A good response to my online poll, with about 100 responses so far, the majority (53%) saying that the Secondhand Smoke lies were the ones that really needed to be nailed.
It was pretty much how I expected the vote to go.
But we’re up against a whole edifice of lies here. A blizzard of lies. Tobacco Control invents a new lie almost every week.
There are also a whole raft of lies surrounding SHS apart from the two lies I highlighted. In the hands of Tobacco Control, SHS has acquired magical properties. It’s no longer a gas like any other gas. It can go through walls. It can go along telephone wires. It can completely defy all the laws of physics. It’s become something out of a Harry Potter movie.
Perhaps it’s true that we have entered a ‘post-normal’ world, in which science and reason have been replaced by fabrications and lies. Everything is made up. We’ve gone from non-fictional ‘reality’ to fictional fantasy.
My response has been to get rid of the TV set, unplug the radio, and stop buying newspapers. And I no longer want to know anyone who believes a single word of any of the scaremongering nonsense spewed out by the mainstream media. I used to tolerate their magical thinking. Now I think it’s a disease. If anyone thinks that secondhand smoke is harmful, I don’t want to know them. I don’t even want to be in the same room as them.
I’ve pulled up the drawbridge, and filled the moat. Next week I’m going to buy some sharks to put in the moat, and a pair of tigers to guard the drawbridge, and a boa constrictor to sleep beside my bed.
It’s one reason why I see a deepening social division emerging in our society (and I don’t just mean little old England). It’s a division between the sort of people who believe anything they’re told – particularly if it’s by an ‘expert’ or a ‘scientist’ or someone with Sir or Lord or Professor in front of their name, and a string of letters after it -, and the sort of people who don’t believe anything at all that they’re told by such people. Or not until they’ve rinsed it, boiled it, and chopped it into thin slivers, and inspected each one minutely with a large magnifying glass.
It’s a division between believers and unbelievers. It’s one of the oldest divisions known to humanity. It’s them and us.
And I’m a complete unbeliever. I don’t believe anything Tobacco Control says. And that includes the the doctrine that Smoking Causes Lung Cancer. For which I was chided today by Steve Kelly, who wrote:
I get Frank’s point about “smoking causes lung cancer” and I think it’s important to point out that “cause” is misused in such statements but I also think it hurts our cause if we seem to suggest that habitual smoking is a health regimen.
I haven’t suggested that habitual smoking is a health regimen. I’ve simply said that I don’t believe smoking causes lung cancer. I haven’t got round yet to saying that smoking improves health. But give me another year or two, and don’t be too surprised if I do.
And I don’t see how it ‘hurts our cause’. I realise that there are many people – for example Chris Snowdon – who believe that smoking does cause lung cancer. And they’re entitled to believe whatever they like. But I don’t happen to believe it. So why should I pretend that I do? For the good of ‘the cause’?
Are we smokers going to acquire an approved orthodox system of faith, according to which it is permissible to disbelieve the secondhand smoke myth, but impermissible to disbelieve the firsthand smoke myth? Or believe that smoking aggravates asthma, but not toenail fungus? What’s wrong with disbelieving the whole damn lot? It’s much simpler.
Tobacco Control are a bunch of charlatans. If they’d told just one lie, that should be reason enough to disbelieve everything they say. But they tell dozens and dozens of lies. So why believe anything they say about anything, including anything they have ever said in the past?
If you come across a snake oil salesman selling a wide variety of snake oils, are you going to say, “Well, his rattlesnake oil is useless. And so is his cobra oil. And his black mamba oil too. You can’t fool me with any of that snake oil baloney! No, sir. Not me. But I do like a drop of his badger essence, and his hedgehog poultices. To keep away the mange, and cure warts, you see…”? No, you’re not. You won’t buy any of it. Not even the nectar of sparrow’s milk in the curly green bottle on the end. Yes, that one.
Or if you went into Tesco, and bought a bought a packet of its own brand corn flakes, and found a large, well-fed rat contentedly asleep in it when you opened it, would you buy any other Tesco own-brand products ever again, or anything at all from them. Or would you just say, “Well, Tesco cornflakes are notorious for having contented rats sleeping inside the boxes. But it’s not like that with their corn puffs. Or their chocolate nut crispies”?
“Smoking Causes Lung Cancer” is just another bottle of snake oil. It just happens to be about the oldest and most popular snake oil of all. More or less everyone buys it. But as far as I’m concerned, once Tobacco Control started lying about SHS, it called into question everything they’ve ever said about anything.
And to me that seems the right thing – and the obvious thing- to do. Reject everything. Don’t start picking and choosing and saying that they’re wrong about this, but right about that. It’s all tainted.
And complete rejection of everything they say seems to me to be the way most people are eventually going to go. Tobacco Control is going to become a by-word for mendacity. And people will say things like, “You don’t believe that nonsense, do you?! It’s almost as bad as one of Tobacco Control’s lies!”
For now, the believers – the people who buy the Tobacco Control snake oil – will carry on believing everything they’re told. But eventually, even they will start to question their beliefs. Because people like that usually go along with whatever everyone else believes, and when they find that fewer and fewer people believe it, they’ll start changing their minds too. Because they don’t want to be left out.
We are, I believe, heading for a complete collapse of belief in almost everything. In Tobacco Control. In experts. In scientists. In doctors. In politicians (actually we’ve probably already got there with them). In the mass media.
Pretty soon everybody’s going to be disposing of their TV sets and their radios, and cancelling their newspapers, and their New Scientist, and Scientific American magazine orders. Maybe even Good Housekeeping and Country Life.
I just happen to have got there early, that’s all.
Frank Davis 
Ones ability to defy the propaganda and defy the so called experts is in itself freedom.
Individual freedom to not be bullied,frightened or led into lies as truth.
We are the strong,we are the few,we are the natural safeguard of liberty.
TCI hates us as we are the final 20% that wont be nudged into submission!
In us breathes TCI’s death…………..The weak have already submitted,we fight on!
Another TC lie debunked
NEW YORK – Tobacco taxes in the USA do not work, and poor taxpayers in the country devote nearly a quarter of their incomes to tobacco products.
On September 20th the research group RTI International published a new report on the burdens placed on taxpayers by excise duties for cigarettes and tobacco products, showing that the increases may not have the intended effect on individuals with low incomes.
The report, which was commissioned by the New York State Department of Health, compared smoking rates across the USA, but concentrated on smokers in New York state, which currently pay one of the highest rates of tobacco excise duties in the country.
According to RTI, when excise taxes in New York were raised recently from USD 1.50 per pack to USD 4.35 per pack there was no significant decrease in the prevalence of smokers in the low-income tax bracket.
Smokers with high-incomes were found to be more sensitive to tax increases than smokers with low-incomes, and purchased less tobacco products following the hike.
The study also demonstrated the negative effects that the hikes had on the financial well being of low income taxpayers, confirming that it only led to an increasing percentage of their incomes being spent on tobacco products, rising from approximately 11.6 percent to 23.6 percent of their total incomes.
Analysis by the RTI showed that nearly 45 percent of all tobacco sales in the state of New York are completed without paying the excise taxes, as, according to the report, some of them are sold on Indian reservations, where excise duties are not applied.
Read more: http://www.taxationinfonews.com/2012/09 … z273nDjtLW
That is a great analysis, Frank. Thirty or forty years ago, the Zealots started the modern anti-tobacco campaign. They gained control of the WHO, which was ripe for takeover since it was unprotected. They framed the anti-tobacco (and, in a reverse manner, anti-alcohol) campaign in terms of helping the desperate people of Africa to have clean water and clean food and clean shelter, etc. But they were lying, because their real objective was to remove ‘unclean practices’ from the healthy, wealthy West.
When the smoking ban was considered in parliament, our MPs should have demanded proof positive that the ban was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. They did not do so. Thus are they condemned, because the new influx after the expenses clearout have STILL not demanded PROOF POSITIVE that our legitimate, free aspirations must be limited because of the danger of SHS.
That is a great analysis, Frank. Thirty or forty years ago, the Zealots started the modern anti-tobacco campaign.
Junican, there is nothing modern about it. I guess my fatherland has a few more unpleasant memories…..
Couples who smoke to be banned from IVF treatment
A HEALTH board is to ban IVF treatment on the NHS for couples where both partners smoke.
inShare.0
Custom byline text: BRIAN DONNELLY
NHS Fife is thought to be the first in Scotland to stipulate both partners must be non-smokers, as well as the female having particular body mass, before they will even be considered for the treatment.
A charity that helps infertile couples criticised the move to restrict the criteria, and a pro-smoking lobby group said it was discriminatory.
The change comes into effect from the start of October as a reduction in treatment cycle provision is also made in Fife.
Couples in the region trying to have a baby on the NHS through the process are to receive two instead of three cycles – a move that follows health boards in Dumfries and Galloway and in the Borders.
The Infertility Network charity said other boards have some restrictions on females smoking, but this is the first time it has encountered both partners being banned.
NHS Fife claimed the move, along with further funding of £100,000, would mean waiting times are reduced.
Gwenda Burns, of the Infertility Network, said the new criteria vastly narrowed couples’ chances.
“There are health reasons involving smokers but, before, women have been offered help to stop smoking and they could go through the treatment,” she said.
“Both partners being non-smokers is not in the guidelines.”
Simon Clark, of Forest, which promotes smokers’ rights, said: “It is discriminatory, and smokers have already paid into the welfare service through tobacco taxes, so in one way they have paid for the right to treatment.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/couples-who-smoke-to-be-banned-from-ivf-treatment.18941465
Yo Harley,
They didn’t read my (very long) writeup.
NEVER tell them you smoke. That’s highlighted around about link #16.
http://www.tichtich.com/infertility-sperm-donors-hfea.html
Horse to water… etc.
Heh! I left a comment there, but it hasn’t got past the moderators! Quelle surprise. And not, I thought, inflammatory, either:
“What a good idea! And to further reduce waiting times, we could also stipulate that they must be non-Jews and non-Muslims. And that they must not have had a Big Mac for the five years prior to treatment. And that they must be salt-free food eaters who also never consume sugar. Oh, and of course they must be teetotal. Gosh, we could get the waiting time for IVF down to two days at this rate!”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/couples-who-smoke-to-be-banned-from-ivf-treatment.18941465
They have resolved the problem by not allowing new users by not accepting any passwords from new users.
Ok, I’ll answer some replies here then:
as far as I know, having blond hair and blue eyes does not lower your chances of conceiving. being overweight and smoking do.
Sorry, this is a misconception. Smoking has NOTHING to do with conceiving. If it had there would not be a “baby boomer” generation.
Nor does blonde or blue eyes harm children. It’s not about the rights of the smoker – it’s about the rights of the child.
the “blonde and blue eyes” ideal has harmed the generations born after. What about the right of my childhood?
There is no need for IVF anyway. The world is not really short of children, last time I looked.
Thank you for this. It is correct. The world’s population is >7 billion people. Adopt the ones that NEED a home.
Are you really trying to say that exposure to second hand smoke prolongs life? If you are then you are the stupidest person ever allowed on the internet.
It must do – I am still alive and ready to take on the likes of you.
Are you qualified to judge about who is stupid and who is not? If you are in no position to do so, please refrain from statements which show your limits. *Thank you*
I wrote this in response to yesterday’s post.
Biggest lie: “There is some chemical in smoke that causes X.” With 100 or more diseases attributed to primary smoking plus the carnage of second and thirdhand smoke, after 60 years of “research,” not one chemical in tobacco has been shown to cause even one “smoking related” disease. Simply saying that there are toxins and “known carcinogens” in smoke isn’t enough. These are equally present in the atmosphere and the food and water that people consume throughout their lives. The entire “smoking causes” theory is based on statistics, not biology. Diseases where we understand the cause can be linked to bacteria, viruses, genetics, nutritional deficiencies, etc. You can produce disease with chemicals (e.g., at a high enough dose nicotine is a poison) but the biology of this is reasonably well documented and understood; the “disease producing” chemicals in smoke remain a mystery.
FD quote on cigars / pipes: “…fairly soon after cigarettes had been widely accepted as a likely cause of lung cancer, all tobacco products were lumped together and the distinction lost.”
That’s probably true for the average Tobacco Control drone, and for the general public as well, including most smokers. For “scientists,” however, things are more sinister.
Rather than “lost,” I’d say “suppressed,” or maybe better, ”deliberately ignored.” If you study the “literature” on primary smoking, the difference between cigarettes and pipes / cigars is one of the major questions that Tobacco Control avoids. But it is a known fact.
The very earliest studies on smoking linked it to lung cancer, but critics quickly pointed out that the relationship was different for pipes / cigars. Ronald Fisher addressed this in the late 1950’s.
In the Framingham heart study (started in 1948 and still ongoing), cigar / pipe smokers were classified as non-smokers; only people who consumed cigarettes were classified as smokers.
1964 Surgeon General’s report, table 19, page 102, mortality attributed to smoking – cigarettes only. On page 112, the SG acknowledges that cigar and pipe smokers have a different disease pattern. At a guess, 95% + of the bad things attributed to tobacco pertain to cigarettes.
The cigar / pipe anomaly is still ignored today. But it has to be known by those who produce the numbers. If you look at the 450,000 (or whatever) yearly U.S. deaths attributed to smoking (the actual breakdown with citations to the “research”) there’s a footnote (always read the footnotes!) that says – cigarettes only.
If data from cigar / pipe smokers were included in “official” figures, smoking would become less dangerous – and Tobacco Control would never tolerate such sacrilege.
The “smoking causes” theory can’t account for pipe / cigar data. Therefore Tobacco Control ignores it. They also ignore reality. Therefore they are screwballs.
Most certainly, the lies didn’t start with secondhand smoke.
xxxxxxxxx
My choice in the poll – smoking causes lung cancer. Like an avalanche, if that lie falls, all other lies also fall.
But was it a lie? Not at the start, I’d say. Take a group of cigarette smokers and compare them to non-smokers; smokers die much more frequently of lung cancer than non-smokers. A fact. The THEORY that smoking causes LC was not unreasonable. But, almost immediately, anti-tobacco fanatics took over. Science was abandoned and the lies (delusions?) began.
Decades were spent trying to induce LC in animals by exposing them to smoke. Didn’t work. So just ignore that data. No one can identify a chemical in tobacco that can cause LC. Ignore that, also. Critiques of the theory? Contradictory studies? Alternative explanations? Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. And of course, any study that supported the theory (or could be twisted to support the theory) was quickly baptized and welcomed into the church.
Over a half century, the flimsy “logic” of the lung cancer studies was applied to disease after disease. Second and thirdhand smoke were invented, and science was created to prove their danger.
THEORY became FACT.
The TRUTH is that tobacco is evil. SCIENCE proves this. Anyone who questions the TRUTH is paid by The Merchants of Death.
And now, THE NEXT STEP, move on – alcohol, salt, sugar, fast food, soda – the possibilities are endless!
They have to move on anyway – smoking rates down, ‘smoking-related’ diseases up.
Zobbitbrat: re your 12:47 PM comment on yesterday’s post.
I think I know the study to which you refer. It was published in 1967 based on survey data gathered in 64 / 65. If I’ve got the right document, it was created by the National Center for Health Statistics, so it’s not part of the Surgeon General’s canon. The title is “Cigarette Smoking and Health Characteristics” (publication series 10 # 34, May 1967). It’s not easy to find unless you know exactly what to look for.
http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?q=site%3Awww.cdc.gov%2Fnchs%2Fdata+filetype%3Apdf+“Cigarette+Smoking+and+Health+Characteristics”&submit1=Search It’s the first item on the list.
Table A on page 8 has the half pack a day data.
Here’s a critique by Sterling: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/jdn02a00 and a response by the author plus Sterling’s reply http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/gaj32f00
Enjoy!
First link doesn’t work. I’ll try again.
http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?q=site%3Awww.cdc.gov%2Fnchs%2Fdata+filetype%3Apdf+“Cigarette+Smoking+and+Health+Characteristics”&submit1=Search
Or try:
Click to access sr10_034acc.pdf
Maybe we should start small and work our way up, just like TC have done?
I would say that the easiest lie to debunk is the “heart attack miracle”
Even anti mike seigal admits this one is shonkey as!
An enormous deception is the claim that the enjoyment of tobacco is a matter for Public Health. It is nothing of the sort. The mere fact that smokers form a group does not mean that they cease to be individuals who have the right to make their own decisions. If politicians had any sense, they would push Public Health back to where it should be – checking sewers and such.
If there’s one thing we can learn from TC it’s that of “slicing the salami” i.e. slowly-slowly-catchy monkey.
While there is some disagreement about the “smoking causes lung cancer” claim, I think we can all agree that the word “cause” is problematic when only 1 in 8 lifetime smokers get it. However, to address that now would just label you as a crank or nutter in the eyes of many, in much the same way as asking for outdoor smoking bans in 1977 would have labelled the antis as such. Learn from TC – do it one step at a time. The secondhand smoke myth should be addressed first… not only is it the cornerstone of everything – the bans, the denormalisation etc – in my experience most normal people don’t believe a word of it anyway; it’s just the MSM and medical establishment (and the politicians) who keep hammering away at it.
Once that lie is firmly dealt with, the others can be addressed in turn.
Actually they dont care if we get the world to laugh at them over shs. Their goal was the smoking bans and the ultimate goal prohibition but probably not just tobacco. Lets remember when you attack on to many fronts as hitler did,he created more enemies than he could defend against. Then a lil island ally of his decided to up the ANTI and attacked the sleeping giant. Now lets guess who the 800 pound gorilla is that public health fanatics have awoken………….The obesity epidemic. Even the kids are rioting against green veggie lunches in school,blackmarket twinkies and pop! The Globall warming fanatics and their junk science took the first big hit……
We are not just in a war on us smokers,we are fighting the entire public health war on humanity. Its humanity that is our ally! Thats why we will win,to many pissed off and affected people and children.
Here they are at it again with secondhand smoke. This time it’s a “study” from…. where else….. the University of Califraudia (Sam Plank’s Disco). This “study” has been picked up by a number of sites, all leading with a highly inflammatory header.
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/09/12759/secondhand-smoke-takes-large-physical-and-economic-toll
BTW Is it just me, or does the person pictured in the article look like Stantonitis Glands in drag. That is a man in drag??? Whose actual name is Max Wendy???? Maybe it is just me :) But I digress…….
Secondhand Smoke Takes Large Physical and Economic Toll.
Exposure Disproportionately Affects African Americans, Especially Infants
Secondhand smoke is accountable for 42,000 deaths annually to nonsmokers in the United States, including nearly 900 infants, according to a new UCSF study.
Altogether, annual deaths from secondhand smoke represent nearly 600,000 years of potential life lost — an average of 14.2 years per person — and $6.6 billion in lost productivity, amounting to $158,000 per death, report the researchers.
The study, which involved the first use of a biomarker to gauge the physical and economic impacts of cigarette smoke, revealed that secondhand smoke exposure disproportionately affects African Americans, especially infants.
The new research reveals that despite public health efforts to reduce tobacco use, secondhand smoke continues to take a grievous toll on nonsmokers.
The study is published Sept. 20, 2012 in the American
Journal of Public Health.
This is, as usual, a statistical game played in a statistical fantasy world, thus producing a statistical “death toll”. There is no indication of plausibility and mechanisms. There is a complete absence of coherent causal argument. The reliance is on flimsy relative-risk differences for particular disease/mortality, usually not partitioned for a multitude of other risk factors. Raw relative risk differences are viewed as “attributable risk” which, in one magic step, is “transformed” into “attributable causation”, and…. voila…. instant “death toll”. Sitting at the computer, other extrapolations can be done before lunch, e.g., years of potential life lost, $ loss in productivity, etc. So much information! The problem is that it has no causal substance.
That this sort of statistical [mis]adventure could be classed as a scholarly analysis of disease/mortality, including the highly inflammatory title, and published as such, beggars belief. But, unfortunately, these sorts of statistical shenanigans are the norm in Public Health as it pertains to lifestyle “epidemiology”. More unfortunate still is that there are members of the public that believe that this statistical toll is of the sort as, say, a fatal disease or a fatal car crash where causation is clear. People believe that when they hear “nonsmokers are killed by SHS” that it involves entirely clear causal mechanisms and conditions leading to mortality. These statistical tolls are no such thing: They are population-level RR differences with essentially no extrapolation potential at the individual level. They are fanciful, wishful thinking by agenda-driven, incompetent miscreants. And the incompetence is endemic….. institutional.
The entire junk study was an effort to attack menthol cigarettes and blacks. Just yesterday another poll study was released to show if menthols werent around that xxx% of blacks would quit smoking! No doubt we will see a few more today and next week in this latest target of the nazis. Its simply another media blitz! So far its not been printed in any on line media with a comments section as yet. Its been in PR releases only that I can locate. But of course thats so they can get a few days headline news before its ripped apart by us or others.
I agree, magnetico – Wendy Max is definitely a bloke in a wig.
(cont’d)
Consider the example of SIDS. Unlike other mortality, it has no identified disease/abnormality/damage precondition. It is a syndrome defined by exclusion rather than demonstrable, specific pathology. When no other pathology explanation is possible, it is labeled as the unexplained category of SIDS: “SIDS is defined as the sudden death of an infant under 1 year of age that cannot be explained after a thorough case investigation, including a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history…”
If there is any “positive” in the circumstance is that SIDS is very rare. There has been much research into SIDS producing a very long list of risk factors, probably more risk factors than the incidence of SIDS per year. The problem is that, given that SIDS is rare, in Relative Risk assessments, the baseline is small, barely above zero in absolute terms. Even RRs of 5.0, 10.0, 20.0 don’t particularly mean anything because they are multiplications of a tiny, tiny baseline.
The implication of SHS in SIDS is extremely poor. For example, the incidence of SIDS in Japan is extremely low despite there being a high incidence of smoking and SHS exposure. Further, the incidence of SIDS in the West began to increase as smoking prevalence was decreasing.
There are far, FAR more mechanistically plausible causal explanations of SIDS than SHS, e.g., accidental smothering while the infant is sharing a bed with parents. In the case of accidental smothering, underlying causation, in mechanistic terms, is completely understood. In such cases, SIDS is not SIDS. Rather, there is clearly definable underlying causation that has nothing to do with a “mystery” syndrome.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/dec/22/scripps-study-sids-focuses-accidental-suffocation/
The idea of SHS “causing” SIDS has been pushed by antismoking fanatics. Advocacy/activist groups (including the Office of the Surgeon-General) can essentially say whatever they want, however outrageous. They are not held to account because no-one is compelled to pay attention to any of their claims. But the fanatics keep pushing these causal claims as if they are definitive.
Pushing the idea of SHS “causes” SIDS is particularly repugnant in attempting to force antismoking conformity. In the case of SHS and SIDS all sides of the causal equation are, and remain, unknown – even after “causal attribution”. According to the antismoking fanatics, an unknown attribute(s) of highly-dilute remnants of tobacco smoke produces an unknown condition through an undefined (unknown) process that results in mortality. And this nonsense passes for “causal explanation” in lifestyle epidemiology. Such a proposition is only delusional – preposterous. This is not causal explanation: It is derangement. It is nothing short of staggering that such claims are even given cursory consideration let alone incoherently elevated to the status of “definitiveness.”
There is a respect for grieving parents where, for example, accidental smothering is suspected. There is an attempt to protect them from further grief by not belaboring the causal point, if mentioning it at all. But not so the antismoking fanatics. If they suspect that smoking had occurred somewhere in the vicinity of a SIDS case, they come out firing, utterly sure in their “causal understanding” of the situation, fingers wagging, obsessed with making as many repetitions of blame as possible. Again, this says nothing of the propensities of SHS, but indicates the depth of depravity of antismoking fanaticism.
We can even go further back to the fanatics’ predecessors and some of their baseless, inflammatory claims:
“Early in the 1900’s it was some church groups (e.g., Methodist Episcopal Church’s Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals) that considered nicotine as a “killer of babies.” The “controversy” was picked up by the New York Times in two stories. In one story it was claimed that 40 babies from a New York maternity hospital “suffered from tobacco heart caused by the cigaret smoking of their mothers.” In the other it was claimed that “sixty percent of all babies born of cigaret-smoking mothers die before they reach the age of two, due primarily to nicotine poisoning.” (Journal of the American Medical Association, 1929, p.123) The American Tobacco Trust was viewed by the church board as “conscienceless baby-killers” that by promoting cigarettes to women were directing a “lying murderous campaign.””
Study: Babies’ low serotonin levels cause SIDS.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-02-03-sids03_st_N.htm
Scottish Government urged to review smoking ban
http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/scottish-government-urged-to-review-smoking-ban-1-2540750#
“Altogether, annual deaths from secondhand smoke represent nearly 600,000 years of potential life lost — an average of 14.2 years per person — and $6.6 billion in lost productivity, amounting to $158,000 per death, report the researchers.”
1) potential life lost — an average of 14.2 years per person
If we go to the charts, we find that indicates an average age of death of about 72.
The average actual age of death in America is about 79.
Sooo, potentially they lost 14.2 years: but, actually, only about 7 years.
2) $6.6 billion in lost productivity
Most 72 year old’s are retired and produce nothing in the workforce. Their death does not cause ‘lost productivity’.
When a worker dies, their job does not die with them. Their employer will go out and hire a new worker. There is no ‘lost productivity’.
“They are fanciful, wishful thinking by agenda-driven, incompetent miscreants. And the incompetence is endemic….. institutional.”
Indeed!!!!!
TC calls those 42,000 deaths ‘pre-mature’.
Actually; since one could have lived longer, all deaths are ‘pre-mature’ in a sense.
Here: Table A
Click to access nvsr59_09.pdf
we see that a person of 100 years of age has, on average, 2.2 years of potential life left.
If that person dies, their death is, on average, 2.2 years ‘pre-mature’!!!!
As a comparison, abortion causes a pre-mature death.
In America there are about 1,000,000 abortions per year and each one is a potential 79 years of life lost.
That is 79 million years of potential life lost as compared to the 600,000 claimed to be caused by SHS.
$6.6 billion in ‘lost productivity’ that is not really lost.
For your amusement:
http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200608/time.html?q=%2522in+lost+productivity%2522+billion
Employees spend an average of 1.86 hours per eight-hour workday on something other than their jobs, not including lunch and scheduled breaks, the survey found. Based on those averages, employee time-wasting costs U.S. employers an estimated $544 billion in lost productivity each year.
Nice post Frank as usual but what can we do about the SHS lie? It is trotted out with total impunity and the fucking idiots swallow it every damn time. It really depresses me how stupid people can be. I’m losing faith.
Here’s another link to Max’s “study”:
Heartening is that there are a number of commenters that are suspicious of this sort of research.
But eventually, even they will start to question their beliefs.
I guess that’ll happen when one of their own personal vices is targeted – as has already begun with alcohol and various types of foods. I’m still not certain that any of the new target-groups will make the connection or see the suspicious similarities between the tactics applied to them and those applied over the years to smoking (most of them still seem to believe, somewhat naively that “smoking is different”), but there’s no doubt that having one’s personal life so directly and drastically affected in the way that smokers’ lives have been does have a tendency to focus people’s minds and make them much more questioning about the “facts” and statistics pumped out in support of those regulations which support them.
I know it certainly focused mine. It’s only through linking up with similarly victimised people on blogs and forums like these that my own eyes have been opened to the corrupt science and plain downright fabrications which the TCI have used to get their way, and opened, too, to the way in which these fabrications have been “pushed” by people who should know better, like health professionals and scientists; or who had a responsibility to be much more cautious before slinging our freedoms out of the window in such a cavalier and careless fashion, like politicians.
So, whilst I suspect that few, if any, drinkers or fast-food consumers will ever have that “Aha!” moment where they suddenly see where this particular ball started rolling, I think that their own levels of mistrust in Experts, Scientists, Health Professionals, “new studies,” and the MSM will increase in just the same manner and through just the same means – and for just the same reasons – as ours have done. And if they start to mistrust everything that these “experts” proclaim (as pretty much everyone on here now does) then further proclamations about smoking made by those self-same “experts” will become casualties of these newly-created cynics with their new levels of awareness and their newly-reduced levels of gullibility. I can easily foresee a situation where science and the health professions, having rendered themselves universally untrustworthy and dishonest to pretty much all of the population, simply can’t get any publicity about anything they do, because nobody’s interested in what they have to say any more – and that doesn’t sell papers or get people talking.
And quite right, too. Having made their own bed by enthusiastically inviting Tobacco Control to share it with them, they deserve now to lie on it.
One surprising thing that has come out of my own personal ISIS survey of smokers is that while some smokers say they haven’t been affected at all by the ban, and some say they’ve been affected a bit, and some very greatly, almost all of them have come to distrust experts. And the only non-smoker in my personal survey said the same.
But, aside from the survey, I get the impression that an awful lot of people are ceasing to trust ‘experts’.
And that, as I see it, is a profound collapse of trust.
Senior doctors and scientists and health experts seem to believe that they will always be automatically trusted. They believe this because, historically, they almost always have been. But they have abused this trust, by supposing that they can say anything they like, and they will automatically be believed. So they’ve come out with the passive smoking lie, among others. But I think that in the coming years they will find that they have lost credibility, and that they will no longer be so readily believed in the future as they were in the past. And that there’s no easy way back to restoring their credibility.
As you say, they have made their bed, and now they must lie in it.