Smoking foes try to stop parents from lighting up

THE WASHINGTON TIMES ^ | December 16, 2005 | Tarron Lively

[kingattax]

Anti-smoking activists who are driving cigarettes from public places across the country are now targeting private homes -- especially those with children.

Their efforts so far have contributed to regulations in three states -- Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont -- forbidding foster parents from smoking around children. Parental smoking also has become a critical point in some child-custody cases, including ones in Virginia and Maryland.

In a highly publicized Virginia case, a judge barred Caroline County resident Tamara Silvius from smoking around her children as a condition for child visitation. Mrs. Silvius, a waitress at a truck stop in Doswell, Va., calls herself "highly disappointed" with the court's ruling.

"I'm an adult. Who is anybody to tell me I can't smoke or drink?" she said in an interview yesterday.

An appeals court upheld the ruling, but not before one judge raised questions about the extent to which a court should become involved in parental rights and whether certain behavior is harmful or simply not in a child's best interest. Mrs. Silvius says she complied with the decision by altering her smoking habits.

"My children know not to come around when I'm on the front porch with my morning coffee, tending to my cows or out in my garden, because I'm having a cigarette," she said. Still, she thinks this was not a matter for the courts because it was not proven that she posed a risk to her children's health.

[SheLion]

Then I guess most of us in our 40s and older should be sickly or dead..........and I guess next fireplaces and woodstoves will be banned because of particulate matter....And we won't even discuss grills or frying.....

We moved to northern Maine in 1983.  Bought this house in Dec of 1984.  Has a huge wood furnace.  Order 6-8 cords a wood a year every since.  Been HEATING with wood ever since.  What is that..................21 years!

Oh yes, I have a fireplace in the living room also. 

[Gabz]

Just because you don't agree with a statement doesn't make it wrong...just disturbing to you.

Actually what I find disturbing is how many people believe incorrect information to be Gospel truth.

The financial cost issue is a central point to the discussion and that is why I as well as others have brought it up.

You are wrong again. The central point to this discussion are court rulings that are blatantly wrong.

[SheLion]

No, second hand smoking is not the same as smoking. But don't make yourself look foolish by claiming your anecdote trumps science.

You have been easily swayed.  I have research second hand smoke aLOT!  Foolish?  I only "look foolish" in the eyes of those that know no better.

SECOND HAND SMOKE FRAUDS

There was a study done in Great Britain on ETS (environmental tobacco smoke). This study was done very slowly, methodically, and slowly. It took FORTY YEARS to finish. It finally finished last year, and was published in the reknowned British medical Journal. It concluded there was no great risk being exposed to ETS, and the Dr. that had headed the study even bemoaned the fact that he hated smoking-and wished it were otherwise-BUT-he reported the facts as the study showed, and their findings were true. Proving the outcry over the last 15 years to be false & misleading. What's that you say?? You never heard of this study?? Why...that's because the media in this country (and most others, I would imagine) REFUSED TO REPORT IT!! Yet the media will forever parrot the anti-smoker Taliban's garbage & hate-filled propaganda as gospel, because they hate smokers, too.
posted by Foolkiller at 05:30 P.M. EST on Tue Jun 21, 2005      #

[SheLion]

Oak Ridge Labs, TN & SECOND HAND SMOKE 

Statistics and Data Sciences Group Projects

I think any anti who tries to dismiss the findings of the U.S. Department of Energy labs at Oak Ridge, should be confronted with the question: "Are you saying that DOE researchers committed scientific fraud and that their findings on ETS exposure are untrue?"

[Gabz]

You have a very healthy attitude when it comes to life.

[Leatherneck_MT]

More Fluff for the sheeple that populate this board.

It's for the chilluns.

People who deprive themselves of their own liberty, for whatever cause sicken me to death.

[Cementjungle]

We moved to northern Maine in 1983. Bought this house in Dec of 1984. Has a huge wood furnace. Order 6-8 cords a wood a year every since. Been HEATING with wood ever since. What is that..................21 years!

Oh yes, I have a fireplace in the living room also.

Well then if you ever get sick in the next 80 years we know what to blame!

[SheLion]

But most lung cancers are.

Not most.

[SheLion]

But most lung cancers are.

Not most.

[SheLion]

Smokers generally pay higher premiums than non-smokers .

Gosh.  I have TriCare Prime Health Insurance.  I don't pay more because I am a smoker.  In fact, they never even ASK if I smoked.  Imagine that.

[SheLion]

Grandmother on my Mother's side died of lung cancer at the age of 62. Smoked like a fiend. Her daughter, my Aunt, is in her 50's and has all sorts of health problems from her own smoking. Growth in her lungs, etc..

Your point is?

Well, since you are throwing out family history:

My one grandmother smoked three packs of unfiltered Camels a day!  Died from old age at 86.

Other grandmother never smoked.  Died full of cancer at age 42.

[SheLion]

Lung cancer is just one of the few cancers and illnesses by smoking.

December 24, 2003 -- IT is that time of the year: parties, presents, family gatherings - and dining-room tables laden with a tempting array of mouthwatering, delicious, seasonal chemicals.

So....what's in YOUR Christmas dinner?

Chemicals? Yes.

We live in an intensely chemical-phobic society, one where food labels and menus brag of being "all-natural" and "purely organic." Poultry sections offer fryers from "happy, free range chickens." "Chemical-free" cuisine is in.

So it may come as a shock to you that even an all-natu- ral holiday feast (and every other meal you consume throughout the year) comes replete with chemicals, including toxins (poisons) and carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals) - most of which average consumers would reject simply on the grounds that they can't pronounce the names.

Assume you start with an appetizer, then move on to a medley of crispy, natural vegetables, and proceed to a traditional stuffed bird with all the trimmings, washing it down with libations of the season, and topping it all off with some homemade pastries.

You will thus have consumed holiday helpings of various "carcinogens" (defined here as a substance that at high dose causes cancer in laboratory animals), including:

* hydrazines (mushroom soup);

* aniline, caffeic acid, benzaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, quercetin glycosides and psoralens (your fresh vegetable salad),

* heterocyclic amines, acrylamide, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, dihydrazines, d-limonene, safrole and quercetin glycosides (roast turkey with stuffing);

* benzene and heterocyclic amines (prime rib of beef with parsley sauce);

* furfural, ethyl alcohol, allyl isothiocyanate (broccoli, potatoes, sweet potatoes);

* coumarin, methyl eugenol, acetaldehyde, estragole and safrole (apple and pumpkin pies);

* ethyl alcohol with ethyl carbamate (red and white wines).

Then sit back and relax with some benzofuran, caffeic acid, catechol, l,2,5,6,-dibenz(a)anthra- cene with 4-methylcatechol (coffee).

And those, all produced courtesy of Mother Nature, are only the carcinogens you just scarfed down. Your l00-percent natural holiday meal is also replete with toxins - popularly known as "poisons." These include the solanine, arsenic and chaconine in potatoes; the hydrogen cyanide in lima beans and the hallucinogenic compound myristicin found in nutmeg, black pepper and carrots.

Now here is the good news: these foods are safe.

Four observations are relevant here:

* When it comes to toxins, only the dose makes the poison. Some chemicals, regardless of whether they are natural or synthetic, are potentially hazardous at high doses but are perfectly safe when consumed at low doses like the trace amounts found in our foods.

* While you probably associate the word "carcinogen" with nasty-sounding synthetic chemicals like PCBs and dioxin, the reality is that the more we test naturally occurring chemicals, the more we find that they, too, cause cancer in lab animals.

* The increasing body of evidence documenting the carcinogenicity (in the lab) of common substances found in nature highlights the contradiction we Americans have created up to now in our regulatory approach to carcinogens: trying to purge our nation of synthetic carcinogens, while turning a blind eye to the omnipresence of natural "carcinogens."

* While animal testing is an essential part of biomedical research, so is commonsense. A rodent is not a little man. There is no scientific foundation to the assumption that if high-dose exposure to a chemical causes cancer in a rat or mouse, then a trace level of it must pose a human cancer risk.

If we took a precautionary approach with all chemicals and assumed that a rodent carcinogen might pose a human cancer risk ("so let's ban it just in case"), we'd have very little left to eat. (A radical solution to our nation's obesity problem!)

The reality is that these trace levels of natural or synthetic chemicals in food or the environment pose no known human health hazard at all - let alone a risk of cancer.

So the next time you hear a self-appointed "consumer advocate" fret about the man-made "carcinogen du jour" and demand the government step in and "protect" us - remember, you just ingested a meal full of natural carcinogens without a care in the world and with no risk to your health.

Pass the methyl eugenol! Bon Appetit!

Elizabeth M. Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health

Full Story:

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/14334.htm

Mike Dore, Secy.
Delaware United Smokers Association
http://www.deusa.org

[SheLion]

Well then if you ever get sick in the next 80 years we know what to blame!

Knock on wood..............I never get sick!

[Gabz]

Hubby was out splitting wood this afternoon (oh wait that's impossible, he's 50 and a smoker, he's incapable of doing physical labor /anti rant sarcasm) and the woodstove is going right now. So is a kerosene heater at the far end of the kitchen, and hubby just lit the grill for steaks.

Oh my.........we're all gonna die :)

[RightOnline]

Well aren't you two just the prissy, self-righteous duo. Stow it, would ya?? Jeez...........what pantywaists we have in this country now..........

[The Foolkiller]

However...insurance costs - which we all pay - are based on the "stupidity" (more like deliberate disdain for others) of people who do unhealthy things to others. When people cause harm to others such as smoking or drinking to excess - then somehow there must be a way to assess them higher costs. Maybe by penalizing them with higher premiums they will stop damaging their children's health and insurance costs for the rest of us will go down!

---

Gee, I'm really surprised that it took 23 posts before it got hijacked to that again.

[Mears]

Ahaaah ! Another one who believes what has been told to him by the antis.

I smoked,my husband smoked,most of our friends and relatives smoked. Five healthy,now middle aged, kids resulted from all that smoking----and none of them smoke.

Tell me this. Why are the baby boomers considered the healthiest generation in history when they were all born and raised when smoking rates were at their highest?

Why are asthma rates in children going up when smoking rates in adults are very low?

I've never recived an answer to these questions----maybe you are the one that will do it for me.

I would never call someone an idiot for smoking in front of a child----I do it in front of my grandchildren and guess what? They think I'm just great.

Looking forward to the answers to my questions.

[SheLion]

Gee, I'm really surprised that it took 23 posts before it got hijacked to that again.

Yep! Did they provide PROOF!!!!! heh!

[TheSpottedOwl]

It's used as leverage by vicious parents. Unfortunately for my ex idiot, I smoke outside. Bf loathes cigarette smoke.

[SheLion]

Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official

Asthma: The Politics of Blaming Tobacco Smoke

 

ABNORMAL LUNG ANATOMY
What Happens With COPD

Asthma

Asthma is not caused by smoking.

The reason asthma develops in one person and not another is not well known. Asthma tends to run in families, but not always.

People with asthma have extra-sensitive airways that overreact to certain environmental elements such as:

• pollens
• fungus
• molds
• animal secretions
• house dust mites
• cold air, etc.

When the airways are exposed to these stimuli, the linings of the airways react by becoming inflamed and swollen. They become "twitchy," meaning that the muscles surrounding the airways tighten and cause the airways to narrow.

Asthma is characterized by episodes of shortness of breath (SOB), tightness in the chest, wheezing and cough, or a combination of the above.

"Pure" asthma can be treated effectively because the changes to the airways can be reversed in most instances. However, if there is a component of emphysema or chronic bronchitis to the asthma condition, the changes cannot be reversed.

For more information about asthma, please refer to the Canadian Lung Association Asthma Resource Center.