James Delingpole has been writing about passive smoking. I’ve known for years that he smokes (or was doing so a year or two back). And so I’ve often wondered why he hasn’t been deploying his considerable talents in the cause of smoking, instead of (or in addition to) the global warming alarmism he usually writes about. Better late than never.
It should have been left up to individual institutions – private members clubs especially, but pubs and restaurants too – whether or not they wished to allow smoking on their premises. Punters would then have been free to choose whether or not they wished, on any given evening, to sacrifice their unalienable right not to be exposed to other people’s deadly tobacco smoke.
That is how free societies work. Free people make free choices.
In 2006 and 2007 in Britain – and at various other dates in other countries around the world – the forces of authoritarian government took away those rights. On the basis of a massive lie.
Quite so. I wonder if this marks a shift in his thinking, and there will be more to follow. And whether others in the chattering classes will speak up too. Plenty of them are smokers too, after all. Perhaps it’s time they joined the mounting global resistance to Tobacco Control.
The Russians are now joining in the chorus. Which should be no surprise, given that in June this year a partial smoking ban was introduced in Russia, to be followed next year by a complete ban. It’s bad enough slipping outside for a gasper in Britain: in the Russian winter, at 40 below zero, it might well be fatal.
I’ve been getting 1000 hits a day this week from Russia on the Black Lung Lie, via some Russian blog that seems to have gone viral in Russia. I’ll quote a few fragments of the (surprisingly readable) Google translation of it. It begins:
Regular article in defense of smokers is a sad sight. Starting with thousands of apologies, the author proceeds to the main part of “Tobacco – it is certainly evil, but you need to deal with it in other ways.” I have a different position.Tobacco – not evil, but only plant. Doctors we pay money so they can fight disease and not with plants. Officials of national and international medicine in its social usefulness greatly inferior guards PRIVOKZALNAYA toilets
…
And what’s good about statistics? That it is possible to cheat. Website of the World Health Organization on the move shocking terrible numbers – six million people die annually from smoking! Well here not to give a couple of green WHO trillion to fight the “tobacco epidemic”? To obtain such data would be required to examine each of the deceased, to exclude the influence of environment, heredity, and a bunch of other factors, and then think about what role was played by tobacco. But everything is easier: we take all the diseases for which smoking is recognized as one of (!) Risk factors, and the gross write them died from tobacco smokers in sacrifices. Thus, by substituting risk factors and causes, fabricated a shocking statistic. It is not clear why smokers who died in car accidents, yet do not make the list. However, do not be surprised if making.
…
The main argument in favor of nanny state – the experts know better. Economists know how to regulate the economy, the doctors will for life, and psychologists will determine the list of permitted entertainment (“whether to ban computer games for excessive cruelty?”). In general, wherever you spit – get into the expert, the reincarnation of Plato guards in the XXI century. practice, however, suddenly it turns out that the noble professionals to work in the public interest, are ready to fulfill orders lobbies for a modest fee.
…
Despite the fact that the scientific method has formed a civilization, at the household level, many people are savages, believing in the invisible forces and blindly bow before authority. For example, not all microorganisms have seen with my own eyes. At the same time believe in their existence, as believed medieval scholastics, discussing the question, “How many angels fit on the head of a pin?”. Faith shapes behavior (wash hands, avoid contact with patients taking antibiotics). What is fundamentally different from the sign of the cross, holy water and exorcism? Than the authority of a doctor is different from the authority of the priest? That scientific facts are verifiable. But to check out all the accumulated knowledge of centuries, is not enough for a lifetime.
These are all arguments that I have made myself at one time or other. In fact I was doing so only yesterday. The only novelty is to find them articulated by Russian writers, with what seems to be a characteristically Russian sardonic humour.
The other novelty is that I should know anything at all about it. But we seem to now be occupying one single, wired world, as my WordPress hitcount today very graphically shows. The news in one place is the news everywhere. And it’s possible to see the global resistance to Tobacco Control gradually emerging.
It won’t be long before the map of China or India or Brazil lights up in red too. And after that, they’ll all join together.
Frank Davis 
genebbb
The pro-smoking crowd have spent years thrashing normal science–after each release of yet another study showing secondhand smoke’s harms. Now, finally, a study shows up that adheres to their bias. Suddenly, they trumpet this one to the skies as the Gold Standard. They’ve lambasted many studies for being “merely statistical.” Suddenly, they trumpet this statistical study to the skies as proof of everything!
What’s particularly amusing is that this study has been produced by that very same “corrupt,” “incompetent” and “statistical” medical establishment they’ve been denigrating and insulting so viciously over all these years. You can’t have it both ways, fellas.
Well, in the course of normal science, this study, null result as it is, will be duly considered, and put into the context of the current literature by normal, qualified medical professionals–none of whom, I notice, are out in the streets (or on message boards) ranting and raving about how this study is in any way definitive or “proves” anything.
Science and scientists don’t work that way of course; only propagandists and gangs of vociferous, unrtained rabble do.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100251229/passive-smoking-another-of-the-nanny-states-big-lies/
John Davidson Jr > genebbb
Gene calm down I know its like destroying your anti-tobacco world of glass but you knew the day would come when it all came crashing down. Now please as much as I like ya and our long friendship please take that valium and click your red Alligator shoes together and repeat…Theres no place like my smokefree utopia…………3 times now then sleep sleep sleep!
“many people are savages, believing in the invisible forces and blindly bow before authority. For example, not all microorganisms have seen with my own eyes. At the same time believe in their existence, as believed medieval scholastics, discussing the question, “How many angels fit on the head of a pin?”.”
He, he, the Russians have got the point! ;)
Lest it get lost where I posted it on the previous thread, the NYC council today banned the use of e-cigs not only indoors but also in parks and beaches and the Times Square pedestrian mall on the overtly stated reason that their use sabotaged the denormalization of smokers and of course that the sight of people vaping would set a bad example for The Children™
They will lose 25% of their tourists ;)
Surprised? Not in the least. Hysteria rules. Superstition rules. Autocrats rule.
The answer? DISOBEY! DISOBEY! DISOBEY! This is not the same as the smoking ban. Vapers hold the high, moral ground. DISOBEY!!!
Your hit map Frank.
Kazakhstan??!!
If you make it famous there, you can take the WORLD! :-D :-D
Yes, it’s amazing, isn’t it!
If like James says, there ought to be a choice available: pub or restaurant owners deciding for themselves to be smoking or non-smoking – what is the biggest, scariest point that this represents for the anti? Come on, we all know it.
It means that anti can’t argue his case anymore, and he will always go to the non-smoking businesses.
And he’ll walk in, look around the room and see what? Lots of people staring back at him that are JUST LIKE HIM.
He’ll finally have the mirror held up to his face. He’ll finally see what he is. This is what the anti fears above everything else.
Probably the best Mikle has ever written
Michael J. McFadden
As people have just seen in New York City, the “harm” argument of secondary smoke was never anything more than a game played on people to justify implementing a ban for social engineering purposes. Thus e-cigs can’t be allowed any more than regular cigs.
The truth is that, for the vast majority of normal people, there’s no level of harm from passing exposures to secondary smoke that anyone sane needs to worry about. Even if you want to ignore the current study and Delingpole’s point, even if you want to fully accept the antismoking claims based on the EPA Report, all you can say is that for every 40,000 worker-years of constant exposure to the high levels of smoke found in the 1940s through 1970s, you’d see, on average, ONE extra case of lung cancer.
And yet, deliberately, unethically, and with full social malice, antismoking advocates have magnified this theoretical and quite definitely unproven “threat” into a crazy fear that has people literally crossing streets through traffic out of concern over passing “deadly” smokers on the sidewalk.
There never has been, and there never will be, any sound reason for the government to step in with mandates for all businesses to ban smoking. There is no sound reason why adults can not be free to make their own choices in the matter of such extremely questionable and low level risks in pursuing their enjoyment and their occupations. And there is no sound reason why simple standards for air quality cannot take the place of bans.
No sound reason other than 1984 and Brave New World style social engineering designed to treat people like lab rats and condition them into the “proper” sort of behavior.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “TobakkoNacht — The Antismoking Endgame”
Delingpole basically just laid out the battle of Midway Island against the Nazis/japs yesterday even RUSH LIMBAUGH ran it………………..The enemy has lost the Carriers and they cannot be replaced! Now its Island hopping time………………lets get em!
Landing Craft Ready………………
Prefer LCACS, but I guess they are the same thing in the end.
The result is the same. :-D
It seems that anti-tobacco is returning to it’s roots.
Pollution in smoking households ‘equivalent to Beijing smog’
“Smokers are exposing very young children to levels of air pollution equivalent to Beijing smog, according to a study by anti-smoking charity Ash Scotland.”
“When smoking takes place at home, the indoor air pollution levels are comparable with those measured during major industrial smog events in cities like Beijing and Singapore.”
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/257583-pollution-in-smoking-households-equivalent-to-beijing-smog/
Ouch, these people really don’t know their own history do they?
Ludicrous remarks like that can get people thinking.
Fear of political embarrassment led to government cover up of link between air pollution and lung cancer
“Delegates attending an international conference in London today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great London Smog of 1952, which caused an estimated 12,000 deaths, will hear how governments from the late 50s onwards deliberately downplayed the huge threat to public health caused by air pollution, and sought to shift the blame firmly onto cigarette smoking instead.”
http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/pressoffice/press_releases/2002/smogpollution.html
Another ancient village pub closed and boarded up today, near me, because of the infernal smoking ban.
“for The Children”
I would like to see just what harm they can prove comes to ‘children’ from smoking.
As we see here:
Click to access lies.pdf
The CDC data shows that there are damn few smoking ’caused’ deaths below the age of 35.
95% of those deaths occur over the age of 50 and the average age of those deaths is 72.
A 15 yr old could smoke for 20 years with no chance of dying from a smoking ’caused’ death.
A 15 yr old could smoke for 35 years with very,very little chance of such a death.
If a 15 yr old smoker was planning on such a death, they would have to smoke for 57 years before they had a 50% chance of such a death.
By that time, they have long ceased to be ‘children’.
Now that they have lost the SHS debate they are still passing anything as long as its a nannystate subject without any care or justification. They are just doing it…………….Totally in your face and it doesn’t matter attitudes is whats left…………A hate campaign with nothing but the hate left cannot long last.
Llewton wrote, “Another ancient village pub closed and boarded up today, near me, because of the infernal smoking ban.”
I’ve got an idea for a research project that would be worth some effort over in the UK and Ireland if anyone is up for trying to organize it.
It depends partly on whether you have something similar to the “Yellow Pages” we have here in the US, a phone directory subdivided for businesses of various types, e.g. pubs. (although most desirable would be one for what you call “wet-led pubs” although I doubt it would be so subdivided.)
I’m thinking in terms of setting a stand for “typical rural pubs” in terms of townships or counties or whatever that would encompass a middling number of folks and pubs outside the major cities but not the deep, deep hinterlands. The idea would be to pick a manageable number (3, 5, 7?) of such places and procure access to yellow pages type phone directories from the year before the smoking ban was implemented and five years afterward. In order to do it objectively (scientifically) within the meager resources of a couple of folks working on a free project with their home phones, it would have to be somewhat limited, but there are still ways of making it a statistically valid random sampling to avoid accusations of cherry-picking. E.G. if population centers were limited to those covering between 10,000 and 25,000 people, and, if there were too many such places or too many pubs in such places to check on all of them, just checking on the first half or first quarter or first five alphabetically. Identifiable “chain pubs” could perhaps be excluded since the idea here is to explore the impact on the “typical classic rural pub.”
The initial check would just be to count the numbers to see how many pubs there were in Year -1 vs. Year +5. The next check would be to see how many appeared in both directories (and those could then be crossed off as relatively non-affected … ignoring the fact for this study that they may indeed have lost business.
Just those numbers alone could be meaningful, and, if the study was done properly it should, by rights, be publishable … though good luck finding a med journal willing to publish the results you’d be likely to get. Still, doing it up right and getting it rejected does have SOME value, as we saw with the work DaveK and I did here in the States a number of years ago:
http://acsh.org/2007/07/a-study-delayed-helena-mts-smoking-ban-and-the-heart-attack-study/
The British Medical Journal now stands quite formally embarrassed at their treatment of our submission since later, similarly large and verifiable, studies have arrived at quite similar results. Their main reasoning for their rejection, that our conclusion showed “nothing new” was obviously false, and there’s no way that they can ever really deny such a thing: they’ve been exposed as an advocacy journal rather than a scientific one.
Would the type of pub research I propose above be worth the effort? I don’t know, and I don’t know how difficult it would be to actually carry out, but it’s worth a thought. Research actually showing that a full third of classic British or Irish rural pubs have closed since the ban would be pretty meaningful (although to be *more* meaningful, a data selection from Year -6 would have to be included.) The study could be extended in a human interest fashion by trying to track down workable contacts for a random set of those pubs that had closed and get actual statements from their owners as to how much of the closure decision rested upon the ban.
– MJM