Oklahoma: Limits on smoking draw fire

Associated Press ^ | April 8, 2002 | A/P Staff

[MeekOneGOP]

fyi........

[chance33_98]

Check out this previous post on same subject entitled: Capitol No Smoking Bill Watered Down - Lawmakers can smoke in their offices

Just adds to the outrage :) Thanks for the update too!

[PhiKapMom]

What is so weird about all of this is that I have never seen so many smokers as I did when we moved from South Texas to Norman, OK. As a non-smoker, I really noticed the amount of smokers -- like I was one of only a few not smoking when I went to baseball games of my son's High School team or band parent meetings.

[lawdude]

"Health officials say smoking kills 6,200 people in Oklahoma each year."

Not 6,244 or 6,187? I would ask, and always ask, just what scientific data and model was used to come up with that number.

There are ads running in Arizona claiming some totally rediculous number and I have asked for the science behind such proclamations and have received NO answers. In other words, they pull these numbers out of the brown and fuzzy and then use them to further their agenda. ALWAYS ASK FOR VERIFICATION!

[Just another Joe]

puff

[MeekOneGOP]

I quit over 19 years ago. Glad I did, too. My Mom passed away last
year and the Death Cert lists tobacco as a contributing factor.
She smoked for over 50 years and the last 4 years of her life she
was on oxygen 24 hours a day. She quit a year before her death.
I remember about 3 months before she died, she told me that
she wishes she had quit smoking long before she did.
What could I say? "I know, Mom, so do I".......
I tried back in the 70s to get her to quit, but gave up on that project
because it just aggravated her and I didn't want to cause a rift in
our relationship.

[MeekOneGOP]

Hey, Joe! :O)

[SheLion]

The numbers are always high and always different. I, too, would like to know where "they" come up with these numbers.

It's rediculous.

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

What in the Oklahoma constitution or America's constitution gives the government the right to dictate public health?If anyone says,"to promote the public good",YOUR WRONG and i suggest you look up the word PROMOTE in the dictonary.To PROMOTE only means to encourage or educate NOT DICTATE!

[concerned about politics]

But members of the Board of Health and state officials who support a ban on smoking say the issue runs deeper than the law. They say the real issue is public health.complete and absolute control over peoples lives by the socialist busy bodies.

If people are allowed to choose abortion or AIDs, both deadly, how can they possibly harrass smokers? Outlaw them all, or none.

[B4Ranch]

My father in law who is 86 has been smoking since he was 16 and still doing great. I think it all depends on the person.

[MeekOneGOP]

My father in law who is 86 has been smoking since he was 16
and still doing great. I think it all depends on the person.

Yes, I think it does a lot. My best buddies Mom smokes still and she's pushing 80.
And she's going strong. She only smokes a few a day though.
There is some evidence, I think, regarding genetic markers or whatever
that are with you when you're born that determines your liklihood of cancer.
But I think that had my Mom quit 20 years earlier, at least her
quality of life would have been better, IMHO.......

[Great Dane]

But members of the Board of Health and state officials who support a ban on smoking say the issue runs deeper than the law. They say the real issue is public health.

So if we all find a cause running deeper than the law.......WE CAN BREAK SAID LAW. ??

[E.G.C.]

E.G.C. Oklahoma BTTT!!!!

[SheLion]

Great Dane: not when 44 states are in the pocket of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This corporation is the biggest smoker hater in the U.S.

When the states that are in their pocket receive huge grants for banning and taxing smokers, what state, especially with their budget problems, is going to give that up?

It's a very hard war we fight. Especially since we do not have the honey pot of wealth like THEY do...........

[PhiKapMom]

Sorry to hear that about your Mom -- my Dad was the same way. He quit several years before he died but by that time a lot of damage had been done! No amount of convincing would make him quit before he got really sick, but it had a huge affect on my brother and I -- neither of us smoke!

[Gabz]

It's not just numbers they pull out of a hat.

About a year or so ago the State of Delaware Health Department was running ads claiming that exposure to second hand smoke CAUSES asthma. Not that it might bring on an attack - but CAUSES the affliction.

I called the Department of Health and Social Services and questioned the information. I got a great deal of grief for being "one of those people" what people are those, I asked - "the pro-smokers." I explained that while I was a smoker, I wasn't a pro-smoker, I was just a proponent of honesty, especially when it came to the spending of tax payer money.

I'm still waiting for the Department to get back to me with the information on which they based their claims, but the ads never ran on any channel on the local cable system again.

Demanding VERIFICATION is a very good deterrent!!!

[Gabz]

If people are allowed to choose abortion or AIDs, both deadly, how can they possibly harrass smokers? Outlaw them all, or none.

Good points.

Being exposed to someone else's cigarette smoke is at best an annoyance, at worst it can aggravate a pre-existing medical condition. Abortion and AIDS always end in death.

I don't know dollar figures, nor do I have anything at my fingertips to cite - but more money is spent on seeking a cure for AIDS than on seeking a cure for lung cancer. And more money is spent harrassing smokers by the people that should be researching cures for lung cancer than is being spent on that research.

I'm not looking to outlaw anything - except using the money of people being harrassed to perpetuate the harrassment.

[Don Carlos]

Gotta say, this is one of the few times recently that I agree with Keating. I'm a former smoker (5 years now), and although I'm very much in the "anti" column, I believe these unelected boards need to be reigned in.

No saint like a reformed sinner, as they say! I lost my father to lung cancer some years back. He had quit tobacco 15 years earlier, but we all knew, as did he, that the cigarettes were the cause.

The Okie legislature has quite a history of legislating for others but, making sure their laws dont impact them. A lawyer acquaintance who is a former legislator told me some years back, that there is (or was) a law in Oklahoma that prohibited chicken theft - except when the legislature was in session!

Something about foxes and henhouses comes to mind.