Most people didn’t have this attitude 20 years ago. Unless you did, than you are an unwitting victim of a multi-billion dollar, decades long PR campaign. Smoking was just one of many vices, a bad habit. It wasn’t enough for anti-smoking advocates to simply state that tobacco smokers were hurting themselves and encourage them to quit. It didn’t work well enough. To truly discourage smoking and reduce smoking rates, smokers had to be portrayed as not only hurting their own health, but those around them. Incite hatred from non smokers. How? The invention of the Second Hand Smoke fraud.
Don’t just take my word for it. Read the anti-tobacco playbook for yourself:
http://www.forces.org/writers/kjono/pdf/tfw222.pdf
1993 ASSIST Study (American Stop Smoking Intervention Study)
By 1998, sites will substantially increase and strengthen public support for policies which a) mandate clean indoor air; b) restrict access to tobacco by minors; c)increase economic incentives and taxations to discourage the use of tobacco products; and d) restrict the advertising of tobacco.
What does mandating clean indoor air have to do with reducing smoking rates and getting smokers to quit?
Answer: Absolutely nothing except to accomplish the other objectives…
”DECREASE PUBLIC TOLERANCE OF TOBACCO USE”
”CHANGING THE PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE OF TOBACCO USE”
Over a decade of research by the National Cancer Institute has shown that the most effective way to reduce smoking rates is to decrease public tolerance of tobacco use through changes in policy, accompanied by media and educational programs.
Changing the public acceptance of tobacco use will require policy change, a critical ingredient of societal change.
Social change also requires that people receive consistent and persistent messages from sources they trust. This this end, ASSIST funds will generate a a variety of media messages that foster and strengthen public support for proposed policy changes.
The recent release of the EPA report on ETS provides the necessary justification to potential opposition, i.e. restaurant owners, small business owners, and smokers for requiring workplaces to eliminate the health hazard of ETS in the workplace.
In 1998, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) spurious claims about Environmental Tobacco Smoke were eviscerated by a U.S. District Court judge.
2.3 Excerpts from Judge Osteen’s July 18, 1998, 90 page-plus Memorandum Opinion appear below:
a.) On page 73 Judge Osteen specifically referenced EPA’s use of a 90 percent confidence level in place of the customary 95 percent:
“The first contention is EPA switched, without explanation, from using standard 95% confidence intervals to 90% confidence intervals to enhance the likelihood that its meta-analysis would appear statistically significant. This shift assisted EPA in obtaining statistically significant results. Studies that are not statistically significant are "null studies"; they cannot support a Group A classification. See Brock v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 874 F.2d 307, 312 (5th Cir. 1989) ("If the confidence interval is so great that it includes the number 1.0, then the study will be said to show no statistically significant 'association between the factor and the disease."). EPA used a 95% confidence interval in the 1990 Draft ETS Risk Assessment, but later switched to a 90% confidence interval. Most prominently, this drew criticism from IAQC's epidemiologist, who was also a contributor to the ETS Risk Assessment: The use of 90% confidence intervals, instead of the conventionally used 95% confidence intervals, is to be discouraged. It looks like a[n] attempt to achieve statistical significance for a result which otherwise would not achieve significance.” (Underline added.)
b.) On page 72 Judge Osteen’s conclusions included a statement that EPA cherry-picked data:
“EPA's study selection is disturbing. First, there is evidence in the record supporting the accusation that EPA "cherry picked" its data. Without criteria for pooling studies into a meta- analysis, the court cannot determine whether the exclusion of studies likely to disprove EPA's a priori hypothesis was coincidence or intentional. Second, EPA's excluding nearly half of the available studies directly conflicts with EPA's purported purpose for analyzing the epidemiological studies and conflicts with EPA's Risk Assessment Guidelines. See ETS Risk Assessment at 4-29 ("These data should also be examined in the interest of weighing all the available evidence, as recommended by EPA's carcinogen risk assessment guidelines (U.S. EPA, 1986a) (emphasis added)). Third, EPA's selective use of data conflicts with the Radon Research Act. The Act states EPA's program shall "gather data and information on all aspects of indoor air quality.”
c.) On page 60 Judge Osteen concluded that it was possible EPA adopted different methodologies for each chapter based on the outcome desired:
“The court is faced with the ugly possibility that EPA adopted a methodology for each chapter, without explanation, based on the outcome sought in that chapter. This possibility is most potent where EPA rejected MS-ETS similarities to avoid a "cigarette-equivalents" analysis in determining carcinogenicity of ETS exposure. Use of cigarette-equivalents analysis may have lead to a conclusion that ETS is not a Group A carcinogen." It is striking that MS and ETS were similar only where such a conclusion promoted finding ETS a carcinogen.” (Underline added.)
The goal all along has been to coerce smokers into quitting. Not to protect anyone from a non-existent risk. Using taxpayer money to funds to encourage one citizen to discriminate against his fellow citizens.
Does this sound like a “Free Republic” to you?