aaarrrgggghhhhh if that's true then I am REALLY in trouble! LOL
Posted on 06/28/2006 10:39:04 PM PDT by SheLion
Psst! Hey kid! Come over here and jump off this bridge! All the cool kids've done it 'n you're the only one left! It won't hurt, it'll be fun. Anyhow, if ya don't do it, I'm gonna come back 'n bugya, 'n bugya, 'n bugya forever till ya do.
Don't worry though, they'll come back to clean up those scraps once the rest of the rowdies have been pacified and you're all alone. Meanwhile, just shut up and don't make waves!
If the smoking ban was actually based upon a concern for the health of the workers, if the studies supporting it were actually carried out and cited honestly, I would not complain. I might be unhappy, but I wouldn't complain.
So why do I complain? Simply because the above conditions don't hold true. Most of the studies cited at the City Council hearings were paid for by anti-smoking-earmarked funds: studies guaranteed to turn out results that ensure the researchers' future grant streams. In those rare cases where a study's results did not support the predetermined agenda, they were simply reinterpreted and massaged so it would appear they did support a ban.
Am I exaggerating? Not at all.
One of the flagship studies used to promote the smoking ban involved Helena, Mont. "The Great Helena Heart Miracle" made headlines and newscasts around the world trumpeting the news that protecting nonsmokers from smoke brought about an immediate drastic decrease in heart attacks and that removing that protection resulted in an immediate "bounce back" to the old higher rates of coronary episodes. In reality, the study itself made no analysis of nonsmokers, and the main "bounce back" actually occurred during, not after, the ban. Unfortunately, these observations received virtually no media coverage; they are known only to those who bother digging through the dusty cyberpages of the online British Medical Journal. The "miracle" was more fraudulent than miraculous, but it's universally used as proof of the urgent need for smoking bans.
Of course, Helena is just one study, and they've got thousands that support the need for smoking bans, don't they? No. Helena and a few others are their best and their brightest but are all similarly and deeply flawed. And they are all repeatedly paraded before legislators who rarely have the knowledge, conviction or inclination to question them.
Would you raise the question if you were in their place? Would you do so knowing you'd be accused of being a "Big Tobacco Mouthpiece" and realizing you'd be standing alone in mean-spirited opposition to the phalanx of innocent and pink-lunged children with whom Councilman Michael Nutter packed the balcony? And would you do so aware that you'd be sharing the TV screen with dozens of fresh-faced idealistic little girls wearing signs proclaiming the dread diseases you're condemning them to? What politician in their right mind would have the courage to stand up for truth when confronted with such opposition? Unfortunately, very few.
Last week, Lady Elaine Murphy of the British House of Lords chided me in an e-mail, saying that I had "completely missed the point" about the English smoking ban in talking to her about the science. She wrote that "the aim is to reduce the public acceptability of smoking and the culture which surrounds it." Now, that's quite different than the public posturings about "saving the health of the workers" and the images of oppressed teenaged waitresses being slaughtered by deadly toxins as they work their way through school. And, it's quite different than the cheap shows of pleading children in front of City Council's TV cameras.
The smoking ban is based on lies, even if they are lies that are often truly believed by those supporting it.
Philadelphians value freedom. Philadelphia is known as the birthplace of liberty. For Philadelphia to blithely trade away pieces of that individual freedom to heavily funded lobbying groups pursuing social-engineering goals based on lies is nothing short of a crime—a crime that we can only hope will be stopped by Mayor Street.
Michael J. McFadden is the author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains (Aethna Press) and the Mid-Atlantic director of The Smokers Club, Inc
aaarrrgggghhhhh if that's true then I am REALLY in trouble! LOL
I'm not suggesting that a statististician should say "Hmm... this person was only exposed to second hand smoke and got cancer, ergo smoking is not harmful." Rather, I'm saying that if a statistician were to separately consider two data sets, identical except that the former data set included a person who got lung cancer after having once walked within 500 feet of a bar where people were smoking but had no other exposure to tobacco smoke, a proper statistician should likely regard the correlation between smoke exposure and cancer to be slightly weaker in the former data set (with that data point) than in the latter. If the data sets are of reasonable size, one data point shouldn't affect the conclusion much, but its effect should be in the direction of reducing the correlation.
To put it simply, there is a certain "background level" of cancer which will occur independent of any exposure to tobacco smoke. Anti-smokers regard every single instance of cancer among those who have any exposure to tobacco as being a "tobacco-related" cancer; further, they aggressively classify people who get cancer as having been "exposed" to tobacco. By contrast, people who don't get cancer aren't considered to have been exposed to tobacco unless such exposure is undeniable.
It is a torch of liberty!
Good analogy though.
It's legal, it's fun. Light up that torch.
And smokers, put down that drink and cigarette and become activists and all will change.
You are a bigger minority than gays, Blacks or Mexicans.
Why the heck don't you do something????
Bar owners have the right, with a few exceptions, to admit or not admit whomever they want. If a bar owner wanted to put up a sign which said "PEOPLE WHO ARE BOTHERED BY SMOKE ARE NOT WELCOME HERE", he should have every right to do so. If he did that and you find smoke bothersome, you would have no right to enter the bar and thus no right to complain about the smoke there.
In practice, most bar owners would prefer not to be so openly-antagonistic toward nonsmokers. If someone is mildly bothered by the smoke but is willing to put up with it, the onwer would have no particular desire to kick that person out; there's no reason he should have to.
Another point that needs to be brought up: many bars spend many thousands of dollars each on smoke eaters and other such devices. Why would a bar owner spend $5,000 on smoke eaters when he could improve indoor air quality even more by forbidding smoking, unless he knows that forbidding smoking would cost him over $5,000 worth of business?
Whose judgement should I respect: the bar owner who's willing to stake $5,000 on the proposition that smoking bans hurt business, or the smoke-Nazi who stakes $0 on his claim that they don't.
BTW, if there are few non-smoking businesses in an area, a business that forbids smoking may very well pick up more business from non-smokers than it loses from smokers; those smokers will go to other businesses. As the ratio of non-smoking businesses increases, each additional business that goes non-smoking will lose more revenue from smokers while gaining less from non-smokers.
Bill Hannegan gave a great line to use. One sure to piss 'em off and deflate the egotistical part of their confidence. There's the science and all but there is also psychological warfare that can be employed:
The following is a quote from Michael of Antibrains: Those who've been following the thread on Mike Siegel's blog will have already seen some of the points below and I'm sure there are more out there that we need to find. This SGR is specifically designed to do for ETS what the SGR of 1964 did for smoking: move the general belief that something is probably bad for you into the "established" world view of "We have all accepted this now and it's time to move on to something else." With the 64 report it was smoking/lung cancer. With the ETS report it's ETS/bunch of stuff.
More lies and Bull Chit. If smoking is down, and more kids are dying from SIDS............explain THAT please!
There's these two magical ingredients called soap and water. You mix them together, rub them on surfaces and dirt and smells are removed.
Excuse me, but are you unsure about the DOD's findings of SHS ? Read the following please:
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?"
DON'T LET THE HEADLINES FOOL YOU
Court throws out challenge to EPA findings on secondhand smoke - (December 2002) - The ruling was based on the highly technical grounds that since the EPA didn't actually enact any new regulations (it merely declared ETS to be a carcinogen without actually adopting any new rules), the court had no jurisdiction to rule in the matter. This court ruling on the EPA report is NOT a stamp of approval for that report. Judge Osteen's criticisms of the EPA report are still completely valid and is accompanied by other experts.
Yep!
So true, Joe, so true. Sad. Here is one for an example:
What a child you are. GROW UP!
THE REAL FACTS OF THE SMOKING BANS IMPACT ON BUSINESS'S
The Facts
>>Bar owners have the right, with a few exceptions, to admit or not admit whomever they want. If a bar owner wanted to put up a sign which said "PEOPLE WHO ARE BOTHERED BY SMOKE ARE NOT WELCOME HERE", he should have every right to do so. If he did that and you find smoke bothersome, you would have no right to enter the bar and thus no right to complain about the smoke there.<<
He can put up that sign.
Nonetheless the people of the community can still regulate smoking in public places.
Attention all business owners suffering from a smoking ban.
Please fill out this form and submit it for a new web page
Ban Loss
Meow!
I take it further out. What is the proper role of government? Having PEL for substances is necessary. Most persons, employees and customers, would want to know the level of potential harm (or safety). Base decisions on full knowledge.
he question is, which organization is best able to accurately measure PEL and which is best able to weigh the pros and cons?
Business in any industry will lose employees and customers to competing businesses if it doesn't provide safe environment. To harm either is counter productive. Free market would give rise to companies that measure PEL and report accurately. ACME PEL would be under the same competitive veracity pressure as any industry. If ACME PEL falls short of their responsibility, Road-Runner PEL will out compete them.
It is quite clear to me that government, void of competition -- yet armed with the legitimization of initiating force -- is far from the most competent organization to measure PEL, weigh the pros and cons and report accurately. It's probably the least competent compared to any in a free competition marketplace.
In a free market, whether due to negligence or intentional, when harm occurs there is redress and restitution. With government there is little if any redress or restitution when it screws up. Banning of DDT is but one example. How many property owners have been denied full use of their property due to endangered species act or EPA regulations and never been compensated for the taking. Taking that is bogus in the first place because it isn't valid use of eminent domain or permitted by any part of the constitution.
Bottom line, in many areas the government -- politicians and bureaucrats -- has usurped from the free market what the free market can do better than the government.
Proclaiming to safe persons and society from running headlong to destruction politicians and bureaucrats create about 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. State government create their own barrage of laws and regs each year.
Yet, how is it that for more than a hundred years, without the "benefit" of the next years new laws and the laws in subsequent years that persons and society increasingly prospered? How do we increasingly prosper to day with out the "benefit" of new laws and regulations yet to come next year, five years and fifteen years ahead?
Also, with the increasing mountain of laws virtually every person breaks the law several times a year. How is it that with all that lawlessness that persons and society have not run headlong over the cliff-edge to destruction? Not to mention that if it were physically possible to apprehend every lawbreaker -- including judges, lawyers, police, prosecutors, bus drivers, grocery clerks etc. -- next week, society would come to a screeching halt -- driving it over the cliff-edge.
Capitalism and the workers that fuel it are the host. Politicians and bureaucrats are parasites living off the host. They leech just enough to gain unearned paychecks, prestige and power. Sure to not so encumber the host where it reduces its production of goods and services beyond that which would leave the parasites to perish. For the parasitical elites cannot produce much needed, life sustaining necessities.
Calling it bizarre would be an understatement. It's lethal. It's the anti-civilization.
The anti-smokers keep trying to turn it into a debate about smoking. That's where their strength is.
Property rights and individual rights is strength. Rational and honest principle is strength -- an asset. Irrational and dishonest principle is weakness - a liability.
Reading what the anti smoking nazis on here say, it is quite apparent they belong on Dailykos, or DU because they sure as hell aren't conservatives if they support a nanny law. They are frauds as surely as Hillary is a fraud in her "move" to the right.
I quit smoking months ago, but I would never preach to anyone what they should do regarding smoking. Being against smoking is one thing, supporting nanny laws passed by the imperial federal government is quite another, something to be expected from liberal leaning lemmings, not posters on FR
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