves. The BMJ can lead a horse to water, but it cannot make him drink.

Rapid Response: ?Helena: 100 days?

On April 5th 2004, 100 days ago, the online British Medical Journal published “Reduced incidence of admissions for myocardial infarction associated with public smoking ban: before and after study,” a study that, according to media releases around the world, conclusively demonstrated the deadly effects of secondary smoke and the immense and immediate medical benefits that had been demonstrated once people were protected from “the deadly poison.” (1)

The release almost immediately generated a storm of criticism within these virtual pages as Rapid Responses containing over a dozen substantial questions and criticisms were generated within ten days.(2)

Throughout the entirety of that 100 day period, only one response has been made by the authors of the study. That response was two months in coming and ignored over 90% of the questions and criticisms that had been raised while taking an Ad Hominem slap at the most recent pair of questioners by accusing them of “following a well-established tobacco industry strategy…” (3)

Perhaps the most serious of all the charges made was the one that charged deliberate misrepresentation of results to the media, and the one that criticized the lack of honesty in the declarations of competing interests.

In the first instance the charge of misrepresentation was clearly not directed at the Journal, but was instead aimed at the conscious presentation of the study by the authors and other supposedly responsible medical and tobacco control authorities as having directly examined and strongly condemned the cardiovascular effects of secondary smoke. As pointed out quietly by the authors themselves in the study, no attempt was made to even estimate such an effect.

In the second instance however the charges were laid at the feet of both the authors who neglected, even after criticism, to openly admit their potential conflicts of economic interest; and at the feet of the Journal which seems to be ignoring the demand that such conflicts be openly exposed for proper consideration by readers and future researchers.

The 14 points below represent only those raised and ignored in the first ten days; there are others that cry equally loudly for response as well. The British Medical Journal has demonstrated its courage in publishing the Helena study and opening its details to direct public examination rather than leaving them in a limbo of interpretation only through press release. It has also shown courage and responsibility in opening its pages to those around the world who have criticized not only this study, but others that were scientifically weak although serving sacrosanct political and medical goals. It needs to prove itself equally courageous in demanding that the Helena study authors responsibly respond to their critics and questioners in the true spirit of peer review and public accountability, and that they do so with a full and open admission and listing of their competing interests.

Sincerely,

Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
http://www.Antibrains.com

Footnotes:

(1) http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/328/7446/977#55832

(2) (Partial listing of unanswered criticisms/questions)

>1)why the enormous difference in ratio of reviewed and included admissions for primary and secondary diagnoses;

>2)why the limitation of previous six-month periods to just the most recent four;

>3)how three patients experienced multiple admissions but only had a total of five admissions among the three;

>4)why similar changes have not been noted among the many prison populations that have experienced similar smoking bans;

>5)why funding from a number of organizations who have declared openly their belief in pushing for smoking bans is not considered a conflicting interest;

>6)why the presentation and the bulk of discussion in the study was deliberately oriented toward secondary smoke while the formal study itself never specifically examined secondary smoke, exposures to it, or the statistical effects of the ban on nonsmokers;

>7)why the initial results boasted a 60% reduction while the final showed only 40%;

>8)why the finding of a 40% immediate reduction in Helena was claimed to be supported by studies showing only a 5% reduction in California over a period of years;

>9)why the findings of increased hospital admissions immediately outside the Helena area were not factored into the reduction of admissions within Helena but were instead simply dismissed as non-significant;

>10)what impact transient traffic or recall bias had upon the study;

>11)what impact would have been made by using different criteria for determining relevant admissions;

>12)what impact would have been made by using different criteria for those assigned to the different groups (e.g. by including/excluding those who were retired and unaffected stay-at-homes or those who had simply had a single dinner or lunch in Helena at the time of their event);

>13)what difference in conclusion might have been forthcoming if the authors had examined three month rather than six month periods, given the clear disparity observed during the first three months of the smoking ban as opposed to the final three months;

>14)what impact on the final numbers could have been attributed to the increased time some smokers spent outside the ban area during the course of the ban, particularly during that telling first three month period of good weather and possible resentment and what effort, if any, was made to examine such impact.

(3) http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/328/7446/977#61207 <

More words don’t mean more logic, or more truth.

ah poor poor saia, Its not in the movement of tobacco control to cede the argument so early………..but alas there is a bright future for some of you……….Just make sure its not employment in the prohibition movement of today for it is doomed as its predecessor was…….LET FREEDOM RING.

…and stupidity reign? You underestimate me.

not for a second I been dealing with nazi personality control freaks for years…..I ve even been to combat and had to fight em……..where were you safe at home in bed.

Nice try HarleyRider.

I appreciate anyone’s service to this country…and my safety and freedom. Including the work of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers to protect me against drunk drivers, laws that protect children against pornographers and molesters, and an effort at this protection against nazi-smokers who think they have a ‘right’ to harm us with the effects of their addiction.

PS – thanks so much for this opportunity to refresh my skills from High School debate team. Although, I must say, however entertaining, the competition is not all that formidable.

ya that MADD group…another prohibition movement…..they go out and turn kids into little nazis…dare same thing…….I prefer to be a member of D.A.M.M. DRUNKS AGAINST MAD MOTHERS……….all those groups started as educational messages.they have now become tools of the prohibition movement…….turning kids into narcs on their parents…..not a good combination………my kid came home proud as a button with a diploma and everything from dare class………..until……..he started running his mouth like a regulator…….then I dug in and found out whose behind these groups now……….care to look and dare to see the colusion of your favorite prohibition buddies..

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Financier of Temperance
by David J. Hanson, Ph.D.
The temperance-oriented Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) “seeks to drive adult beverage consumption underground, away from mainstream culture and public places.” 1 It attempts to stigmatize alcohol, de-legitimize drinking, marginalize drinkers, and create a de facto quasi-prohibition of the legal product.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation spent over a quarter of a billion (that’s billion, not million) dollars ($265,000,00.00) in just four years alone further developing and funding a nation-wide network of anti-alcohol organizations, centers, activist leaders, and opinion writers to promote its long-term goal.

An in-depth report, Behind the Neo-Prohibition Campaign: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, demonstrates that “nearly every study disparaging adult beverages in the mass media, every legislative push to limit alcohol marketing or increase taxes, and every supposedly ‘grassroots’ anti-alcohol organization” is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2 The foundation supports numerous temperance-oriented activists and groups including:

http://alcoholfacts.org/RWJfoundation.html

look to the bottom,your heroes at dare and madd are listed………The lady who started madd was on tv a few months back and said the entire group has been taken over by leftwing politicos…..and have turned it into a lobbying group for prohibition instead of an outreach orgram any longer………she said dont waste your time its a gestapo unit………..and after you see that it was madd and dare who got the .10 moved down to .08 we all know what that means…….next is .05 then near beer at .02 then we get to brazil where its simply any amount…….thats right brazil totally outlawed any alcohol in the drive or in the car………..you reall should look deep into what your heroes are up to.

Saia, Now there you go calling us smokers Nazi
why do you have to lower yourself by labeling us with such a revolting name!

Oh’ I see you are just copying what HarleyRider is saying and he’s wrong to use the Name Nazi.

Here it is I smoke, it’s legal, it kills, it’s my choice, its addictive, but you know what I respect not smoking around children, I respect not smoking in bars, I respect not smoking at Public beaches and the list goes on and on and on!

Yet the Hospitals, and the State keeps taking my money from Ciggarette tax for the poor, for those without healthcare, for some of the sick for different project don;t they!

Lets just start to tax food, soda, perfume, lets just tax everyone’s personal addictions and then perhaps you will be happy.

By the way tell me, some of your addictions you want taxed and tell me where you want to be able to drink or eat something that is offensive to me!

Oh and another off the wall point I do not believe, in the State sponsored Methadone project but I bet you do and I bet you think its their right after getting their State Sponsored Methadone treatment that they get behind the wheel of a car and drive home , Don;t you!

Guess what their stoned, guess what accidents happen, guess what there is no law against this or statue…nice isn;t it, fair isn;t it but, its us smokers who are killing everyone including ourself’s right!

No tobacco control group, with any legitimacy, is trying to outlaw tobacco.

The goal of any legitimate, mainstream group, is to reduce smoking prevalence to the point where it is not an enormous public health concern.

No one is trying to take away your cigarettes.

M.A.D.D. is not relevant to this discussion, unless you somehow can connect them to Maine’s smoke-free campus policy.

Anyhow, I do feel inclined to address two points, and I use “points” loosely, in the last paragraph.

First off, slippery slope, not a valid argument without a LOT of substantiation. You just sound paranoid.

Second, public health is generally diametrically opposed to personal freedoms. It is illegal to be in your driver’s seat, with your keys, and be drunk (even if you are sleeping and have no intention of driving). This, and extending into drunk driving laws, are a balance of personal freedoms and the public’s health. One could argue that driving under the influence should not be illegal at all. If you violate a traffic law or kill someone, that is the law you break, not the mere fact of being drunk. However, given the amount of deaths and injuries attributed to drunk driving, the public’s health wins out. If there is research enough to support that if enforcing a .05 BAC, instead of .08 BAC, would reduce deaths by X amount…that will be weighed against the personal freedom to have a beer or two and drive. Which one wins out? I’m sure it depends on the magnitude of change, and the court’s interpretation of how restrictive the law can be.

Anyhow, why not just be smart and get a cab?

HAVE YOU HEARD THE LATEST…..3RD HAND DRINKING…….its the latest from the health facists and anti-drinking establishment……..thats when the designated driver gets drunk by breathing in the same air as his drunk friends while in their vicinity or enclosed car……..ya their that frigging nutty………as nutty as third hand smoke…..you people really should hire some descent propaganda artists….these last 6 months of headlines are making you laughing stocks across the world………….with a lil help from me.

You are rebutting an argument no one has made.

NO ONE IS STOPPING YOU FROM SMOKING. Keep doing.

However, no one has a right to freedom without consequences. You have the right to free speech, but the consequences of that free speech are beyond the protection. Monetary contributions to political campaigns are a form of free speech, but exercising that right means losing money out of your pocket (the contribution).

Secondly, the government pays for a lot of health related costs from tobacco. The Master Settlement Agreement, which the tobacco companies adhere to for the most part (there are infractions in advertising from time to time), stipulates that tobacco companies pay the states to reimburse them for the cost of tobacco-caused illnesses.

However, nearly all estimates show that taxes collected and MSA settlement money does not cover the amount spent on medical costs, or other external costs.

I agree, tobacco tax money should be funneled directly to the relevant programs and needs, but unfortunately that is a political issue. Politicians see tobacco tax as a way to gain income from a fairly widely supported tax increase.

Again, though, don’t forget that the money the state pays into medical costs for tobacco interest, is money that must be allocated in the budget for medical costs. That leaves less money to allocate to other issues, so in one way or another, the tax money peripherally chips away at the external cost of cigarette smoking.

It is a tax that, out of intent although maybe no practice, is trying to include the actual cost of your smoking in the cigarettes. The problem is that the economics of the situation allow the real cost ($$ in your pocket) to remain low. Smokers are price sensitive. If a pack of cigarettes, in real cost (again, $$ in your pocket) reflected the real AND external cost of smoking, far fewer people would choose to smoke.

There are people now looking at the economics of putting taxes on sugary sodas and foods with no nutritional value that are tied to obesity. The rationale is multi-leveled. On one hand, people are price sensitive, so by increasing the cost, less people consume and in lesser amounts. On the other hand, certain products are the cause (albeit not in a single dose/use) of a significant amount of disease, which also creates health care costs footed by healthy, non-users and the government. So this tax, in effect, loads more of the external cost into the real cost of the product.

Let me reiterate this point that some of you keep missing:

NO ONE IS TRYING TO TAKE YOUR CIGARETTES AWAY.

AGAIN: real tobacco control researchers/lobbyists/educators/et cetera are trying to reduce prevalence until smoking is not a large public health problem.

Well, first off, methadone is a prescribed and monitored treatment by someone with prescription privileges (I presume it requires an M.D. or some advanced nursing credential). It is to medically treat a chemical dependence. Also, you need to get a textbook and look up the differences between addiction and dependence.

Secondly, actually it is against the law to hop in the car. You can get a DWI or something else while even on over the counter allergy medication. You don’t have to be specifically drunk to get a driving under the influence. If you are deemed by the officer to be driving while impaired (I can’t say I know the legal differentiation between DWI and DUI, my guess is a controlled substance distinction), you can be arrested.

So yes, getting high on the methadone and driving can get your ass in trouble.

I have no connection with alcohol control people and you assume that I agree with 3rd hand drinking. My guess is that these are the fringe people, not the legitimate alcohol control research community. But regardless, I’m not connected with them nor have I stated any feelings on it.

And actually, 3rd hand smoke, has been found to be real in a study or few. Does it mean they are without flaws? No. Does it mean it’s fodder for policy decisions? No.

However, 3rd hand smoke can be shown (assuming it continues to be replicated in studies) with a biological measure, in infants, with parents that only smoke outside. If an infant, who otherwise has no contact with nicotine, has blood drawn and it shows elevated cotinine levels (metabolite of nicotine)…the child is consuming, from somewhere in it’s environment, nicotine.

Of course you need to pay complete attention and look at levels and potential harm. From what I recall, it was very low, and not harmful levels. However, as a parent using a legal substance, it’s probably not a bad thing to just know about, which includes knowing the potential for harm (which, at this time, seems like basically none).

third hand smoke the biggest laugh of all

put here with permission from the author

A 15/day smoker gets about a half picocurie per day. A typical nonsmoker living or working with smokers might get about 1/100th of that, or about 5 femtocuries/day.

A millicurie is a thousand microcuries, a million nanocuries, a billion picocuries, or a trillion femtocuries.

It would take that nonsmoker a trillion days to absorb the dose that killed the Russian.

Of course that’s secondhand smoke. The article referred to “third-hand smoke” absorption by a child from surfaces left over from past smoking. A reasonable estimate for the amount remaining stuck to the 10,000 squarefeet of walls, ceilings, furniture, floors, and draperies in a reasonably ventilated 2,000+ sq. ft home would almost certainly be less than 1%, but let’s assume that 1% actually does remain and spreads out over that 10,000 sq. ft. of surface. With 15 cigarettes having been smoked while the child was at school and the house then thoroughly aired out, we’d then have 1% of a half picocurie (i.e. 5 femtocuries) spread over that surface.

Let us suppose you don’t watch your child very carefully and further suppose the child deeply loves licking an entire 10 sq. ft. of floor sparkly clean every day during Jeopardy! That child will then have licked 1/1,000th of those 5 femtocuries into his system: 5 “attocuries.”

So, how long would it take such a child to get the “killing dose” of the 5 millicurie Russian that the Times article featured?

In 1,000 days our child would have licked up 5 femtocuries.
In one million days, 5 picocuries.
In one billion days, 5 nanocuries.
In one trillion days, 5 microcuries.
It would take one quadrillion days (2.74 trillion years) for that child to absorb 5 millicuries.

Unfortunately the universe is only 10 billion years old, so the child would have to lick floors for 274 cycles of our expanding universe to match our radioactive Russian.

Of course since he’d normally excrete most of that polonium we’d have to refuse to change his diaper until the end of that period… not a very pleasant thought.

And then there’s that whole annoying fact that the half life of polonium is only 138 days, so we’d just have to ignore the laws of physics as well in order to justify the story’s thesis.

Even if someone wanted to quibble with my estimates, changing 1% to 10%, or 10 sq ft to 100, or 15 cigarettes to 150 cigarettes per day… or even ALL THREE in attacking my argument… we’d STILL be talking three billion years of exposure along with a suspension of the laws of biology and physics.

I strongly feel that the Times’ treatment of this story showed blatantly irresponsible journalism and should be corrected. I have sent them a letter to that effect.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”

CONTANINE IS JUST ANOTHER way the anti-tobacco lobby tries to create a fear in people…..its not harming anyone……..its a scare measure used by tobacco control thru a pee sample…..it doesnt mean a thing……..in children or in adults…….. we survived as a species for how many thousands or millions of years in evolution with fire and smoke……..you guys are a laugh.
I assume you have bought 20 thousand acres in the arctic for when global warming turns the north pole into beach front property……….lmao

I don’t think anyone here said, unless I miss it, that third hand smoke can kill. Second, he talks about a lethal dose. I think the concern, if there is or should be one, which I have no opinion on, is developmental and risk, not lethal dose.

Regardless, if repeating the study leads to infants having cotinine in their blood and it is isolated to “3rd hand” smoke (I hate that term), then it’s not bogus.

Being real doesn’t necessitate immediate death or even long term risk elevation. The implications are clearly different, but it’s real I’d that’s the case.

Smoking Bans and the Third Reich

Hitler was a fervent anti smoker and a crusader for the anti-smoking cause. He personally funded research into the dangers of smoking and little wonder those results given the nature of his regime tended to support his assertions that smoking was an evil the Aryan race must be rid of. Many of the studies carried out during the Third Reich are the basis for the arguments put forward today by those seeking the imposition of repressive smoking bans.

Hitler once stated that tobacco was “the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man” Under the Nazi’s the Bureau Against the Dangers of Alcohol and Tobacco was established in 1939 followed in 1942 by the Institute for the Struggle against the dangers of Tobacco. Nazi’s were the first to coin the term “passive smoking”

Under the Nazi regime the German people had imposed on them the most comprehensive set of tobacco regulations and restrictions seen in any modern nation to that date. Hitler himself took particular interest in this area often personally overseeing the drafting and implementation of anti smoking policy.

“I am convinced that if I had been a smoker, I never would have been able to bear the cares and anxieties which have been a burden to me for so long. Perhaps the German people owe its salvation to that fact.”
Adolf Hitler 1942

Bans And Restrictions in Nazi Germany

The Luftwaffe banned smoking in 1938.
The German Post office introduced.it’s own ban
Smoking was barred in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals,and rest homes.
The NSDAP (National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939
SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty in 1939
Hermann Goering’s bans soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches, and while taking rest periods.
Sixty of Germany’s largest cities banned smoking on street cars in 1941.
Smoking was banned in air raid shelters. Some provided separate rooms for smokers
Tobacco coupons were denied to any woman who was pregnant
Blanket smoking bans were introduced in many cafes, bars and restaurants
Women below the age of 25 were banned from smoking
Restaurants and cafes were barred from selling cigarettes to all female customers
In July 1943 it became illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public.
Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944. This initiative coming from Hitler himself,who was worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke.

Why is everyone still replying to this guy. He’s either a 13 year old at home (watching for mommy) or he’s some dude without a job and nothing to hang on to but strange thoughts and this debate.

I’m tired of getting emails, please stop responding to him…

I just wish to add a few things:

If you want to smoke, then smoke. If you don’t want to smoke, then don’t smoke.

This is one of the most simple concepts one can come across.

Everyone lives their own life in accordance with how it makes sense to them.

Also, I don’t appreciate being judged as less intelligent for the fact that I fell into an addiction as a young teenager.

I also may drink vodka a bit too much. Does anyone care to judge me for that, just while we’re at it?

Keep your statistics. It’s a choice. In 50 years, will any of us here really care either way?

oh, and harleyrider . . . who the hell cares what the Luftwaffe banned in 1938?

It’s 2009 buddy, move on.

You’re absolutely correct,it is 2009 why are we having laws put in place that the NAZIS had……..?????………could it be the political comaprisons of todays politicians and movement are the same as the NAZIS…….Its a questionsome PHD may need to answer.

Meanwhile Al Capone’ and his comrades will continue to supply the tobacco blackmarkets created by this new progressive government.

Just because a law was put in place by an oppressive regime, does not necessarily make it an oppressive law.

You’re right, I’ll concede, banning smoking in hospitals and trying to protect the health of female conductors . . . this man was truly a monster . . .

The Nazi party also discouraged drinking alcohol and encouraged better dietary choices. By your logic, we should all wash down our 15 donuts for breakfast with some Jack, because hey, if the Nazis said it then it simply must be pure evil and oppressive.

Grow up.

oppression knows no limits or bounds……the term nazi sticks not only by historical comparison but politically and morally to those who endorse such draconian laws….they have made themselves the OPRESSORS against the people.

I’m finished talking to you Harley.

You have no logic in your statements.

A hospital smoking ban is draconian? Are you serious?

Very serious……..They have no right to tell people they cant…….as far as the surgery room no smoking its a environment with flammable substances n2o 02 and others……..no smoking around flammable areas.thats commonsense…..something long ago lost.
Then we had common courtesy,but smoking bans did away with courtesy…..the day criminal law came into being against a smoker was the day government lost the the backing of the people. Opression causes lack of respect for the law.