[trumandogz]

Govt control over private property/business. Should be up to the business owner.

The government controls countless aspects of what the owners of private property can and cannot do.

For example:

A bar owner cannot sell beer to 12 year old kids.

A store owner cannot sell cigarettes to children under 18.

An apartment owner cannot deny leasing to a minority.

A restaurant owner cannot serve meat that is not inspected.

A day care center owner cannot store toxic waste at the day care center.

A bar owner cannot pump toxic air into his bar.

Each of the above government regulations are instituted to protect the public safety or at least the perceived public safety. Thus as long as their is a perceived public safety threat from ETS there will continue to be smoking bans.

The stark reality is that within 10 years there will no be a jurisdiction in the U.S. where there are not smoking bans.

[Gabz]

An apartment owner cannot deny leasing to a minority.

Yes they can. I have the perfect right to lease my apartment to anyone I wish, or deny leasing it to anyone I wish.

[Madame Dufarge]

Each of the above government regulations are instituted to protect the public safety or at least the perceived public safety.

So your position is that anti-smokers are so irredeemably stupid that they can't make a decision not to enter a place that allows smoking.

That the only way they can face this life-changing decision is to call in the force of government to save them from their thumb-sucking selves.

Health and safety regulations are for the protection of the public in areas where the public has no visibility (filthy kitchens, adulterated alcoholic beverages, etc.).

What kind of idiot couldn't tell whether smoking was allowed or not at the front door?

[elkfersupper]

All that you mention are fairly recent developments and are intrusions on your fellow citizens' rights.

Glad to see you are happy about that.

[SheLion]

A bar owner cannot pump toxic air into his bar.

Each of the above government regulations are instituted to protect the public safety or at least the perceived public safety. Thus as long as their is a perceived public safety threat from ETS there will continue to be smoking bans.

The stark reality is that within 10 years there will no be a jurisdiction in the U.S. where there are not smoking bans.

Ok, so what about the industry that produced big air purifiers for bars and restaurants that will suck the rug right off of your head?!  I know of such a person that marketed and sold these huge air purifiers.  He has had to foreclose on his home because all of these people have lost their jobs because of the smoking bans.

Air purifiers were the way to go, in order to have a smoking section and a non smoking section.  Just like the big Casino's in Las Vegas.  The air is like glass.  You have to look around to see if anyone is smoking because the air purifiers are sucking out the smoke and what other BO might abound.

But these air purifiers weren't good enough for the highly paid professional anti-smokers and now all their little pinions that have been duped to believe that second hand smoke and smokers have got to go.

Well, you believe what you want about getting rid of smokers, but I don't think it's going to come in your time or the time of your choosing.  Cigarettes are legal and that's a fact. 

Millions of us choose to smoke and we don't want to be around you anymore then you want to be around us.

If you think it's ok to force a business to close and to conform American's into the mold of your choosing, just because you don't want to see people smoking, you are a lot more addicted then any smoker will EVER be!

[SheLion]

Each of the above government regulations are instituted to protect the public safety or at least the perceived public safety. Thus as long as their is a perceived public safety threat from ETS there will continue to be smoking bans.

Taken from a letter to the Editor in LA:

All citizens do NOT have any "right" to breathe clean air.  If we did, then all planes, automobiles, trucks, factories, and breweries (the source of toxic poisons in the air) would be banned. Only then could everyone "breathe truly clean air".

The Report by the Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, who is a self-described rabid anti-smoker, does not show any "new evidence" as they claim. As the Report itself states, it is merely a compendium of previous reports and biased "studies" written by and/or paid for by the anti-smoker industry. No new studies, no new evidence.

No one has ever died from being around secondhand smoke but this conveniently escapes the anti-smoker zealots.  Coronary heart disease is usually genetic in origin, but it's politically correct nowadays to claim that secondhand smoke is the culprit. Never mind that no unbiased, scientific study has ever proven that secondhand smoke has ever caused anyone any harm; the real truth isn't on their agenda. 

The anti-smoker campaign has never been about health, it's always been about power and control by The Nannies (along with millions of dollars for the anti-smoker and pharmaceutical industries).

[SheLion]

OSHA and the Environmental Health Department prove secondhand smoke is NOT a health hazard.

 
500 ug (OSHA safe level) divided by 3.3 ug (median reading Applebees) = measured airborne nicotine* levels are 152 times safer than OSHA regulations ie. In other words NO HEALTH HAZARD as per OSHA workplace indoor air quality standards.
(snip)

There is no recognized safe level of exposure to all the substances of secondhand smoke.

That however, is a disingenuous statement, every harmful substance known to mankind has a safe level of exposure......it's called OSHA permissible exposure limits. And if you believed that false premise, no recognized safe level of exposure, we would have to ban drinking water due to the level of arsenic naturally present. We would have to ban the very air we breathe due to the CO2 levels present. (CO2 is fatal at a 20% concentration but with every breath we inhale a 4% concentration).

Secondhand smoke does not rise to the level of being a hazard, as proven scientifically. Therefore even though you may be offended by the smell of tobacco smoke; no government entity has the authority to ban secondhand smoke on the argument of public health hazard - that is a disingenous argument.

Did you notice the pro-smoking ban lies and rhetoric have become more vocal in the media lately? They are frantically trying to defend the indefensible. Perhaps another $100 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation would help.

[SheLion]

"The secondhand smoke claims were demolished by a 1998 World Health Organization study," said Sheldon Richman, senior fellow at the Future of Freedom Foundation. "A ten-year meta-study, in which the World Health Organization analyzed all the research and studies to date, failed to find a clear link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. The activists tried to hush it up, and their media allies were all too happy to not report it. The truth was bottled up when the activists and the media alarmists did not get the results they wanted."

Second-Hand Smokescreens
Monday, June 04, 2001
By Steven Milloy

World No-Tobacco Day 2001 was yesterday. Sponsored by the World Health Organization, the theme was secondhand smoke. The event’s poster featured “Secondhand Smoke Kills” emblazoned over a photo of the Marlboro Man riding into the sunset.

WHO proclaimed, “Second-hand smoke is a real and significant threat to public health. Supported by two decades of evidence, the scientific community now agrees that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke… The evidence is in, let is act on it.”

That’s quite an ironic statement, though. It appears the WHO doesn’t even put much faith in its own research on secondhand smoke.

The WHO’s World No-Tobacco day web site lists, “Comprehensive Reports on Passive Smoking by Authoritative Scientific Bodies.” The listed reports include the 1986 reports from the Surgeon General and National Research Council, the 1993 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and two late-1990s reports from the California EPA.

For those unfamiliar with the reports, the list appears formidable. Otherwise, it’s just disingenuous.

The 1986 reports by the NRC and Surgeon General concluded secondhand smoke was a risk factor for lung cancer. But of the 13 studies reviewed, 7 reported no link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. Given the statistical nature of these studies, this split in results is precisely what one would expect if no true link existed.

Neither report produced much progress for anti-smoking activists. So they convinced the EPA to pick up the gauntlet.

Thirty-three studies on secondhand smoke had been completed by 1993. More than 80 percent of the studies reported no association between secondhand smoke and lung cancer, including the largest of the studies. The EPA reviewed 31 studies - inexplicably omitting two studies reporting no association between secondhand smoke and lung cancer - and estimated secondhand smoke caused 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually.

Under the stewardship of the anti-tobacco Clinton administration, secondhand smoke hysteria caught fire.

Observing the “success” of the EPA report, the California EPA adopted by reference the EPA’s conclusions into the state agency’s own report. Little original or independent analysis went into the Cal-EPA report.

Just when it seemed anti-smoking activists finally succeeded in producing scientific reports establishing secondhand smoke as a health risk, a federal judge overturned the EPA report in 1998. He ruled the EPA cheated on the science.

Later in 1998, the WHO published the largest study ever done on secondhand smoke and lung cancer. The study reported no statistically significant association between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. Oops.

Now let’s go back to the WHO’s list of reports on its web page.

The 1986 reports don’t carry any weight. That’s why the EPA did a new report. But the EPA report was in all important respects trashed by a federal judge - by implication, a fate also deserved of the California report that relied on the EPA report.

And the WHO omitted its own report from the list of “comprehensive reports” by “authoritative scientific bodies” no doubt because the “wrong” answer was reported.

If secondhand smoke really increases lung cancer risk, why all the smoke-and-mirrors?

Of course, lung cancer is not the only health alarm sounded about secondhand smoke. The science on these issues is also not as it’s hyped.

The WHO claims secondhand smoke causes between 35,000 to 62,000 deaths from heart disease annually in the U.S. But the WHO omits mention of an important New England Journal of Medicine editorial on the controversy.

University of Chicago Hospital health studies chairman John Bailar - hardly sympathetic to the tobacco industry - dismissed the link between secondhand smoke and heart disease, citing the poor quality of study data and evident researcher bias.

WHO claims, “Second-hand smoke also causes and aggravates asthma and other breathing problems, particularly in children. It is also an important cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).”

But researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examining data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveyreported in January’s Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine there was no association between secondhand smoke and asthma among 5,400 children aged 4 to 16 years of age.

No one knows what causes SIDS. Just this week, Wake Forest University researchers reported SIDS may be related to a genetic deficiency. Reportedly, the absence of a particular muscle enzyme allows fatty acid products to accumulate, producing a toxic effect causing heart arrhythmias and respiratory arrest.

Anti-smoking activists have yet to explain where were all the childhood asthma and SIDS cases in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when smoking indoors was commonplace and adult smoking rates were much higher than they are now.

Secondhand smoke is annoying to many nonsmokers. That is the essence of the controversy and where the debate should lie - the rights of smokers to smoke in public places versus the rights of nonsmokers to be free of tobacco smoke.

In debates over individual liberties, fabricated and propagandized science should play no role.

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of the upcoming book Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001). Mr. Milloy may be reached at milloy@cais.com.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,26109,00.html

Secondhand smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 69 that cause cancer.
   Truth: Everything contains chemicals, there are around 10,000 of them in our daily diet. Not all chemicals are dangerous so why bother saying making such a claim except to create hysteria among morons who will believe anything in an effort to get them to sign their petition. Same thing with the 69 carcinogens. Only a few of them are Group A, and in very large doses over a long period of time, can cause cancer in humans (not just in lab rats) The real question is whether or not ETS in large doses can be harmful to nonsmokers over a long period of time and there are numerous studies that say no and are available to you upon request.
 
Secondhand smoke is proven to aggravate asthma and increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases in children and adults.
   Truth: Wrong again and there is plenty of documentation to prove otherwise. (Also available to you upon request) How many children do you know who have cardiovascular disease? SFBN is playing the "kids card" which in my opinion is an especially despicable stunt to support their tyrannical agenda. Read the following:
 
 Germany and the chief architects of their smoking ban was Chancellor Adolph Hitler and Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels. In Hitler’s Mein Kampf he wrote, "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people."In writing about the holocaust, Rabbi Daniel Lapin noted that Hitler believed “that as long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation…. In the name of the children, incursions into the private lives of American citizens have been made that (the) Nazis would have gazed at with open mouthed admiration.” Does “we have to do it for the children”, sound familiar? In promoting the smoking ban of the Third Reich, Dr. Goebbels made good use of his own idea that, “If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the new truth.” It was these two concepts that allowed the German government to forward their smoking ban and later, their far more infamous deeds of social engineering.