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
>>Statistics clearly show that speaking english doubles your lung cancer risk.<<
That's funny. not remotely accurate. But funny.
Absolutely not. I'd go further and say we shouldn't let them drag science into the debate, but they always will. It's a civil liberties issue and I wish we could keep it on that plane.
Smoking bans are going to be as successful as the law that spawned speakeasies in the 1920's. Successful at diminishing respect for the law and whittling away at the concept of property rights and increasing the number of criminals.
Alice's Restaurant comes to mind. (Q: What are you in for, kid? A: I'm a litterbug.)
Waste of taxpayer loot, waste of law enforcement officers. Increased power to the nanny state.
Nevertheless, smoking is an unwholesome habit and we have bigger and more urgent battles. Like gun ownership. Governor Rendell is again trying to outlaw guns in Philadelphia.
Let's have that fight. At least we won't be diverted by totalitarians saying, you're an addict and you stink like a gun. ;)
You should never trust politicians...
I think it's a bit of a stretch to imply that anti-anti-smoking detracts from the campaign against gun control. There is only so much time in the day so I suppose you could have a minor point. But I would also think that the cigarette odor could also help mask the smell of gunpowder; if I were a smoker I'd be less nervous getting pulled over.
The anti-smokers keep trying to turn it into a debate about smoking. That's where their strength is. From a health and hygiene standpoint, smoking's mighty hard to defend. Addiction's mighty hard to deny.
We have to deal with the social atmosphere in which we now find ourselves. And right now, privacy for people doing unwholesome things is practically exclusive to homosexuals and patrons of abortion clinics.
Great assortment of keywords. Should I add YELLOWBIRD or would that be too obscure you think?
I'm a smoker and so far they haven't been able to pass a smoking ban in our county. My favorite restaurant is non-smoking. I don't think they did it to punish me but to please some of their other customers. That is freedom at work, they have a choice, I have a choice and I still choose to patronize their business because I love their food.
What we don't need is villianization of every behavior that offends someone. I really am very allergic to many perfumes, I have never gone on a campaign to eliminate perfume. I remove myself from the problem as best I can and go on with my life.
>>Are you being forced to enter a bar where people are smoking?<<
Nope but its out in public and the public has the same right to restrict second hand smoke that they would have to someone putting a legal drug in everybody's drinks in that bar.
I oppose the regulation of smoking in the home, car or private clubs on constitutional grounds - right to privacy and all that.
As I am sure that this entire raft of nonsense is really just more PC driven leftist behavior control, this will not follow out its logical conclusions in every direction. I guarantee that despite the statistically obvious threat homosexual practices are to a male human being's health, they will never be outlawed.
So, this argument regarding science and health is specious, unless it can be positively proven that smoking injures or threatens the health of the unwilling bystanders who do not participate in the behavior.
That is what is being falsified. Witness the latest study by the Surgeon General... ""Exposure to secondhand smoke remains an alarming public health hazard," Carmona said. "Nonsmokers need protection through the restriction of smoking in public places and workplaces" — and by smokers voluntarily not puffing around children.
Supposedly, this is the latest word on the subject..."It isn't a new study but a compilation of the best research on secondhand smoke, the most comprehensive federal probe since the last surgeon general's report on the topic in 1986, which declared secondhand smoke a cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers."
This "science" whether factual or not, isn't going to lead to a complete smoking ban, unless and until the enormous revenue, more than the tobacco companies make, in cigarette taxes somehow is replaced with other revenue streams, or diminishes to the point of insignificance. The government gains the most from continued tobacco use, and that is why this is just more PC broughlaahdoo. This may seem obvious, as it does to me, but it seldom comes up in discussions on this subject.
You must mean some other "they", as our government has a much easier time finding ways to perpetuate taxes than they are willing to wean themselves from the revenues tobacco brings them... approximately 156 billion $ since 1993. They are not going to suddenly place onerous, confiscatory taxes on food substances that cannot be separated from the most common and popular foods consumers buy, and which support whole food industries that generate their own vast tax revenues already.
The Federal government continues to subsidize tobacco farming to the tune of millions... "Tobacco Subsidies in United States totaled $528 million from 1995-2004." Is that a sign that they will prohibit smoking any time soon? The Feds are investing in a cash crop. This is a fraud, and many people are fooled by it, thus we see the same kind of political demagoguery displayed every election cycle, yet the status quo is as solid as ever.
And from having you on my list for a long time, I wouldn't expect anything less from you! FELLOW FREEPER!!! heh!
BTW...I LOVE that quote...works for me!!!
Kiss my patoot, ok? You know nothing about me and my sense of humor. Your a suck up! He will love it.
Enough already. Get your teeth out of me! I have very long claws!
No problem.
Thank you!
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