Free Republic

"Well, you can all bet that I will keep this thread and throw it into the face of the next anti-smoker that comes down on us about cigarette butt litter!"

Butt, butt, butt, it's only smokers who litter. They must be the ones throwing out these "trucker" bombs, and the Walmart bags, and the bottles of Colt 44, and fast food wrappers, etc.... And blame those dirty baby diapers on evil smoking babies. Everyone knows that saintly non-smoking babies always deposit their diapers in the trash where it belongs. And heck, the poop of non-smoking babies don't even stink.

"How about a fresh tube of KY Jelly to be delivered on April 14th..."

I can only afford to send them the empty ones, since I know I'm going to need more from the fresh tube to help ease the pain.

"The supreme court ruled it is alright for wine drinkers to buy on the Internet and avoid state taxes. But, they deny that same right to smokers. Both are legal products, why the difference?"

They didn't do it so that state residents could avoid state taxes. They did it because some states, like New York, prohibited shipping from out of state wineries while allowing shipments from those in state. Funny thing is this lawsuit was brought about by a small Virginia winemaker who had been fighting this un-Constitutional impediment to interstate commerce. Meanwhile, Virginia has been up in arms about how to stem the growing tide of imports of garbage into its landfills from New York.

Nobody cares about how they treat tobacco taxes and shipments because very few farmers still continue to grow it in only a few states.

"The states thought they'd struck rich when they fleeced the tobacco companies."

More correctly, they fleeced smokers, not the big tobacco companies. The attorneys general conspired with big tobacco to pass on the costs of the settlement to smokers and as the story portrays, to have the states squash competition to preserve big tobacco's market share.

"Time for people to stand up and take back private property rights. This is a good beginning."

Yes, it is a good beginning, but there is so much further to go.

Take a look at how the National Cancer Institute (NCI) frivilously throws away taxpayer funds on "research" (sic) to support the taking of private property rights from our citizens. The NCI supports idiots like Stan Glantz to study crap like this? It's time to get past being mad and time to start making these people accountable for their blatant misuse of funds from the public treasury for the purpose of lobbying for laws against the people.

Here's an interesting quote concerning genetics and nicotine metabolization from a paper entitled, "Pharmacogenomics, the Human Genome Project and the Practice of Medicine," written a few years ago by Ian J. Mehr, PhD, MBA.

"Possibly one of the most intriguing correlations in the CYP450 family is between polymorphisms in the 2A6 gene and smoking. The 2A6 gene is responsible for the oxidation of nicotine and plays a major role in nicotine metabolism, which leads to the speculation that there could be a genetic role in nicotine dependence. Support for this hypothesis was found in a study that demonstrated individuals with defective 2A6 alleles were underrepresented in a group of addicted smokers. Furthermore, smokers with defective 2A6 alleles smoked significantly fewer cigarettes."

For the most part, I'd agree with you 100%, Mears, that's it's only about the money. However, in this case it has gotten to the point where the liars are also trying to save face after getting their hand caught illegally in the cookie jar one too many times. They're credibility is just about shot. Ahhh, but greedy bastards never learn, do they?

Got it, thanks. Like I said, I've given urine so many times (and blood), I can only imagine what they can to with it (either legally or illegally). If I ever run into a clone of myself because they were doing off the wall genetic experiments, I wouldn't know what to do. LOL...

Seriously though, or not seriously... However you wish. People do some very strange things. Not to start any conspiracy theories, but how would one be absolutely sure that they are not giving samples that are going into some supersecret DNA database? Just because I may be paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't taking such liberties... Privacy Act notwithstanding.

No sweat, Gabz. It was fun rummaging through my files to see how much I forgot I had since I hadn't engaged anyone on those issues about cotinine measurements in quite some time. Here's an interesting quote I got concerning genetics and nicotine metabolization from a paper entitled, "Pharmacogenomics, the Human Genome Project and the Practice of Medicine," written a few years ago by Ian J. Mehr, PhD, MBA.

"Possibly one of the most intriguing correlations in the CYP450 family is between polymorphisms in the 2A6 gene and smoking. The 2A6 gene is responsible for the oxidation of nicotine and plays a major role in nicotine metabolism, which leads to the speculation that there could be a genetic role in nicotine dependence. Support for this hypothesis was found in a study that demonstrated individuals with defective 2A6 alleles were underrepresented in a group of addicted smokers. Furthermore, smokers with defective 2A6 alleles smoked significantly fewer cigarettes."

Remember that from our arguments with Ginny on Yahoo? That's when Spinner told Ginny, the born again anti-smoking former smoker, the reason why she couldn't stand smoking anymore after smoking for ten years was because she had defective genes and thus couldn't metabolize nicotine efficiently. Whatta hoot to hear Ginny holler. Ahhh, memories...

"Thanks we all enjoy your not being there.
KOFF KOFF"

No sweat. Happy to oblige. Just do us a favor and hang a big "NO SMOKER'S WELCOME" outside of your place of business like all the rest of the anti-smokers do so I can be sure as to not annoy you with my patronage. I sure wouldn't want any of you exposed to the carcinogens rubbing off my nicotine-stained fingertips onto the greenbacks I might have offered for your services.

Have a nice "smoker-free" day

LOL, I wasn't even thinking about disposable kits! Not to inform you of my "personal habits", but I've had to pee in the bottle so many times for job requirments over the years that I just naturally assumed they were sending samples to the lab.

Here's a FAQs page on cotinine measurements from a lab. It's pretty accurate from my knowledge. However, I recall there can be as much as a 400 fold variance due to individual's ability to metabolize nicotine efficiently.

Howdy, Calpernia! Pleased to meet you.

Yes, you're right. Nicotine can be and is absorbed from fruits and vegetables in the nightshade family. It's even found in certain tea leaves.

However, most bodies do metabolize nicotine rather quickly, though at various rates. So the serum blood levels of nicotine decrease rapidly after being consumed. So testing for nicotine may show trace amounts but it really isn't a good quantitative indicator of how recent and what level of exposure someone was subjected to. That's why they generally measure cotinine in both blood and urine samples. The metabolite stays in the body longer, until excreted as a waste product. Funny thing about cotinine though is that all of us metabolize nicotine at different rates. Researchers assume that's why some people are more predisposed to become tobacco users than others.

Did you know they even found traces of nicotine in thousand year old Egyptian mummies? That has researchers perplexed because there were no known nightshade varieties in ancient Egypt and tobacco is a new world plant. It's not just from exposure to tobacco smoke from smoking crypt robbers and archeologists. The nicotine was fully embedded in hair and nail samples. Some surmise there were ancient overseas trade routes between the continents.

Again though, there are huge differences in levels of nicotine and cotinine found in the blood and urine samples between active smokers and non-smokers. The biggest risk of misclassification for those who regularly consume large amounts nicotine containing plants and beverages is for non-smokers where researchers may assume they are actually exposed to more environmental tobacco smoke when they may not be at all.

So anyway, I'm interested in seeing how this plays out. I can imagine employers start asking for a strand of hair when giving interviews so they can see if you smoked a cigarette or have been socializing with any heavy pot smoking friends for the past so many months... You think women with longer hair would have more of a problem? ;) Oh well, who knows where this will go?

Just a few random thoughts on this.

This has been going on for centuries. I think Henry Ford was an avowed anti-smoker and didn't allow his employees to smoke if he could help it. I think the same was true for Edison.

Weyers' policy to not employ smokers is surely acceptable as a private company employer, but I'm not so sure the way it was implemented was entirely legal or ethical. This is not simply a matter of smoking itself, but his insistance these employees submit to a test. I'm not sure that even illegal drug testing has been declared legal for all jobs, at least not in all places. It may be in some places, but mostly those type of policies are enacted for situations in which there are safety considerations for other employees and customers, such as airline pilots. Heck, good ol medical profession is a notorious trade for producing drug addicts, but prescription drug addicted physicians and surgeons rarely get more than a slap on the wrist even when identified as operating a scapel under the influence. These women working for Weyco were paper pushers. Certainly no ominous safety considerations there. From what I understood of the situation, old Weyers didn't even know these women were smokers, and one worked for him for over fifteen years. She had been holding up her portion of the employment "contract" or agreement, until ol Howard decided to change the rules.

This will undoubtedly open the doors to a gamut of employer intrusions into employees' personal lives until legislators draw the line. Where do you think the line will be drawn? Could you imagine an employer requiring all employees to submit to a DNA test to look for genetic disposition to see if he'd like to employ them? And then, since he framed his whole argument around medical benefit costs, what if the employer inquired as to family members habits under the guise of "saving costs"?

His only justification for implementing this policy was that the insurance companies charged him higher rates for employer covered healthcare premiums. He didn't necessarily have to fire them, but could have made them make up the difference in insurance premium costs or procure their own insurance. Heck, workers with children normally incur far higher annual medical costs than childless smokers so I don't understand why health coverage wouldn't be higher for them. And then there's the issue that smokers would consume less pension benefits due to estimated shorter lifespans. I'd love to see Kip Viscusi's figures factored in to see how much having smokers in his employ might "save" him money.

But most importantly, under implied contract rules, the employees were fulfilling their part of the employment contract. They really weren't fired "for cause", but for refusing to submit to an obtrusive test. When conditions of employment change such as this tenured or vested employees are generally grandfathered in. It's true that no one "owns" their job, but employment is a contract and both parties are expected to fulfill their portion of the agreement. However, it is better off they're gone, for he could have made their employment miserable by scrutinizing their work habits daily to look for some other cause to fire them.

Anyway, my beef isn't with goofballs like Weyers and Weyco. I'm more concerned about government agencies following this same policy. There a sheriff in Arizona, several State Attorneys' Offices in Florida, the city of Miami, among others who are getting on this only non-smoking employees allowed ban-wagon. A police dept in Massachussetts fired a cop simply because someone saw him light up in a bar while off-duty. I don't even think he was a full-time daily smoker, but just happened to feel like having a few while at the bar. There are many more casual smokers these days, who don't smoke daily, but will have a cigarette or two while relaxing with a drink. Heck, smokers also pay their fair share of taxes and then some, so no government agency has the right to restrict employment. Even those police and fire departments who claim that smoking employees can't perform under the rigors of the job shouldn't be able to make arbitrary and capricious judgements. Some smokers are more physically fit than couch potatoes who don't smoke. People are employable as long as they can continue to meet the physical requirements under annual testing criteria, whether they smoke or not.

But as far as the private employers rights are concerned, Stossel is right. But in being right, the anti-smokers who support this just shot themselves in the foot on smoking bans implemented "for the employees' health". They are contending that if it's ok to fire smokers, then no employees should have any right to employment. Someone doesn't smoke and doesn't like to be exposed to it in the workplace, then too bad. Tell em if they don't like it to go work for Weyco.

I don't think one would test positive for primary smoking by eating plants from the nightshade family. There's a huge difference between measurements in primary smokers and non-smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Most of the research and analysis I did was to examine anti-smokers claims that non-smokers are regularly exposed to significant amounts of ETS. The fact is that non-smokers are not exposed to an awful lot of tobacco smoke in many places these days. The government estimated through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that on average, non-smokers were exposed to approximately 75% less tobacco smoke in 1999-2000 than they were back in 1990. Those measurements are so low that diets rich in nightshades is much more likely to give false positives.

Gabz, you're right that they don't test for nicotine itself because it has such a short half-life. They test for the cotinine, which is a product of nicotine metabolization.

Oh, I've been doing well. Just real busy trying to get by.

Best of luck on your building. I'll be up there before long now that the weather is finally getting better.

Publius, just for your info, the report was eventually published. There's a copy of the abstract on the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) PubMed database.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) used to have it posted on their site, but I can't find it under the same document title as when I downloaded it years ago. However, you can point your fellow freeper to get a copy here. The conclusion was, "Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk. We did find weak evidence of a dose-response relationship between risk of lung cancer and exposure to spousal and workplace ETS. There was no detectable risk after cessation of exposure." However, it is important to note that their calculations for childhood exposures were, "ETS exposure during childhood was not associated with an increased risk of lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64-0.96)," which means that their data indicated that children exposed to parental smoking had less of a risk of contracting lung cancer later in life than children not exposed. So when they say childhood exposure was not associated with increased risk, they weren't lying, but they were misleading because their results did indicate it was associated with decreased risk. Pretty incredible, eh?

Yes, that's the idea. Let's jump on the ban wagon and ban them durn farmers too. It's all their fault for makin' it easier for folks to hunt and forage in supermarket aisles.

Then just ban supermarkets. Make everyone hunt or forage for their food.

"...but they will be going up this year I am sure - we've gotten building permits for some of the work we are going to be doing and so we won't be able to stay under the radar screen."

Now you went and did it, Gabz. There's a reason why so many homes in the rust belt get run down, to help keep the taxman away. But where you are, it shouldn't affect you too much.

Here, our assessments are going up by 23% this year and through the goodness of their hearts, they actually proposed cutting the tax rate per $100 by a whopping 1.5%. That equates to a 46% increase in property taxes this year over last. That's also after going up over 20% last year.

I just don't understand how the government can take in such a windfall with a straight face. Cost of services they supply certainly don't increase by that much. My salary sure doesn't go up like that from year to year, so why should they get so much more of our money to "play with"?

LOL. You crack me up. Thanks for the humor.