Posted on 01/10/2003 7:41:00 PM PST by Max McGarrity
Secondhand smoke "might make your hair smell," but it's not a proven health risk, Bears-coach-turned-restaurant-owner Mike Ditka said Thursday, leading the charge against a proposed restaurant smoking ban in Chicago.
With a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other, Ditka said his steelworker father was living proof that it's baloney for medical experts to claim that exposing a restaurant employee to an eight-hour shift's worth of secondhand smoke is the equivalent of smoking a half a pack of cigarettes.
"My dad smoked four packs of Luckies from the time he was 12 until the time he was 60. He lived to 80. He died of hardening of the arteries. He didn't die from what smoking caused. He worked in the steel mill where every morning, you woke up and there was half an inch of soot on the cars," Ditka said.
"People who have survived in industrial areas of our country late into their 80s and 90s have inhaled more smoke than all the smoking in the world can give you. I find it hard to believe that people try to shove the secondhand smoke theory down your throat because I don't believe it. I don't believe it even hurts you. It might make your hair smell a little bit, but that's about it."
Ditka said he has nothing against Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), the City Council's leading anti-smoking crusader. He simply believes the restaurant business would "suffer tremendously" if Burke and Health Committee Chairman Ed Smith (28th) persuaded their colleagues to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.
"These people who are popping off and throwing their weight around better open up their eyes and understand that you've got freedoms in America. If you don't want to come in this restaurant, don't come in. If you don't want to go where people smoke, don't go. They run the City Council. Let the people down here run the restaurants," Da Coach said.
Reminded that smoking has been banned for years in California restaurants and bars, Ditka said: "That's fruits and nuts. That's what they are. A lot of liberals. . .. All the do-gooders in the world. The people in California who abolished smoking are the same people who want to legalize marijuana. Come on. Give me a break."
At a Health Committee meeting earlier this week, restaurant owners attempted to slow the anti-smoking steamroller.
They warned that a Chicago-only restaurant smoking ban would send customers fleeing to the suburbs and prompt conventions to move elsewhere. They argued the ban would create an enforcement nightmare, with confrontations between tip-seeking servers and their customers.
Mayor Daley sympathized, called for more City Council hearings on the controversy and backed away from his earlier endorsement of a restaurant smoking ban.
On Thursday, restaurant employees held a news conference at Ditka's Restaurant, 100 E. Chestnut, to reiterate those arguments and pile on a few more.
"This city is rich in character--full of taverns, neighborhood joints, steakhouses and family restaurants. A smoking ban would completely expunge that character. It would absolutely reduce this city to another generic, dime-a-dozen, two-bit town," said Glenn Garlisch, a waiter at the Chicago Chop House, 60 W. Ontario.
Anyway, I'm certain that it is a matter of degree - that is, just smelling smoke isn't going to cause a problem, but constantly breathing a thick cloud of smoke most likely has an association with lung disease. A better approach might have been to require a certain amount of maximum particulate indoor pollution, measured over time in "public" places.
Spot on in both respects. OSHA has stated publicly that the toxins that appear in environmental tobacco smoke in measurable quantities fall far below any permissible levels already set for those toxins. For instance, it would take 14,285 cigarettes burning at one time in a 20' sealed square room with a 9' ceiling to reach the permissible level of acetaldehyde, to reach permissible levels of benzo[a]Pyrene would require 222,000, and so on. Every reputable scientist admits the dose makes the poison. Hell, we drink arsenic every time we drink tap water. But the anti-smoker groups are adamant about the rhetoric they use: "there is no safe level of shs." A few years back ASH, one of the biggest, oldest, nastiest anti-smoker organizations (run by attorney John Banzhaf), sued OSHA to address the issue. Last year OSHA answered, saying "if we address this issue, we will set a permissible level." ASH dropped the lawsuit and the spinning began in the press about how great it was.
Ventilation is, of course, the answer to the perceived problem of accommodating everyone, if the free market solution is just not good enough or if they demand to call it a labor issue, but antis won't even consider it and run roughshod over anyone who suggests such a logical alternative.
That's unlikely, though not impossible if she lived and worked with smokers for 40 or 50 years. But that kind of exposure would be required, not having dinner periodically in a smoker-friendly restaurant or working at one.
Ditka is an ass if he thinks his opinion has any scientific weight.
How come Ditka's "anecdotal evidence" isn't as important as yours? Seems to me he's arguing private property and choice, anyway.
I'm against these far-reaching bans on smoking, but let's not pretend they're anything other than cancer sticks.
You don't like smoking, don't smoke. You don't like being around smoke, don't go where smokers are. Problem solved. No "scientific weight" necessary, though I can provide you with that if you really want it. And thank you for supporting private property rights.
IMPRESSIVE USE OF CAPITALS BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE BOLDED THEM.
Ditka is an ass if he thinks his opinion has any scientific weight.
I doubt if he thinks his opinion carries scientific weight - anecdotes are meant for popular appeal, not scientific validity. His and yours.
I'm against these far-reaching bans on smoking, but let's not pretend they're anything other than cancer sticks.
I don't think that this discussion is about whether or not smoking is hazardous to your health. It is about whether or not the government should have the ability to decide whether a private business owner must restrict his clientel to non-smokers or not based on the desires of a few busybodies.
Also, I must point out that while there is pretty good evidence that smoking is hazardous to ones' health, second hand smoke's effects on the population is much more obscure. There is little evidence that second hand smoke has anywhere near the same effect on lung health that direct smoking does. This would be particularly true when there is adequate air filtration.
Interesting post. Maybe so. Where are you? Here in San Antonio, we are in the Bible Belt, so perhaps a few less smokers, although plenty of people here do smoke.
We still love him here in Chicago.
Ed Burke makes the other alderman look like angels. Burke is with out a doubt the biggest crook on the council. He's taken more bribes than anyone. But he always gets away with it.
You say "This "do whatever you want if it's private property" stuff is fatuous nonsense." which is, of course, a disingenuous attempt to reframe the debate. No one has suggested anyone has the right to "do whatever" they want and you know it. What's at issue is the owner's right to permit a LEGAL activity in his own establishment if HE wants.
The other point, of course, is the willingness of the customers to patronize such a place and the willingness of the workers to work there where such LEGAL activity is taking place.
It's really quite simple for anyone not blinded by hatred and bigotry to understand. The outrageous rigidity on the part of militant anti-smoker control freaks toward ANY compromise on smoking bans is proof that you aren't as worried about environmental tobacco smoke as you are pathologically obsessed with harassing smokers. Your insistance on spewing your hatred on the smoking threads here only proves that obsession.
His credentials are based on the fact that he makes money selling his coffin-nails.
Keep you day job. You would never make it as a lawyer.
Right, it is not the purpose of government to rule over us or to lord it over us.
This "do whatever you want if it's private property" stuff is fatuous nonsense.
You are no conservative, sir and/or madame. That's one of the more frightening statements I've seen in almost five years on Free Republic. Absolutely shameless.
Fatuous and disingenuous (deceptive, for those who attend modern public schools). As I said before, no one has suggested "anywhere, anytime" but you. But your analogy, however ludicrous, proves my point, not yours. To use the "legal" porn example, there are places permitted to engage in those activities--if you don't like it, stay out. Antis often use alcohol in the same kind of example, which also proves my point, not yours. Bars, and many restaurants, serve alcoholic beverages. If you don't like it, stay out. That doesn't mean people can drink "anytime, anywhere," or that they want to, but that they can drink in places designated for that activity--at the owner's discretion.
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