H/T Harley. I suppose that I ought to be pleased. Peter Oborne in the Telegraph has called for the smoking ban to be relaxed:
There’s a quiet rebellion under way against bossy government
…it is time for ministers to wake up and ask exactly who it is that ASH and other anti-smoking organisations represent, and why and on what basis the state is paying for them.
It’s time to loosen the laws against smoking in pubs. It’s time to treat smokers as grown-ups and not pariahs. It’s time to remember what it means to be a Conservative.
But… there’s exactly the same problem as with yesterday’s video. Because he makes exactly the same kind of concessions as they did. Here’s the first:
There’s no argument that cigarettes kill, and the early attempts by the tobacco lobby to deny this were dishonest and disreputable.
Here’s the second:
I’d also guess that almost every smoker now realises that smoking in public places is a gross intrusion on others.
Here’s the third:
They should, of course, acknowledge that the anti-smoking lobby has achieved good things.
I don’t believe any of those things. If Peter Oborne believes them, why on earth is he calling for the smoking ban to be relaxed? For if he really believes that smoking in public places is a gross intrusion on others, he can’t possibly be calling for smokers to be allowed to grossly intrude on other people by lighting cigarettes inside pubs.
My position is simple. I don’t think smoking kills anybody. And I don’t think that it’s at all an intrusion – quite the opposite. And I don’t think antismoking zealots do any good whatsoever: I think they do nothing but harm. And so there’s no justification whatsoever for the smoking ban.
What Oborne is doing is a bit like someone saying that, yes, I know that there is an unexploded bomb under my house, and yes, I know that if it goes up it will take half the street with it, and, yes, everybody knows that the Bomb Disposal Unit do a fine job, but all the same I really don’t want to have to stand outside in the rain for hours while they dig a hole in my living room floor and defuse it, because I might miss Emmerdale Farm at 5 pm.
Once you’ve said all that, the Bomb Disposal Unit is just going to throw you out of your house, and march in and dig up the bomb. Because that’s what they must do.
No, if you’re going to stop them, you’re going to have to say that there is no such bomb, so it will never explode, and the Bomb Disposal Unit is an unnecessary luxury, because nobody has ever dropped any bombs here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Because unexploded bombs are only ever found in countries which were subjected to bombing raids – like Britain or Germany or Japan.
But Oborne isn’t doing that. He’s doing quite the opposite. And really he’s almost begging for someone to overrule him. And, of course, somebody will.
Another thing he said:
I started to worry about the trend of events when the smoking ban in pubs was imposed.
Ah, that’s when he started to worry, was it? As in, “I started to get a bit worried when the boat capsized and sank, and I found myself in a air pocket surrounded by dead bodies”? Or, “I started feeling slightly worried when the fire raced up the staircase, and I found that the fire escape door to the roof was padlocked shut”? Or, “I started to get a wee bit worried when the shark bit off my other leg too”?
If he didn’t get very, very worried seven years ago, when smoking in public places was banned, I really can’t imagine that anything else is going to worry him too much now. Or if he’s been moving up through the worry gears over the last seven years, he’s still in first gear.
This is a piece that’s quietly screaming: Please Don’t Take Me Seriously, because I don’t really want the smoking ban relaxed at all.
Frank Davis 
That was my reaction when I read it. Why start with an effective apology? We should not be apologising for smoking or plead to be tolerated. We choose to smoke, accept any risks that may or may not exist, I don’t believe the propaganda either. None on this blog needs to repeat the arguments. Before the ban I probably did think smoking was dangerous but no more, when they went so OTT I started to question it all. Now, I no longer care.
“I started to get a wee bit worried when the shark bit off my other leg too”
Hmnph. I guess you’re one of the whiners who gets all lathered up while you’ve still got a leg left, eh? ::sigh:: Some people!!!!
Frank, you make good points, but, as you may have noticed in the past, I tend to differ. I believe that our most important audience are the great middle masses of people who don’t have a particularly strong opinion one way or the other about smoking in public or smoking in pubs. For the most part they believe virtually 100% in the idea that smoking causes diseases and is bad for the health of the smoker. And also for the most part they believe it’s at least somewhat questionable whether the claims about the extreme dangers of secondary smoke exposure are true.
Those are the people we are most likely to have success with in winning over to our side with reasonable arguments, and those are the people who will make up the bulk of the political power by numbers in terms of future decisions.
Now, IN ORDER to win them over, they have to be willing to listen to and consider the eminently reasonable, self-evident, easy-to-prove,-see,-and-understand arguments we make about the basic harmlessness of secondary smoke exposures in ordinary public situations. If we start out our argument by saying “Smoking is harmless and there’s no solid evidence it causes cancer.” we’re going to instantly lose 80% or so of our potential listenership — people will simply write us off as crazies and figure that any other arguments we make must crazy and not worth the time to listen to. It’s also a MUCH more difficult point to argue scientifically than the whole secondary smoke argument, AND it’s basically an irrelevant argument when it comes to smoking bans. Primary smoking could be as pure as mother’s milk or as deadly as Saddam Hussein’s farts — as far as bans go, the deadliness of primary smoking is irrelevant: the bans are based on the threat to OTHERS.
So that’s why I disagree with the idea of starting off with trying to argue the harmlessness of smoking, DESPITE the fact that I’d agree with idea that IF you showed it to be harmless AND convinced people of it, that THEN it would be much easier to get them to believe that secondary smoke was also harmless. With a thousand hours of effort you might be able to convince three people of that, while that same thousand hours could convince three dozen or three hundred people that the threat of secondary smoke was either imaginary or at least overblown, and that bans should be amended/rescinded.
When you’re facing a more powerful enemy (and with their money, the Antis are clearly more powerful), then you’re best bet is almost always to go for their weak points first before trying for a main body attack.
On a related side-point: one of the Antis’ weak points is that they are unreasonable and unwilling to accept rational compromises. The 80% of the fence-straddling population can see that when it’s pointed out to them and it lowers their estimate of how valid the arguments and stances of the Antismokers’ are. When we present ourselves from the start as looking for reasonable compromises (e.g. reasonable ventilation standards, accepting bans in maternity wards, etc etc) that 80% group is more likely to sit down on a stool and be willing to listen for a few minutes to the rest of what we have to say. And that’s all we need: our basic anti-ban arguments are strong enough that all we really need are those few minutes of open-minded listening in order to move a good chunk of that 80% from mild sympathies with the Antis over to mild sympathies with us…. and that’s a win that can win the wider war for our side.
– MJM
people will simply write us off as crazies and figure that any other arguments we make must crazy and not worth the time to listen to
But why are they writing us off as crazies? It’s really because they think it’s crazy for anybody to disagree with what experts and scientists and doctors tell them.
With a thousand hours of effort you might be able to convince three people of that, while that same thousand hours could convince three dozen or three hundred people that the threat of secondary smoke was either imaginary or at least overblown, and that bans should be amended/rescinded.
Why should they believe authorities are right about firsthand smoke, but wrong about secondhand smoke? Either they believe what the authorities tell them, or they don’t.
The basic problem, as I see it, is that they trust authorities much more their own personal experience.or judgment. They’ve surrendered their autonomy.That’s our problem today. And it’s not a new problem: as I’ve pointed out before, it was the problem 500 years ago when Protestants started questioning the authority of the Pope, and began to think for themselves and follow their own consciences.
I’d firstly ask people whether they’d be happy to accept the moral guidance of the Pope in Rome. And when they said no, I’d ask them why they readily accept the advice of all these scientists and doctors. And if they replied that it was because the scientists and doctors were ‘experts’, I’d reply that the Pope was also an expert.
Yes exactly! The ONLY battle to be fought is that the root is rotten to the core; the entire fallacy lies at the whole premise that smoking, actively, is dangerous. I no longer believe it to be. There is nothing about it that has been proven to be. Nothing! It is no more risky than tea or coffee, in fact probably even less so.
I actually got into a bit of a debate today with a smoker who made it a point to say it wasn’t healthy. I disagreed; it went nowhere. It isn’t just a battle of truth, it is a battle of sovereign thought. That is a difficult threshold to cross, to realize that most of what you know is meant to drive you to behave and believe things which aren’t true. To dismantle that is to rely on yourself for judgement. Many, unfortunately, are not willing or able to do that…
Belief isn’t a science its a worship of sort,to destroy a persons beliefs or make them defend them makes them think. We must challenge the very core of the argument that’s where this path has led too. Once the challenge is made they’ve had to think or they simply go pfft and move on. Those that go pffft and move on will never think or even defend their attitude or Bigotted thinking. They’ve made up their mind and don’t give a rats ass about it at all as long as their hate is satisfied via criminal laws. Fortunately most folks love the fight and debate that ensues and when they see these Nazis cant defend the argument we win………..But the word gets out and it spreads. They must be challenged on every point,surrender no point to any claim they make! NONE NADA NOTHING! Need back up get on facebook and get in with the groups and send the word out we will be there!
Regarding a claim that smoking itself is harmless: “[But why are they writing us off as crazies? It’s really because they think it’s crazy for anybody to disagree with what experts and scientists and doctors tell them. … Why should they believe authorities are right about firsthand smoke, but wrong about secondhand smoke?”
No… It’s for two reasons:
1) They’ve heard it not just a thousand times, but a million times. Completely regardless of its truth or falsity, not more than one person in a hundred will even entertain the idea that smoking is not unhealthy for the smoker. So, if you start out with that argument, you will have lost 99% of your listening audience right at the start — even if your point were 100% true!
Say you discovered tomorrow that Deborah Arnott was actually a vampiress demon worshipper who stripped nude at midnights during full moons and conducted infant sacrifice rituals on a bloodstained altar. You have no direct photo/video evidence of this, BUT, if someone were to sit down and read your 500 page document on it they might be convinced.
Are you better off trying to discredit her with that argument, or with a two-minute quickie, backed by an irrefutable one-page document, showing how she lied about misappropriating some government funds?
The first argument might be stronger, but virtually no one will listen to it no matter how true it is and how strong that full 500 page doc might be. Soooo…. you go for the second.
2) People will, just from the starting point of the blink of an eye, be more opening to sitting down and listening to you about the misappropriation or the secondhand smoke argument than they will be about sitting down and listening to you about the demonic sacrifices or the firsthand smoke argument.
Also, I agree with this partially: “they trust authorities much more their own personal experience.or judgment.” but not fully: a lot of people have personal experience in which they remember heavy smokers getting sick and dying (they forget that a lot of nonsmokers do too), but they don’t remember, or at least make the connections, to people exposed to secondary smoke getting sick and dying. So, they’re predisposed to trust the authorities more on the first than on the second.
Re: Pope. Yep, good point!
:)
Michael
“but they don’t remember, or at least make the connections, to people exposed to secondary smoke getting sick and dying.” Unfortunately tobacco control is trying to change this, I’ve seen an ad on TV where a man talks about getting sick because of working around smokers for 30 years or something like that. Can’t find a link anywhere at the moment. It was the first time I’d seen such a blatant ad claiming that someone was terminally ill from secondhand smoke, I almost threw something at the TV.
Emily,
Here’s a link to Nathan’s story regarding SHS exposure.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/stories/nathan.html
They’ve surrendered their autonomy.
You’ve said it all right there. Without self-direction we might as well be drone bees living and working exclusively for the betterment of the hive.
I guess I will always be the Lone Gunman……………..
Attack and kill everything in the room leave no survivors……………With Nazis that’s what has to happen kill all their so called science! By challenging it all they have to defend all of it if they can………They cant that’s why they fall back to their basic most ruthless justification they have, THEYRE OWN HATRED OF SMOKERS.
Everyone gets sick and dying! Otherwise none of us would die. And up until recent history almost everyone WAS a heavy smoker. For God’s sake! What are the drones going to do when they find out that we all die? Sure as eggs are eggs. We’re born, then we die. Who would want to go on forever, shrivelling and shrivelling, bending, thinning, aging? Not me pal. I wanna LIVE whilst I am alive! Yay, up the smokers. Dont give two shites who likes it and who doesnt. Do however hate the segregation. On a serious note, I know it must always have been awful to be an ethnic (or any other) minority, but now I KNOW how awful it is. But I will NEVER ever be a secret smoker. I see people trying to hide their cigs, taking nifty sly puffs etc. Not me, out n proud! Proud n Loud.!!
we’re going to instantly lose 80% or so of our potential listenership
Id argue differently Mike, it blows them away to even see the claim made and then when you back it up and demand they prove it! They cant……………It destroys the very foundation quick sand the whole miserable agenda was built on!
Challenge them to the very core of their so called beliefs and what they’ve been told for 2 generations…………..They can handle it and the rest go OMG!
Once that genies out it makes all the rest of the JUNK SCIENCE go down easily!
Mikle even John Stossel came out and said they cant even prove smoking causes heart disease on live TV a few months back. The message is out there and now we have Peter Obourne calling for a relaxation of the smoking ban. We have to put these things in the forefront of the fight. Its not only mandantory that we do but how else is science suppose to ever be forced to get back to real provable science instead of LINKED TO JUNK SCIENCE! That’s all its been since dolls study and likely all of it before that as even Mark Twain writes in the MORAL STATISTICIAN about the junk science…………….how a mans health is damaged by smoking and drinking or whatever I took all your damned studies and lit my pipe with them!
We aren’t dealing with anything new,its an age old problem but now its all LINKED TO JUNK SCIENCE!
The rise of a pseudo-scientific links lobby
Every day there seems to be a new study making a link between food, chemicals or lifestyle and ill-health. None of them has any link with reality.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/13287
We owe it to the children and the future of mankind………..
The Bradford-Hill criteria are a charade. They forgot to include any requirement to consider alternative explanations, including infection. As a result, they’ve been ignoring the role of infections for seven decades, while strutting around pretending to be scientific. It’s a snow job that exploits all the ignorant people who don’t even know that those alternative explanations exist.
Well, as you know, Michael, from long correspondence, i disagree with you on that. Bending over backwards only gets you a kick in the gut as well as one in the ass. My approach to almost everything is to keep my eye ever-steadily on the goal and to play any angle I think will accomplish it. And that, in this debate, leaves me in the middle. It’s hard enough to talk people out of ONE false (but long-held and popularly-accepted) belief but trying to talk them out of TWO at the same time– especially when the second one is even longer-held and more popularly-accepted– is pretty much impossible. One step at a time.
So here’s how I see it:
Our immediate goal involves overturning bans and preventing new ones. The rationale for those bans is secondhand smoke. Firsthand smoke and what it does or doesn’t do to the firsthand smoker is irrelevant to the argument and irrelevant to the goal. It’s a different subject. Don’t bring it up at all. If “They” bring it up, say it’s a different subject (which is absolutely true) and return to the one at hand. In fact, you want to put a great distance between the two. This does not, however, mean that you in any way concede that smoking causes cancer, heart disease or death. You just don’t discuss it. Because it’s irrelevant. Because you’ll be making your job much harder. Just shut up.
If they were telling you that God came into their Philadelphia bedroom and told them to kill their neighbors, don’t try to convince them that there isn’t any God, just say you know for a fact that He was wintering in Pomona. One step at a time.
Nor should you concede that smokers should be isolated in any instance, even in those instances you yourself consider “reasonable” or “reasonable compromises” because if smoking should be banned on maternity floors you’re conceding that ETS is dangerous to infants so then why not in homes where people have babies? and why not in podiatry wards? Don’t people with bad feet have a “right” to clean air? IOW: I’m saying: Just shut up.
Harley made a fine point in a past post that’s also part of the argument here. Our goal has to be to speak past the media and past the pols and directly to The People. And, consciously or not, you’ve just entered the realms of social psychology and mass communication. Both of which tell us: one step at a time.
Firsthand smoking is absolutely relevant to the issue. The largest number of deaths blamed on secondhand smoke is from heart disease, and they use the same fraud to blame secondhand smoke that they use to blame firsthand smoke. Their fraud is ignoring the role of infection, while exploiting the fact that poorer people are more likely to have been exposed to the pathogens. And this explains why the pretended risks from secondhand smoke are supposedly so similar to the pretended risks from firsthand smoke, as has been noted even among anti-smokers.
You raise some Interesting points. Here are a few more to consider….
World Health Organization: Air pollution kills 7 million people a year
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/25/world-health-organization-air-pollution-kills-7-million-people-a-year/
Excerpt:
“The new figures are more than double previous estimates and suggest that outdoor pollution from traffic fumes and coal-burning, and indoor pollution from wood and coal stoves, kills more people than smoking, road deaths and diabetes combined.”
This finding raises some questions for me. Firstly, the masses have been “educated” to believe that smoking and diabetes are two of the primary variables contributing to illness and death, particularly in regards to heart disease. The WHO seems to be disputing previous declarations with this offering regarding air pollution. What are we to believe when conflicting/overlapping findings are presented? Secondly, and to me the most demonstrative of ignorance, is the question of how one separates the variable of smoking or SHS exposure from the variable of air pollution? The task is impossible. How can anyone declare a non-smoking urban dweller died from exposure to SHS at their workplace rather than air pollution? Lastly, the WHO loves to cite a 1 in whatever death rate for effect. Purportedly, air pollution has a 1 in 8 death rate (despite smoking status). This becomes laughable when all of the death rates are presented as percentages.
-Air pollution: 1/8 = 12.5% (may be noncommunicable…who knows?)
-Noncommunicable diseases: 2/3 = 66%
-Communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutrition conditions: 25%
-Injuries: 9%
Total percentages of the 55 million deaths world-wide in 2011 = 112.5%
If we assume the noncommunicable diseases include pollution deaths the percentages equal 100%. Isn’t anyone dying from natural causes anymore?
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index2.html
Carol,
Please, please, pleeeeeease can you provide some links to the studies which you often mention about the causes of LC by infection? I know you’ve mentioned them often, but I’d be interested to read some first-hand, as it were. I know that most of them will be in highly complicated scientific language, but if I can get hold of them and go through them carefully in my own time (I’m not a scientist, as you may have guessed) to get them – in my own mind – in “normal” English, I’d be very interested to read them.
Your argument against the anti-smokers’ claim that secondhand smoke is dangerous is that it’s only a little bit dangerous. That has accomplished nothing. The anti-smokers have gotten away with their unreasonable policies, despite most people acknowledging that they’re unreasonable. They need to be discredited, but you refuse to consider doing this. Most of all, we have the right to demand that the government not commit fraud to deprive us of our liberties. That is a genuine violation of human rights.
Take the survey on Louisville smokefree parks survey they are running
Heres a list of Louisville zip codes to enter at the end when they ask you for one
In the top of the page is a window that shows stories the survey is under number 2
http://www.louisvilleky.gov/MetroParks/
Frank: As long as you actually live in Louisville, of course!
City officials are seeking public input about the possibility of prohibiting smoking at Louisville Metro Parks playgrounds and spraygrounds and possibly at other public park facilities.
Metro parks and public health officials are asking residents to complete a survey by Monday. It is available at http://www.louisvilleky.gov/MetroParks.
The eight-question survey, which can be filled out anonymously, asks residents to express their opinions on the possibility of prohibiting smoking at various facilities.
“Toddlers and young children have respiratory systems that are still developing. They are especially vulnerable to the effects of secondhand smoke,” said Public Health and Wellness Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt. “We want to measure public sentiment for protecting our children in outdoor spaces where they play.”
In late 2013 signs saying “Children at play — thank you for not smoking” were put up at playgrounds at Cherokee, Iroquois and Shawnee parks.
Public Health and Wellness staff members counted cigarette butts left in and near the playgrounds both before and after the installation of the signs and found a significant drop after the signs went up.
Parks, playgrounds and spraygrounds are about clean air, natural beauty and engaging in healthy activities,” Metro Parks Director Mike Heitz said. “We want to hear from people on this important issue.”
Through mid-week this week, more than 750 surveys had been completed.
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2014/03/27/louisville-considers-smoking-ban-playgrounds/6972827/
Playground smoking bill fizzles
By Online staff , Herald-Tribune
/ Thursday, March 27, 2014
By Jessie Van Berkel
TALLAHASSEE
The battle between government regulation and smokers’ freedom to light up has an unlikely setting: the playground.
If people want to smoke on the swings or by the slide, Florida’s local governments cannot stop them — and it appears likely to remain that way, at least for another year.
To the disappointment of Sarasota County officials, a bill in the Florida House that would to allow cities and counties to ban smoking at playgrounds has stalled.
“It shocks me that the Legislature wouldn’t support it,” Sarasota County Commissioner Joe Barbetta said. “It’s a public health issue.”
This year’s scaled-back House and Senate bills follow a failed push last year to allow local governments to stop smoking not just on playgrounds, but on beaches and at parks. Sarasota County also supported that bill.
The county banned smoking on beaches and in parks more than seven years ago, only to find out last year that they cannot legally enforce the rules. In January 2013, County Attorney Stephen DeMarsh warned commissioners their regulation was invalid, based on a 2003 Florida law that prevented local smoking bans.
That news came a couple years after Dr. Beach ranked Siesta Key the top beach in America, boosting tourism. The smoking ban was part of the reason Siesta Key was at the top, Commissioner Christine Robinson said.
“It’s an economic issue for us as well,” Robinson said.
The issue is personal for Robinson, who has young children. When they go to the playground, she said she sees people smoking and wishes her children were not exposed to it.
This year’s bills would have allowed sheriff’s deputies or police officers to fine someone up to $100 if they continued to smoke on a playground after a warning and request to leave.
Supporters of the proposed legislation noted that the state allows school districts to restrict smoking on their property.
“The same kids that are in the schools are on the playgrounds,” Barbetta said.
He pinned the bills’ lack of progression on strong lobbying by the tobacco industry.
The House bill (HB 309) was referred to two committees and the Health Quality Subcommittee. None of them have voted to advance it. The subcommittee doesn’t have any more meetings scheduled this session.
But in Tallahassee, there’s often an alternative route, though the likihood seems slim.
“There are other ways for it to be amended on other bills — we just don’t know yet,” said Rep. Ray Pilon, R-Sarasota, who was a co-sponsor of the House bill.
No one from Sarasota or other counties has met with him to push the bill this year, Pilon said. On this issue, “I think they’ve learned to manage their expectations.”
“We’ll try again next year,” said Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, who sponsored an identical bill (SB 342) in the Senate. That bill unanimously passed in one committee.
He plans to return in 2015 with the scaled-back playground version, which he said was more appropriate than the broader regulation of beaches and parks.
http://politics.heraldtribune.com/2014/03/27/playground-smoking-bill-fizzles/
Frank delete the above…………thanks
Done. I’m a parent and a former smoker and I hope you have me living in a classy neighborhood: 40297
Not sure Waltc it might be the Projects or the old Victorian homes down by the river………
Michael and Frank. Every time I am participating in a discussion on Facebook about smoking, I have been observing, that many antismokers have have given up believing, that shs is dangerous for them, and so their argument is “it smells bad”, “I hate the smell” “smokers smell bad”. These emotional and irrational arguments are placed by educated and intellectual people as well as well as less intellectual, and you cant argue with emotions.
I think, that you are both right in what you say. I agree 100% with Frank about the authority issue, and I think Michael is good at tactics.
“If we start out our argument by saying “Smoking is harmless and there’s no solid evidence it causes cancer.” we’re going to instantly lose 80% or so of our potential listenership — people will simply write us off as crazies and figure that any other arguments we make must crazy and not worth the time to listen to.”
Thats my experience too, because I say so, and I don’t feel, they believe me. At least not my son – anymore ;)
Marie simply put the proof in front of them……………Then when they try and defend the causation angle tell how about an end point study proving it then……….
JOINT STATEMENT ON THE RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS”
7 October, the COT meeting on 26 October and the COC meeting on 18
November 2004.
http://cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/cotstatementtobacco0409
“5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke – induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease.”
In other words … our first hand smoke theory is so lame we can’t even design a bogus lab experiment to prove it. In fact … we don’t even know how tobacco does all of the magical things we claim it does.
The greatest threat to the second hand theory is the weakness of the first hand theory.
Judge doesnt accept statistical studies as proof of LC causation!
It was McTear V Imperial Tobacco. Here is the URL for both my summary and the Judge’s ‘opinion’ (aka ‘decision’):
(2.14) Prof Sir Richard Doll, Mr Gareth Davies (CEO of ITL). Prof James Friend and
Prof Gerad Hastings gave oral evidence at a meeting of the Health Committee in
2000. This event was brought up during the present action as putative evidence that
ITL had admitted that smoking caused various diseases. Although this section is quite
long and detailed, I think that we can miss it out. Essentially, for various reasons, Doll
said that ITL admitted it, but Davies said that ITL had only agreed that smoking might
cause diseases, but ITL did not know. ITL did not contest the public health messages.
(2.62) ITL then had the chance to tell the Judge about what it did when the suspicion
arose of a connection between lung cancer and smoking. Researchers had attempted
to cause lung cancer in animals from tobacco smoke, without success. It was right,
therefore, for ITL to ‘withhold judgement’ as to whether or not tobacco smoke caused
lung cancer.
[9.10] In any event, the pursuer has failed to prove individual causation.
Epidemiology cannot be used to establish causation in any individual case, and the
use of statistics applicable to the general population to determine the likelihood of
causation in an individual is fallacious. Given that there are possible causes of lung
cancer other than cigarette smoking, and given that lung cancer can occur in a nonsmoker,
it is not possible to determine in any individual case whether but for an
individual’s cigarette smoking he probably would not have contracted lung cancer
(paras.[6.172] to [6.185]).
[9.11] In any event there was no lack of reasonable care on the part of ITL at any
point at which Mr McTear consumed their products, and the pursuer’s negligence
case fails. There is no breach of a duty of care on the part of a manufacturer, if a
consumer of the manufacturer’s product is harmed by the product, but the consumer
knew of the product’s potential for causing harm prior to consumption of it. The
individual is well enough served if he is given such information as a normally
intelligent person would include in his assessment of how he wishes to conduct his
life, thus putting him in the position of making an informed choice (paras.[7.167] to
[7.181]).
Ha ha, I se, that I stutter ;)
Theres been about 3 other trials in the last 4 years that found the same thing. Koreas the last one I remember in 2011
Lung and Bronchus. Invasive Cancer Incidence Rates and 95% Confidence Intervals by Age and Race and Ethnicity, United States (Table 3.15.1.1M) *†‡
Rates are per 100,000 persons. Rates are per 100,000 persons.
Note the age where LC is found…………..OLD AGE group incidence hits the 500/100,000 at age 75-85
AGE it seems is the deciding factor……….
http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/uscs/cancersbyageandrace.aspx?Gender=Male&Count=false&Population=false&DataType=Incidence&RateType=CrudeType&CancerSite=All Cancer Sites Combined&Year=2010&Site=Lung and Bronchus&SurveyInstanceID=1
The ranking goes for all cancer deaths/mortality:
Per 100,000 population CDC NUMBERS/ smoking rates from tobacco free kids
Kentucky at 207 Adults in Kentucky who smoke* 29.0% (971,000)
Miss. 200 Adults in Mississippi who smoke* 26.0% (579,300)
West Virginia 196 Adults in West Virginia who smoke* 28.6% (420,500)
Louisianna 196 Adults in Louisiana who smoke* 25.7% (888,300)
Arkansas 193 Adults in Arkansas who smoke* 27.0% (601,400)
Alabama 190 Adults in Alabama who smoke* 24.3% (893,100)
Indiana 187 Adults in Indiana who smoke* 25.6% (1,259,300)
Maine 186 Adults in Maine who smoke* 22.8% (241,400)
Missouri 184 Adults in Missouri who smoke* 25.0% (1,149,600)
Delaware 184 Adults in Delaware who smoke* 21.8% (153,100)
South Carolina 182 Adults in South Carolina who smoke* 23.1% (831,200)
Look at the trends only a few deaths between the states and with less smokers than the others!
Australia tobacco sales increase despite plain packaging – Telegraph
telegraph.co.uk
Australia, which in December 2012 became the first country to ban branded cigarette packs, is being closely watched for signs of success
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10718244/Australia-tobacco-sales-increase-despite-plain-packaging.html
Frank, you summed up this idiot perfectly. It’s because of nitwits like him that the anti-smokers get away with it, not in spite of them.
The health fascists have expanded the use of their fraud to air pollution. “Around the world, one out of every eight deaths was tied to dirty air, the agency determined — twice as many as previously estimated. Its report identified air pollution as the world’s single biggest environmental health risk.” (Pollution Killed 7 Million People Worldwide in 2012, Report Finds. New York Times, March 25, 2014.) (We can always tell when Official Lies are being shoved down our throats, because The New York Times doesn’t allow comments.)
The bogus death toll is based on falsely pretending that deaths caused by influenza are caused by air pollution. It’s due to exploiting the fact that pollution levels rise in cold weather, along with annual spikes in death rates caused by the flu virus, Jonathan M. Samet and the Cancer Society, are in back of it! Their crony Bryan J. Hubbell at the US EPA is involved with international gang, too.
But they have a most able and unexpected opponent, who appears to be working on his own and not for industry! He is Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr., of Cox Associates in Denver (and I discovered that he is the nephew of the co-founder of the Health Effects Institute, Archibald Cox.) The Health Effects Institute gets about half of its funding from the US EPA, and shakes down the automotive industry for most of the rest. They published the Cancer Society’s garbage. Mr. Cox is a risk analyst and has a CV a mile long, starting with Harvard and MIT, and he doesn’t like the quality of their work. He has re-analyzed the data in the 100 cities study, and showed that the greatest correlation is with temperature, not pollution. Unfortunately, being from Harvard, it will probably never dawn on him to consider influenza. More of the details of this are on my web page.
http://www.smokershistory.com/influenza.html
And, it shows that the people who thought they could get secondhand smoke excused by whining “What about pollution?” were simply playing into their hands. Those phony deaths are simply added into the total.
In the same story on another site they tossed in the old 600,000 people die of shs worldwide every year trash. Righ in the middle of the story.
Mark nails it…
http://markwadsworth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/smoking-bans-increase-number-of-reviews.html
Very useful link. TVM.
I see the study was carried out by a Dutch team. Always admired the Dutch… even more so now.
http://www.waff.com/story/25009818/second-hand-smoke-pregnancy-study
Second-hand Smoke & Pregnancy Study
Friday, 28 March 2014
“Smoking bans increase number of reviews into the effect of smoking bans by 10%, study says”
From the BBC:
Laws banning smoking in public places have had a positive impact on the number of reviews of their effects, an international study in the Lancet suggests.
Researchers found no evidence of a 10% reduction in premature births or severe childhood asthma attacks within a year of smoke-free laws being introduced, but realising that few people would scrutinise their work too closely, decided to make the claims anyway.
‘Puzzling Evidence’
Researchers can obtain funding more easily if they manufacture evidence justifying the smoking ban ex facto. Researchers who report that the smoking ban has had no impact apart from smokers succumbing to colds and flu’ more often are liable to have their funding cut off.
The research team actually managed to obtain funding for simply thumbing through 11 previous studies from North America and Europe and then cobbling the purported results together.
Inevitably, the spokesman for an important sounding body like “The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists” was all too ready to confirm that smoking bans benefitted adults and children.
‘Take me to the river’
This is one of the first large studies to look at how funding for research into anti-smoking laws in different countries and states is affecting the amount of statistics about the health of children living in those regions being collated, discarded as inconclusive and then fabricated.
Laws that prohibit smoking in places commonly frequented by children, such as bars, restaurants and workplaces, have already been shown to protect researchers from having to do any proper research and admitting to their funders that the ban had made no discernible difference.
In this study, taxpayers’ money was squandered at the University of Edinburgh, Maastricht University, Hasselt University in Belgium, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
‘Psycho Killer’
The researchers stared bleakly at a large stack of paper containing data on 2.5 million births and almost 250,000 hospital attendances for asthma attacks in children before deciding they might as well just make it up.
Dr Jasper Been, lead study author from the Maastricht University Medical Centre in The Netherlands, said the impact of funding for research on children under 12 was revealing a lot about the supply-demand curve for such research.
“But,” he added, “While the quantity of studies has increased as we would expect, the quality of them has never been lower.”
Go hit this one guys I cant get in……………http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/smoking-ban-reduces-premature-births-and-asthma-1-3356549
Well I be damned the Scotsman approved my comments and posted them…….
Refuting garbage like that should be no problem for anyone who rejects the anti-smokers’ scientific fraud. They use defective studies that ignore the role of chorioamnionitis to falsely blame smoking and passive smoking for perinatal illnesses. The rates of preterm birth, etc., have only declined recently, due to intrapartum prophylaxis to carriers of Group B streptococcus – not smoking bans.
http://www.smokershistory.com/perinata.htm
We know this because the rates of both preterm birth and asthma steadily increased since the 1980s, despite all the smoking bans and people bullied into quitting.
http://www.smokershistory.com/newviews.htm
But instead of a competent defense, there’s nothing but reams and reams of irrelevant, witless drivel by someone calling himself “John Birch.”
Carol Im John Birch……………….At least that’s how the puter picked my name up as………..whats witless about what I posted. Actually it got doubled over after they approved them the first time I didn’t know it.
So did you think I couldn’t figure out that you’re John Birch? With the same lame posts on every single article, regardless of the subject, and which annoy other readers because they waste such vast quantities of space saying virtually nothing? And they never expose the anti-smokers’ scientific fraud.
And re a competent defense, if you read the study that Rollo Tommasi claimed concluded that “both chorioamnionitis and maternal smoking are causes of reduced lung function in infants,” it is clear that they didn’t present their own results, just those of others. And then presented them in a way that’s designed to mislead anti-smokers such as Tommasi. Pointing this out is much more useful than a pile of generalities.
Carol Im no PHD. But I do have time to fight and fight I do with whatever I have. Im trying to generate some re-education to the masses to destroy the myths. I didn’t have the opportunity of a ivy league college degree. I had the opportunity to serve in the US navy for the country. Speaking in general terms and subject is what I have the ability for and a slight bit of physiology training via the hospital command I was stationed at with doctors and corpsman along with flight surgeons.
I find you both informative and friendly and have enjoyed backing you up in many a online fight with our common enemy. I would never openly attack you or your comments. I would appreciate the same respect.
Though there is considerable evidence showing that on average the babies of women who smoke during pregnancy weigh on average a few ounces less than babies of women who do not smoke and that the rate of low birthweight babies is somewhat higher for smokers, there is no credible evidence for the hyperbolic claims that the babies of smokers have a higher mobidity and mortality rate. Quite the contrary, the babies of women who smoke during pregnancy have a better survival rate ounce for ounce, a somewhat lower rate of congenital defects, a lower rate of Down’s syndrome, a lower rate of infant respiratory distress syndrome and a somewhat lower rate of childhood cancer than do the babies of non-smokers.
Dr. Richard L. Naeye, a leading obstetrical researcher who studied more than 58,000 pregnancies, states unequivocally:
“We recently found no significant association between maternal smoking and either stillbirths or neonatal deaths when information about the underlying disorders, obtained from placental examinations, was incorporated into the analyses. Similar analyses found no correlation between maternal smoking and preterm birth. The most frequent initiating causes of preterm birth, stillbirth, and neonatal death are acute chorioamnionitis, disorders that produce chronic low blood flow from the uterus to the placenta, and major congenital malformations. There is no credible evidence that cigarette smoking has a role in the genesis of any of these disorders.”
“I would never openly attack you or your comments. I would appreciate the same respect.” All you do is endorse everything that I’m arguing against. And you call that “respect”? And, I don’t have a college degree of any kind. Nor do I appreciate being put on the spot by people who publicly pretend otherwise. Also, I am not impressed when someone links to one of my pages while pasting only a couple of tthe older, smaller studies on it. That is not representative of what people will find there. I put a lot of effort into trying to keep my pages up to date. And, what is the point of that paragraph starting with “Though there is considerable evidence showing that on average the babies of women who smoke during pregnancy…” Is that just another attempt to appear reasonable by pandering to the prejudices of idiots? All it does besides equivocate is add unnecessary length. And rather than just an Authority Figure Quote from Naeye, the point should be made that the anti-smokers’ studies do not have pathological examinations of the placenta, and that is why their findings are bogus. Finally, there’s the issue of all those lengthy, irrelevant posts. They don’t make our side look good. They just look like helpless floundering and flailing. All they do is obstruct discussion, and that’s why you get banned so much.
Carol your antagonistic nature is what turns people off and your attacks on them. Ive over looked it myself for quite some time. I gather that’s the reason you have such a hard time maintaining healthy relationships with folks. It might be time to ponder your attacks on those who are in the fight,the same fight you are in too. We can disagree but we all want the same thing for the bans to end. You have an angle you fight from which I happen to agree with too. Snippets or whole stories it matters not to me as they explain in detail what they state. As far as linking to your pages I wont any longer………..you sure know how to kill allies and friendships.
With “friends” like you, people don’t need enemies. You’re easily the most inconsiderate poster on any board. Frankly, I doubt that anyone would consider a link from you to be a great recommendation for it anyway. I think you only used them as supplemental space-filler. And all you’ll do is make yourself look even more clueless.
Harley is one of my best sources for new stories! He goes everywhere, and looks at everything.
What he just looks at is no problem. It’s his comments that get him kicked off. If he’d just land a few on target and then let it be, it would be fine. He uses miscellaneous quotes from my pages as filler, which I don’t care for, and also misrepresents my personal background, which I dislike very much. I would rather he not talk about me.
No Carol there not clueless Links get old and its very hard sometimes to find them again buried in a wasteland of bits and bytes. Even the wayback machine sometimes cant find them. Its why I keep full page copies of the good stuff to repost. Snippets only tell a portion and when people want the whole story they get it without searching for new links. A lot of the stuff we put out with links tend to disappear within weeks after we start using them especially on government sites like Cal Epa for instance or on health dept web pages or even other studies.
Virtually every page out there always has that little snippet in it about smoking to stay with the game plan even if the study destroys what TC says in their message.
The target audience that wants to know and see the facts has it and they reuse quite a bit of what we put out verbatim across the net as people decide to fight back for a change.
The ones we want to attack are people like Rollo, Sammet, Repace,Glantz and all their other operatives across the net from ACS or the legacy foundation. These are the people who target and babysit the stories around the web daily as they come out. Or the local Nazis in one of their propaganda runs in local media.
Ive spent years the same as you but not nearly at the forefront as you did with EPA and other things in the early days. Im here on the backend only coming into the frey when it outlawed myself and others. We had to play years of catchup to even begin to fight back.
Today the movements grown and we nail these Nazis everyday and all day. We don’t let them move or say anything. We nail them as you do. The movements going bigger and bigger all the time and there may come a day when they will welcome your point of view back to the government and get the science back on track and end the charade with linked to junk science.
I fully understand your grudge and hatred of the echo chamber you speak of in D.C. and thru out. You are right totally about that,in fact your right about lots of things.
Like I said Im in the fight to end same as you only your jobs bigger your a professional with a name and recognition. Your voice has merit mine is but a echo of the millions of smokers who want their rights back.
I want no issues between me and others fighting a common foe……….We all need each other in this fight.
So please just try and hold back fighting among ourselves its just helping the enemy in the long run. Post your findings and state them simple so others can take your educated breakdowns and use them in the fight we are all in.
Give us a message,give us the ammo to fight with………..as you have and continue to do!
For all you’ve done and you continue to do I thank you as do millions of others.
Here I do have an issue:
But instead of a competent defense, there’s nothing but reams and reams of irrelevant, witless drivel by someone calling himself “John Birch.”
To begin with; Carol 2000, I am wondering if you are in a position to be a judge with respect to what is “witless drivel” and what isn’t.
If you were a little less self absorbed, you might see what Harley is doing – taking a leaf out of tobacco control’s instructions and be repetitive. It works a treat.
All you do is endorse everything that I’m arguing against. And you call that “respect”? And, I don’t have a college degree of any kind.
I must admit, I do not hold a college degree, either. I went to university and got 3 of them there. (the triplicates…. it’s a German thing…. don’t worry about it!)
Carol 2000, I mean not to offend you, especially since you did cite “studies” well. However, citing studies is one thing – what they drive towards is another.
You would condone us doing something just because anti-smokers do it? Forget that. All that does is help give comment sections a bad reputation. You think repetition “works a treat”? Works to do what – make other people glad when the spammer gets banned? Oh and you think I’m too “self absorbed” to understand the genius of making an annoying jackass out of oneself? Seems to me that being totally self-absorbed is the first prerequisite for being an annoying jackass. And yes I am “in a position to be a judge” the difference between what’s on target and what’s not. So are other people, and changing the subject simply looks like what people do when they’re losing. It makes it look as if our side has no better response available. And I think it’s a good thing if people on our side try to encourage good comment board behavior on the part of our own.
This was initially a reply to Walt, but the thread was all over the place and my post kept expanding, so….
“If they were telling you that God came into their Philadelphia bedroom and told them to kill their neighbors, don’t try to convince them that there isn’t any God, just say you know for a fact that He was wintering in Pomona.”
Or say that Satan appears as a beam of light to mimic God and God said, “Thou shalt not kill” so it couldn’t have been God, but Satan, the father of lies, the same entity (or his demonic angels) that encourage so many ‘scientists’ to falsify data to realise predetermined outcomes for large sums of money.
At least round where I am, everyone I know of no longer holds medical doctors in the esteem that they used to. They are considered quacks here now. Being a remote area, we do end up with the worst of a bad bunch because the ones with good reputations go to areas more convivial for them.
But hopefully, people are increasingly becoming aware that the people in white lab coats are whited sepulchres.
Matthew ch. 23:
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Like Frank’s excellent ‘Pope’ reference, these people were looked up to 2,000 years ago. It seems an age-old problem whereby the masses really find it hard to think for themselves and so ‘sheeple’ is a good euphemism for ‘trusting fool’.
But I’ve been trying to change the sheeple for years in one way or another and it has been very difficult, whatever route I have taken. You can show people a video of Yuri Bezmenov explaining exactly how the KGB used to subvert the West with ‘equality’ to destroy us, but many people are too dazzled by the beam of light that is ‘equality’ to hear a bad word against it, even when the evidence of it being a fraud to enslave us is in your face.
I think both sides here have a point. Oborne was too apologetic too often, but that’s the conditioning. My driving instructor in 1980-81 used to smoke rollies in the car during lessons (can you imagine that now?) and used to say on lighting just about each one, “Another nail in the coffin”.
People were gone then. My parents’ generation were starting to give up en masse. The SHS propaganda was subconsciously kicking in, because I remember we children were concerned about our health and nagged adults (before starting ourselves a few years later).
Like the manmade climate change con and the evolutionary theory myth, some things will take a long time to change, because they become so ingrained and religions to many. And the propaganda has been incessant, because a) global governance is the goal (and we’re probably almost there after a journey of over a century) hence the Religion of the Green God to unite the world in order to ‘save’ it and b) it has to be Marxist-Leninist for total control of the masses, hence the Theory of Evolution must be promoted as if fact. Lenin said, “Our programme necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism”.
To begin a piece, a journalist might say
When it comes to personal freedom, who in government has the right to prevent people from doing what they choose, despite the possible health risks?
And then continue,
Go back two decades, and we smokers could light up on a train, in an aeroplane, at the airport, in pubs and restaurants…..
And never mention health again, as the article is meant to be about freedom for adults to choose.
But then to write, Of course it was right to set aside rooms for non-smokers, is the opposite of freedom. It is stamping on property rights: one of THE most fundamental freedoms.
People are so used to being bossed around ‘from cradle to grave’ that they don’t know what their rights are. Or that they even have any!
I think the masses are happy enough to keep their heads below the parapet and think that they’ll survive. The time will come when they’ll need to act or life will become insufferable. Sadly, it’ll probably be too late for the rest of us by the time this happens.
More junk
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2590336/Smoking-ruins-flavour-coffee-Toxic-chemicals-tobacco-harm-ability-taste-giving-up.html
According to yesterday’s print version the effect is permanent.
That’s funny I bought myself a super duper Bunn restaurant coffee maker and bean grinder at whopping 900 bucks at a restaurant supply house. The coffee is expensive at 20 bucks a bag and we use 4 bags a month. Yet I smoke premium brands of Marlboros. Both for the taste! I guess my buds are as rebellious as the rest of me by not conforming to the Nazis standards.
Ah, but they’d claim the coffee would taste even better if you didn’t smoke and that you will never know this because you’ve fucked up your taste buds.
No Coffee and Ciggy in the morning,thats unethical and Insane……………..Obviously these people are Mental patients.
Today is not a good day to give me the news that my choice of coffee beans (for taste!) won’t work for me.
A commenter left this as a response to this utter, utter bullshit article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2590336/Smoking-ruins-flavour-coffee-Toxic-chemicals-tobacco-harm-ability-taste-giving-up.html
Heaven on earth used to be a cigarette, coffee and brandy-happy days!
To me it still is. A coffee, a ciggie and (if evening) a whiskey (single malt, please!) gets you out of many dark days.
The taste is PRICELESS, the effect PERMANENT.
Today, for the second time in 8 weeks I hugged another mother, crying my eyes out for her, too. Two kids who had no idea of how to deal with “dark funk” and being “off-the-beaten-track”.
Thanks to the media who beats the track people are supposed to be on!!! I am angry, very, very angry!!!
The “chiiiiildren”….. – healthists, look what you are doing to their parents! And, dear healthists, I do know that my offspring is “on a mission” tonight. Losing two friends in 8 weeks warrants it. And, you know what you sh*tty healthists; I have given permission for my offspring to be delivered home completely and totally drunk tonight. And, worse even, I have rolled enough cigarettes to keep the bunch of guys going tonight.
AT LEAST THEY ARE STILL ALIVE AND CAN DEAL WITH IT!!!
As for “my-body-is-my-temple-fanatics”: I do have some REALLY nasty questions!!!
(Apologies to everyone – I am still sorting photographs for the first guy who took his life in January; now I am getting the boxes out again to also get the pictures of the one whose funeral was today. Finally the anger has arrived for the second time in 8 weeks…)
Here’s an idea for when the conversation turns to medical experts. Quote the following and ask your adversary to guess what habit/substance/pleasure and its medical consequences is being described here:
“…nausea, weakening of the organs of breathing, coughing, hoarseness, paralysis, weakening or the organ of generation to the point of impotence, lack of libido, back pain, disorders of the eye and ear, total diminution of bodily powers, paleness, thinness, pimples on the face, decline of intellectual powers, loss of memory, attacks of rage, madness, idiocy, epilepsy, fever, and finally suicide …” ?
Or here:
” … productive of the most deplorable and generally incurable disorders …” ?
Is it heroin? or tobacco?
No! It’s masturbation according to the view of the medical ‘experts’, given out to the population and repeated (with additions, which sometimes include cancerous tumours) over and over throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
(The quotes are from a pamphlet of 1716 by a Dr Bekker (a Dutch theologian) and from ‘A Medical Dictionary’ by Dr Robert James, a British medical doctor, 1745).
In a very popular, low ceilinged pub in the 70’s I used to long for some decent ventilation.
It was OK if you got a seat but at 5ft 7 in my stockinged feet if I had to stand the cloud underneath the ceiling reached down to eye level as the night worn on. Needlessly to say I wasn’t going to contribute to it.
The ladies who served behind the bar were very short so they never realised that there was a problem and I was too polite to remark on it.
High ceilinged pubs were fine.
1983
“James Repace, a physicist with the Environmental Protection Agency, advocated the use of greatly disparate ventilation rates for smoking and nonsmoking areas. He expressed his belief that increased ventilation can “remove the threats” of public smoking.”
http://www2.tobaccodocuments.org/product_design/87779408-9413.html
So what happened?
ASHRAE Standard 62: tobacco industry’s influence over national ventilation standards – 2002
S Bialous and S Glantz
“Objective: To describe the role of the tobacco industry in the development of ventilation standards for indoor air quality by influencing the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).”
“Conclusion: The tobacco industry determined that allowing smoking in ventilation standards for indoor air quality was a high priority and dedicated significant human and financial resources to ensure that its interests were represented.
The health groups, until recently, have largely ignored the policy implications for tobacco control of standard development.
This situation is changing, but unless health groups maintain high visibility within ASHRAE, the tobacco industry may succeed in creating a standard that ignores the dangers of secondhand smoke.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1747689/
Three years later
Ventilation Does Not Effectively Protect Nonsmokers from Secondhand Smoke
“Conventional air cleaning systems can remove large particles, but not the smaller particles or the gases found in secondhand smoke.”
“The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the U.S. standard-setting body on ventilation issues, has concluded the following:
“The only means of effectively eliminating health risks associated with indoor exposure is to ban smoking activity.”
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/protection/ventilation/index.htm?s_cid=tw_osh133
Tornado Repace Miss Rose below we all remember this one but worthy of a repost
Schuman’s Expert Witnesses Testify in Secondhand Smoke Trial
The plaintiff’s expert witnesses spoke up on day three of David Schuman’s case against his housing cooperative, Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI), for its failure to prohibit the nuisance created by his townhome neighbors, the Popovics’, secondhand smoke.
Courtroom and Plaintiff’s Townhome Register Similar Carcinogen Levels
But, an incident from Repace’s testimony Thursday came back into play Friday during cross examination. Goecke pointed out that on Thursday, while demonstrating the carcinogen monitor, Repace had measured the concentration of carcinogens in the court room — which is in a smoke-free building — and the amount he recorded there was similar to what Repace had reported recording in Schuman’s townhome in July of 2011.
greenbelt.patch.com/articles/schumans-expert-witnesses-testify-in-secondhand-smoke-trial
As you can see even in a smokefree courtroom the same so called levels were read in Schumans own Kitchen in his house! The so called scientist was none other than a fellow prohibitionist and JUNK SCIENTIST,Tornado Repace!
Talk about being laughed out of court……………….btw these prohibitionists create whats called ”risk assesment studies” Purely fictional and nothing more than statistical magic to create fear and bigotry against smokers!
Just so everyone knows Repaces son in law was the neighbor to the schumans………….That’s how this lunatic pushed his agenda,victimizing them thru his own family connections….fools
Interesting. I had not known that!
Thanks Harley!
– MJM
I found that out on a real estate site about 6 months ago. The story was warning renters and condo owners that if they were going to push a lawsuit that they better have proof of actual harm before they even contemplate such a move.
“James Repace, a physicist with the Environmental Protection Agency, advocated the use of greatly disparate ventilation rates for smoking and nonsmoking areas. He expressed his belief that increased ventilation can “remove the threats” of public smoking.”
Ah, I see! Repace, the ‘indoor-tornado-advocate’……
Who funded what “research”? Just in case we all can’t comprehend this change of mind….
Great research Rose! I’ve never fully understood how they got ASHRAE under their thumbs. There’s clear resistance within ASHRAE as you can see from the way they word their statements on ETS (e.g., unless they’ve recently changed it, instead of saying “WE” believe nasty things about ETS, they say “Cognizant authorities (i.e., the Antismokers) have determined that …”
They also seem to have a pronounced inconsistency in the way they deal with smoke from cigarettes and smoke (and other airborne pollution for that matter) from other sources, particularly cooking: When ASHRAE deals with other smoke/air problems, do they ALWAYS insert caveats that the only REAL protection is to ban the activity? I don’t think so, BUT, if they do NOT say that about other things while they DO say that about tobacco smoke — are they then legally liable for problems that arise from other sources?
There’d be some good research to be done on ASHRAE’s political development in this whole area, but I’d have no idea where to begin.
– MJM
Really Mike its not like they can separate airborne stuff from other stuff as its all pretty much the same stuff regardless of the source………. Its like a catch 22 damned if they do and damned if they don’t!
In 2005, Jonathan Samet and three anti-smoking activist cronies formed a majority of the voting board of the ASHRAE Position Document on ETS.
http://www.smokershistory.com/Samet.htm#ASHRAE
How’s that for “influence”! And then the media lied that it was an “independent” report, too.
The same corrupt clique headed by Samet (plus one more) was in charge of the 2010 report, which is also the “2013” report.
https://www.ashrae.org/about-ashrae/position-documents
ASHRAE will be hatching something about e-cigs, too.
EHC discussed the use of e-cigarette and if this should be included in ETS PD or possibly
as an emerging issue brief.
Action Item 11 – Schoen – collect literature related to e-cigs and distribute to EHC
Emerging issue reports
http://tinyurl.com/nyhds55
“I believe that our most important audience are the great middle masses of people who don’t have a particularly strong opinion one way or the other about smoking in public or smoking in pubs.”
A more logical target is the 45 million adult smokers in the USA.
If only 1 in 10 were allied into a cohesive group, you would have 4.5 million people working together for a common cause.
In America, the NRA with only 4 million members, is a very potent political force.
Smokers would be more receptive to the facts on smoking; as, most of them will have noticed that they are not suffering horribly from smoking.
Also, they like so many of us, will have been directly effected by the bans-higher taxes-bigotry and other shit.
An orginization along the lines of this:
http://www.americansmokersparty.com/votethebumsout/
Lynda Farley has troopered on; but, I wimped out.
I am not a good sales person or comfortable speaking in public.
An example of the info at the ASP site.
http://www.americansmokersparty.com/Articles/TheScientificScandalOfAntismoking/
I am not a good sales person or comfortable speaking in public.
I am a sh*t sales person, but I can speak in public. I learned it – and I learned also how to keep people awake when speaking. (I scored 85% in an important exam for doing so even though I never touched on what I was supposed to be talking about in the first place!)
I base my speech on the fact that I anticipate questions. The rest follows the rules of entertainment.
BTW, anybody having to do a speech: NEVER read of a sheet of paper! Look at people. Speak louder and slower than normally. Have a bit of fun!
Gary, you could have a great time putting your point across!!!! Go for it. PLEASE!!!!
I couldn’t agree more, Gary.
The mascot who greets visitor(s) to my website with the text bubble “I Vote and I Smoke” motto proudly proclaims that 34 million Americans smoke and vote.
Well, I’ve thought about changing that to 26 million on many the occasion. It just so happens to be a JPEG file which degrades every time it’s changed, so I leave well enough alone. It’s shabby enough looking already.
The other reason is that it’s probably closer to reality than I thought at the time (circa 2000) that I first put it up. If you include cigar smokers and pipe smokers there’s probably 60 million smokers, in my ever so humble opinion.
If you figure on a 55% average turnout for presidential elections (38% in the mid-terms) it comes out to 34 million. So I’m sticking with my mascot (whoever he really is).
Which reminds me that cigar smokers, pipe smokers, cigarette smokers, and now Vapers need to quit sniping at one another.
Whoopsie daisy! The mascot (whoever he really is) actually proclaims “I Smoke and I Vote”. Long time no see (and no update), by even myself.
Which reminds me that cigar smokers, pipe smokers, cigarette smokers, and now Vapers need to quit sniping at one another.
This is a KEY point. The smoker haters do their best to wind up one against the other. Currently on the receiving end are the – now baffled – vapers. At first they were wound up against smokers and when tobacco control decided that the job was done, it turned on the vapers who are pretty new to attacks.
Divide and rule.
Let’s face it; we’re all in this together. Once tobacco control has been kicked out of our lives, we can start to implement WORKABLE conditions for EVERYONE; smoker rooms, non-smoker rooms of which the vapers have to most extensive choice. They DO NOT SMOKE, so it’s up to them where they wish to vape. (For me that is fine; if I am out with non-smokers, I use my e-cig which right now enables me to NOT buy tobacco in England.
Tell it to the vapers. They got their whole script from the anti-smokers. And, they’re the most clueless about how this works against themselves.
Carol the vapors especially the companies employees that were pushing vaping wholly thought that the smokefree Nazis would be totally on their side and pushed it that way making the same claims the Nazis did…………..Then out of the blue they get the same shit back on themselves and don’t even know how to fight back from it……….
Tell it to the vapers.
I don’t need to. They (we) know it.
Nice try – still it don’t work.
I can tell from any vaping board that most vapers still don’t understand how spouting the anti-smoker party line works against themselves. They’re bewildered that the anti-smokers still don’t accept them, and continue to treat them like smokers. Some of them seem to think that it’s because they haven’t bashed smokers hard enough.
You would condone us doing something just because anti-smokers do it?
YOU BET!! It WORKS!
Tell it to the vapers. They got their whole script from the anti-smokers. And, they’re the most clueless about how this works against themselves.
Actually, this is not the case. Lame try, Carol.
I haven’t yet seen anything resembling an intelligent response among the vapers. Meaning one that attacks anti-smoker sceintific fraud, not just general enhortations to hang together.
Whenever I wish to draw attention to the uncertainty about evidence that smoking is dangerous, I like to draw attention to the McTear Case (mentioned by Harley above). My reason is that, being a civil case, the standard of proof required is merely “on the balance of probabilities”. Thus, the Medical Establishment ought to have been able to convince the Judge that smoking ‘almost certainly’ causes LC. THEY FAILED TO DO SO MISERABLY!
Of course, the vast majority so want to believe it to be true that they closed their minds many years ago. Nevertheless, it is worth causing that little doubt. One way to cast great doubts on the SHS myth is to cast doubts on the smoking/LC connection. “EG. Do you know that there is no certainty that smoking causes LC? (Give link to McTear Case). How much less certain then is it that SHS is dangerous?”
The whole point is to counter the ‘gut feeling’ (which is not actually rational – the dose is the poison), which seems to govern the thinking of MPs, that if the smoke from smoking cause LC, then so must the same smoke in the air generally.
When they cant even figure out what causes any cancers,just what good is linked to studies……….unless your suing the britches off whoever you decide has the money and some quick junk science and a judge with you political leanings with a shade of jury rigging/stacking with the right attitudes and VOILA Billions in payoff!
The court of public opinion is not a court of law, and it’s not good enough to expect peoples’ opinions to change just because of what some judge said. The next judge might say something different.
Instant karma…
Prog, there is a much quicker way. Just switch your car lights on when they are right up your bumper…..
Works every time!
I dont even take allthe bloggers and “freedom” parrots serously any more. All I see and read is a load of muttering,waffling and wall to wall bluster. To get what is constantly groaned about requires more than monitor gazing and tickling keyboards,it requires some action which can be felt,anywhere,anytime and anyhow. Lets find out ,how many parrots can still fly
Pathfinder, are you prepared to find out?
(Btw, I was raised to make sure that my opponent hurts much more than I do after encounter. Oh, action….. Withholding tobacco tax works a treat!)
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I think you’re being a little unfair on Oborne, Frank. I strongly suspect that if he hadn’t have put in the obligatory “of course everyone knows …” and all the other mantras, his editor-in-chief would have insisted that he did so or refused to put the article out at all. It’s a sign of how far the tentacles of tobacco control (via some heavy-handed State pressure) have reached that even major newspapers like the Telegraph aren’t allowed to publish articles unless they contain the usual provisos. But, hey, at least since the ban they are allowed to publish articles critical of the ban and of organisations like ASH – before the vote of February 2006 not a squeak of protest was allowed in the MSM for fear of highlighting the truly evil and spiteful (and corrupt) nature of the whole anti-smoking movement, just before its moment of highest triumph in getting the ban pushed into law. It’s one of the reasons why the only place where there is any genuinely honest comment about anything is on the Internet in blogs like yours, where the authors haven’t got a “boss” looking over their shoulder and a job to keep.
I hope that Oborne keeps writing, maybe in a more independently-minded media, because we really do need well-respected journos getting “on side” and starting to ask all the kind of awkward questions which he did in his article. That’s assuming, of course (because I see that it was written back in March 2014) that he hasn’t given up smoking in the meantime – it’s quite well known in writers’ circles that smoking writers instantly turn into crashing bores the moment they give up smoking, and this is duly reflected in the quality of their articles, so I do hope that this doesn’t happen (or hasn’t happened already) to Oborne.
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