The risks of smoking are greatly exaggerated

TheRecord.com ^ | 20 November 2002 | ERIC BOYD

[SheLion]

Too much is made of the 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke. We're told these chemicals are so harmful that they are responsible for the deaths of millions worldwide. Untold in this "war on tobacco" is that each of the plants we consume consists of an equally daunting thousands of chemicals many of which are recognized poisons or suspected cancer-causing agents.

Cayenne peppers, carrots and strawberries each contain six suspected carcinogens; onions, grapefruit and tomato each contain five -- some the same as the seven suspected carcinogens found in tobacco.

High-heat cooking creates yet more dietary carcinogens from otherwise harmless chemical constituents.

Sure, these plant chemicals are measured in infinitesimal amounts. An independent study calculated 222,000 smoking cigarettes would be needed to reach unacceptable levels of benzo(a)pyrene. One million smoking cigarettes would be needed to produce unacceptable levels of toluene. To reach these estimated danger levels, the cigarettes must be smoked simultaneously and completely in a sealed 20-square-foot room with a nine-foot ceiling.

Many other chemicals in tobacco smoke can also be found in normal diets. Smoking 3,000 packages of cigarettes would supply the same amount of arsenic as a nutritious 200 gram serving of sole.

Half a bottle of now healthy wine can supply 32 times the amount of lead as one pack of cigarettes. The same amount of cadmium obtained from smoking eight packs of cigarettes can be enjoyed in half a pound of crab.

That's one problem with the anti-smoking crusade. The risks of smoking are greatly exaggerated. So are the costs.

An in-depth analysis of 400,000 U.S. smoking-related deaths by National Institute of Health mathematician Rosalind Marimont and senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute Robert Levy identified a disturbing number of flaws in the methodology used to estimate these deaths. Incorrectly classifying some diseases as smoking-related and choosing the wrong standard of comparison each overstated deaths by more than 65 per cent.

Failure to control for confounding variables such as diet and exercise turned estimates more into a computerized shell game than reliable estimates of deaths.

Marimont and Levy also found no adjustments were made to the costs of smoking resulting from the benefits of smoking -- reduced Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, less obesity, depression and breast cancer.

If it were possible to estimate 45,000 smoking-related Canadian deaths as some health activists imagine -- and Marimont, Levy and other respected researchers think it is not -- then applying an identical methodology to other lifestyle choices would yield 57,000 Canadian deaths due to lack of exercise and 73,000 Canadian deaths blamed on poor diets.

If both the chemical constituents of tobacco smoke and the numbers of smoking-related deaths are overstated -- and clearly they are -- how can we trust the claim that tobacco smoke is harmful to non-smokers?

The 1993 bellwether study by the Environmental Protection Agency that selectively combined the results of a number of previous studies and found a small increase in lung cancer risk in those exposed to environmental tobacco smoke has been roundly criticized as severely flawed by fellow researchers and ultimately found invalid in a court of law.

In 1998, the World Health Organization reported a small, but not statistically significant, increase in the risk of lung cancer in non-smoking women married to smokers.

Despite these invalidating deficiencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization both concluded tobacco smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers.

One wonders whether the same conclusions would have been announced if scientific fraud were a criminal offence.

When confronted with the scientific uncertainty, the inconsistency of results and the incredible misrepresentation of present-day knowledge, those seeking to abolish tobacco invoke a radical interpretation of the Precautionary Principle: "Where potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activity should not proceed."

This unreasonable exploitation of the ever-present risks of living infiltrates our schools to indoctrinate trusting and eager minds with the irrational fears of today. Instead of opening minds to the wondrous complexities of living, it opens the door to peer ridicule and intolerance while cultivating the trendy cynics of tomorrow.

If we continue down this dangerous path of control and prohibition based on an unreliable or remote chance of harm, how many personal freedoms will remain seven generations from now?

Eric Boyd of Waterloo has management experience across a wide range of sectors.

[Kozak]

Gee maybe his food tastes crappy because he destroyed his sense of smell somehow???

[metesky]

It's customary to ping the Freeper to whom one is referring, hand job.

[golder]

Is there such a regulation, stating that cooks must not step out for a smoke?

The letter from the health department suggested not smoking. If you do smoke, and it must be out doors, you must wash before returning to work. I was standing in the back door smoking as always. It should be obvious, this had little to do with public health. For the record, my refrigerated square footage, exceeded the dining room square footage. This restaurant was very clean, it was the love of my life. Damn these people.

[laredo44]

And RED MEAT is legal, but 23 million Americans wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole!

But many of those 23 milliion would be more than happy to prevent the rest of us from ingesting. And that's the problem the moronic smoke banners just can't seem to come to grips with. Today, they get their wishes enacted into law. Tomorrow, the next least favored activity gains the spotlight. Each group with its pet peeve stands in line waiting for the legislature to drive another nail in the coffin of liberty.

Have you ever heard of the term "pecking order"? I'm told it describes actual chicken yard behavior. The "alpha" chicken can peck any other chicken in the group, the "beta" chicken any other chicken except the "alpha" chicken, etc. The "omega" chicken can be pecked by every other chicken and can peck none. Sometimes, the "omega" chicken gets pecked to death. The "psi" chicken becomes the new "omega" chicken, and the process repeats.

Today, smoking is the "omega" liberty. It is in the process of being extinguished. Zealots have discovered that to do so means that private property rights must be sacrificed. This does not deter them for their call only requires that others to cede rights, not they themselves. They absolutely cannot fathom that when smoking is universally banned, the "psi" liberty will become the next victim.

I'm not a smoker. I'm not an ex-smoker. I'm a never smoked-er. What I am, is a lover of liberty, and I know when it is being attacked. I support what you are doing, not just because you have a right to use your body as you see fit, but because this fight continues to expose the fraudulent activities of those who seek to enslave us all. These are the tactics of liberals, not conservatives. Their ends-justifies-means rationale requires they alter any study, provide any false witness, tell any whopper. And the number of "useful idiots" they attract is truly sad.

[laredo44]

But what right is it of a smoker to decide whose body is more tolerant by subjecting them to second-hand smoke?

Where have you ever seen it argued a smoker has the right to subject another to second-hand smoke?

[A. Pole]

The owner cook, sold the beautiful, small restaurant of 20 years, very quickly.

Serves them right!

[Ditter]

Do ya think? ;9}

[SheLion]

Ok! Question for you: how old was this lung at the time of death? Got an answer for me?

Another question: was this person's lungs exposed to RADON? Coal Dust? Farming Pesticides?

I want another answer: do you believe that if a person never smokes they will never die? I want your opinion on this.

About your Grandfather dying: you believe it was because of his smoking, right? Not because the Lord said "his number was up."

And "I" got some stats for ya!

The BIG LIE That Smoking is an Economic Burden To Society

"After the Clinton administration proposed a fairly substantial increase in the cigarette tax as a way of funding health care reform, my colleague Dennis Zimmerman and I wrote a paper entitled "Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform and Economic Analysis." (CRS, Library of Congress, #94214 E ) The part of the paper I'd like to talk about is the justifications for increasing the cigarette tax.

"I know an economist, so I start with the presumptions that people have subjective preferences about what they like to do and how they spend their money and that, in general, we want to allow people to enjoy their lifetime resources in accord with those preferences. We would intervene in those decisions only under certain kinds of circumstances that we try to delineate and measure.

"When you buy a pack of cigarettes, you pay the price of the cigarettes. You also assume some implicit costs that you know about if you are aware of the health effects of smoking. But there might be another part of the cost that you don't pay, the cost that smokers impose on other people. That is the kind of cost that we were trying to examine. When we looked at the study done by health economist Ray Manning and several associates (funded by the RAND Corporation) we found that the spillover effect per pack of cigarettes was 33 cents. At the time (1994), the sum of federal, state, and local cigarette taxes was about 50 cents per pack. So the cigarette tax was already higher than the spillover cost."--Jane Gravelle, economist, Congressional Research Service.

"The lifetime health cost for a smoking man is $72,700 and $94,700 for a smoking woman. For nonsmokers, the cost is $83,400 for a man; $111,000 for a woman.

"If people stopped smoking today, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs." --New England Journal of Medicine,1997;337:1052-7.

Smokers are not a financial burden as you imply: Smoking-related healthcare costs are a pittance to overall healthcare costs (8% in my state of Maine). If every smoker quit, healthcare costs would go down only temporarily and then rise above the amount you are complaining about now, because nonsmokers get sick too and for more years. Smokers more than make up for their extra cost by dying (their choice-not yours) sooner; collecting less social security and pensions, and less time in nursing homes. The state tax on cigarettes is all gravy. This is all backed up by facts. You should know this if you're going to play with numbers.

But of course you won't read what I posted.  Your right and that's it!

Want me to post a gory picture of a liver from alcoholism? eh?

[verity]

Addiction masking as antiauthoritarianism? ;~)

[golder]

The owner cook, sold the beautiful, small restaurant of 20 years, very quickly.

We all lose. The tax man, the rabid anti smoker, my favorite customers, and me. I truly loved my work, as a result, I was one of the best. I am a native Californian, live in the Sierra, these ignorant, do nothing government workers, are about to succeed in ridding themselves of me.

[SheLion]

The owner cook, sold the beautiful, small restaurant of 20 years, very quickly.

Presently he drinks and frolics, his former customers, smoking and non smoking, are searching for a beautiful, Epicurean delight they are likely not to find.

Welcome to America.

Do you think the anti-smokers health fanatics care?? Hell no! They go from city to city, FORCING private business's to go smoke free. Leaving closed business's, lay-offs and lost revenue in their wake. They could care less. They ACHIEVED their goal! Total control over the people!

Smoking Bans Bad For Business

Go to this link and scroll down. Read all of the devestation the smoking ban did to all of these restaurants!

[SheLion]

What kind of physician might that be? Not an oncologist, I assure you...

Well, I had cancer twice and I had TWO oncologists! And THIS, I can assure YOU!

[SheLion]

Gee maybe his food tastes crappy because he destroyed his sense of smell somehow???

Gee........she lost her sense of smell when her spouse broke her nose. Go figure!

[Bogey]

I don't live in the backwater. That's the problem. If you look at the research dollars going to lung cancer, it's dismal. Why? Because people conviently only link it to smoking. People that don't smoke get screwed in the process.
And vastly overlooked in diagnosis. Disturbing also is the fact that the actual x-rays to find lung cancer are dangerous. Which means early detection is almost unheard of.
This is horrific as well for individuals who are in remission from other cancers. Very, very common for the reacurrence to go into the lungs. There are tons of people that have lost family members to cancer in the lungs. While they thought they were cancer free, it showed back up in the lungs or the brain. Not unusual at all.
You need to get your head out of a hole.
Your insistence that lung cancer is only smoking related is horse...it. Tell that to the thousands of people that have lost loved ones to this disease because that's where the original cancer spread to.
My friend died at 44. Her previous ovarian cancer went straight to her lungs. One day she had trouble breathing.
Died a month later. Her case is hardly isolated.

[SheLion]

You're absolutely right, justices DO often render "quack" rulings, but in this case several EPA scientists resigned because of this travesty of a report. EPA appealed but the appeal hasn't been heard.

Your absolutely right, Max. And I told him several posts earlier that it took "5" years of study for the Federal Court to make their ruling. It just wasn't an overnight pencil whipping!

[SheLion]

Look smoke if you want, but don't delude yourself that it's harmless, grow up.

We are NOT mindless BOOBS! All of us know that smoking isn't good for us, just like fat greasy burgers! But tobacco is LEGAL! Hello!!!

Like I said, if smoking was as bad as you anti-smoking health fanatics are spewing, it would have been banned 50 YEARS ago! My parents told me back in the 50's that smoking was NOT good for us. It's nothing new. But the anti's sure would like to THINK they just discovered this!

[Dr. Luv]

And the Oncologists who treated you followed your "The risks of smoking are greatly exaggerated" screed?

'Tis to laugh...

[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

Yes, it's bizarre. I suppose some undercover agent saw you smoking and then not washing your hands. Many years ago, when I was in school, one of my Chinese fellows told us that if any paying customer could see what's going on in a Chinese food kitchen they would probably give up eating Chinese food for life...

[Wolfie]

I think it can be safely stated that when someone doesn't like an acitivty that you clearly enjoy, and has decided to try to convince you to stop, the very first thing they're going to do is start lying to you.

[Publius6961]

I am still waiting for the insurance commercial that says, " If you are under 50 and don't engange in unsafe sex...."

LOTFLMAO...

300 years from now historians will have a hard time not rolling on the floor laughing at the "Age of Morons"...