Just Can't Quit: How far will smoking bans go?
November 12, 2008, 11:00am
California became the first state to ban smoking in bars a decade ago. Since then, smoking bans have flourished in bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, universities—you name it.
Recently, the Bay Area city of Belmont passed a law that targets people who smoke in their own homes.
Smoking is one of the worst things you can do to your body, but how dangerous is second-hand smoke? Are banners saving lives or battering science? Are they progressive champions or plunderers of property rights?
Citing the proliferation of privately enforced bans, reason.tv host Nick Gillespie says, "I actually like smoking bans; I just don't like it when the government does the banning."
Indeed, smoking bans have already set the stage for all sorts of other nanny state policies to save us from ourselves. The nannies have already barged through our front doors. Just how much farther will the banners go?
"Just Can't Quit" was written and produced by Ted Balaker.
For related articles and to embed this video on your own web site, go here.
As a bonus double-feature, click below to see 2002's Talking Butts: A Smoking Documentary, which was made with the help of reason's Paul Feine, Jesse Walker, Jacob Sullum, and Charles Paul Freund. The 25-minute film explores why people smoke and why attempts to regulate and punish smokers have unintended consequences. And it features a cameo by filmmaker John Waters that is absolutely unforgettable.
To embed Talking Butts on your site, go here.
MMMM | November 12, 2008, 2:06pm | #
Even while the sensible thing to do was quit smoking anyway, for 30+ years, the righteous, indignant, and ignorant each bought into anti-smoking hysteria and played right into the hands of filthy lucres who made 100s of millions litigating this bullshit. Meanwhile, tobacco companies drained their coffers to do what? Their payouts to state treasuries did what for "the public" exactly?
Californians especially are schizophrenic. It makes sense to ban public consumption of coke, angel dust, and LSD, and harder drugs, but why establish a free-market and public safe havens for the sale and consumption of marijuana, but then ban tobacco across the board?
I also enjoy watching libertarians argue against smoking bans but wonder why they isolate this issue from drug law in general. This is a fun debate, but you can't get away from death, dying, public health, and public conduct.
Do you think that, in the best of all worlds, with a free market for recreational drugs, that laws could be applied as evenly as they are now for the federal war on drugs? I'd love to think so. Perhaps Appalacia would turn blue again, if they were allowed to do what they do best already and turn a tidy profit.
Moreover, while in a perfect world, drug abusers would be free to kill themselves, why should the rest of us finance their decline? Why wouldn't a large set of disincentives apply to drug abusers, such as the loss of health or other benefits conferred at tax payer expense? That's the problem. Too many addicts are morally inferior to the "go it alone" libertarians on this blog and less likely to stay at home and die quietly. They'd seek treatment at the county hospital, or show up in ER coughing up blood.
For myself, I would prefer spending drug war money on startup costs for public health care system and then finance it going forward with profits from a heavily taxed recreational drug industry. We all die, who cares why.
Mr. Average | November 12, 2008, 2:20pm | #
Smoking Bans apprently DO increase public health
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/11/12/smoking_ban_tied_to_a_gain_in_lives?mode=PF
Smoking ban tied to a gain in lives
Fatal heart attacks drop in Massachusetts
(excerpt)
Nearly 600 fewer Massachusetts residents have died from heart attacks each year since legislators banned smoking in virtually all restaurants, bars, and other workplaces four years ago, according to a report to be released today that provides some of the strongest evidence yet that such laws save lives.
The study, conducted by the state Department of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health, shows that a steep decline in heart attack deaths started as Boston and most of its neighbors adopted bans. Enforcement of the statewide law beginning in mid-2004 coincided with a further reduction, the study found. From 2003 to 2006, heart attack deaths in Massachusetts plummeted 30 percent, significantly accelerating what had been a more modest long-term decline.
The report, obtained in advance by the Globe, found that the number of heart attacks began dropping in communities with strong antismoking laws years before the 2004 statewide law and that similar reductions were achieved in other cities and towns only after the state ban. By the end of 2006, the rate of decline in all cities and towns had nearly converged. The authors said this pattern showed that advances in treatment of heart attacks were not responsible for the smaller number of deaths.
"This is the strongest study yet done of the effect of smoking bans on heart attacks," said Dr. Michael Siegel, a Boston University School of Public Health specialist in tobacco control who has been a critic of some antismoking laws and of previous research conducted by the state and Harvard. "You can no longer argue that these declines would have occurred simply due to medical treatment."
SStahl | November 13, 2008, 10:27am | #
Helen Lovejoy asked, "Will someone please think of the children?"
See how viciously and unscrupulously antismokers have been using children.
The Huffington Post (March 19, 2008)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-stier/sick-kids-misused-in-smok_b_92334.html
Quote from the article:
Turns out the truth doesn't matter. The New York City Health Department is standing by TV ads that show children allegedly sickened by exposure to second hand smoke. Only problem is, the deathly-ill kids weren't actually known to be exposed to smoke. They were just stock footage of diseased kids.
....
"If they were selling a commercial product, the FTC would surely regulate this misleading ad," said Jef Richards, who is also Professor of Advertising at University of Texas at Austin.
(NOTE: They ARE selling products--smoking cessation products!)
**********
AOL News (March 17, 2008)
http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2008/03/17/are-gross-out-anti-smoking-ads-necessary/
“This weekend, watching a spring training baseball game on TV, we were accosted with another horrible anti-smoking TV ad. This one showed sick children hooked up to machines in a hospital. We covered our son's eyes, but not before he saw disturbing footage of a very ill kid. Isn't daytime TV supposed to be safe from that kind of thing?”
***********
For those who don't recall, from Multicenter Case-Control Study of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer in Europe, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 90, No. 19, October 7, 1998:
Results: 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).
(*) Note the implication of the results for CHILDREN. The authors of this study stated that they could not prove yet could not rule out a dose-response relationship for their adult studies, which had insignificant results. The fact that the particular correlation that did prove statistically significant was for CHILDREN does rule out a dose-response relationship. (Any idiot who's ever walked down the pharmacy aisle at Wal-Mart has seen Bayer, Tylenol and Benadryl, among others, for children because children can only handle the lower dosages.) IOW, the authors of the study contradicted their results in their conclusions.
SStahl | November 13, 2008, 10:44am | #
Mr Average wrote:
Smoking Bans apprently DO increase public health
[And cut and pasted from the Globe]
"This is the strongest study yet done of the effect of smoking bans on heart attacks," said Dr. Michael Siegel, a Boston University School of Public Health specialist in tobacco control..
"You can no longer argue that these declines would have occurred simply due to medical treatment."
PicassoIII wrote:
Before any ban advocates get excited about this, the article does not mention mechanism.
*********
Yet, we've all seen the economic damage from smoking bans--and not only in the bar industry. How much has that economic damage harmed public health. Don't even try to pretend that losing one's job or business doesn't have a deleterious effect on one's health. How much additional harm have antismoking attitudes, engendered largely by smoking bans and fallacious advertisements, had on society in terms of tearing families apart, giving antismokers a license to physically assault smokers, turning good workers away from their jobs (the obvious example was the researcher in chronic heart disease, which has cost public health dearly), the nightmares given to children subjected to gross antismoker ads (which tend to be fallacious anyway), and so much more.
Interestingly, smoking bans also tend to be followed by marked DECREASES in air quality. the aiurlines are the best example of that. The idea is that banning the most innocuous thing in the air can be used as an excuse to cut back on air vetilation and filtration systems. Oops.
The harm done to public health from smoking bans is undeniable.
Withdrawal from nicotine involves temporary cravings. Withdrawal from smoking is a bit more tricky--except for the fella who read Allen Carr's book. Withdrawal from freedom entails the abuse of science, law and humanity.
PicassoIII | November 13, 2008, 11:32am | #
chinese bob wrote:
All of the carbon dioxide from cars has to be as harmful if not more harmful than second hand cigarette smoke.
Better yet, let's ban cars, buses, trucks, and factories because they are harming the air we breathe in at a far greater rate than the handful of cigarette smokers.
Let's not get discriminating here. If it produces smoke, then let's ban it. That's the only way we can truly say we're eliminating the risk to our health because medical studies show second hand smoke is harmful.
Careful, talk like that will make nanny statists think you can tie smoking to global warming.
You do bring up a good point though, air pollution, LOCAL particulate pollution can be a big deal. LA smog and SanDiego, Oakland marine ports. Some numbers to ponder..
Particulate pollution
comparison.
Wood fire
toxins.
It takes 17 cigs to equal the pollution of running a modern gas car for an hour.
A car w/ no catalytic converter is 88cigs/hr.
It takes a whopping 900-1750 cigs to equal the pollution of a single diesel truck (or piece of construction equipment or generator or….).
Someone will of course counter that these things are necessary, fine.
Does anyone NEED a fireplace? That’s 750-1475 cigs worth.
How bout a charcoal grill, those are just as bad. Just to get that flame broiled flavor so desired by aficionados gross polluters pump ~60 PACKS, 6 WHOLE CARTONS worth soot into the atmosphere. Pay special attention to the second link, seems that even at the same concentration wood fires are more hazardous. The pollution from a single bonfire?
120,000 cigarettes
Not much of a tree hugger but i couldn't help but pretty much stop using my fireplace when i saw these numbers living IN chicago.
This is one of those things where you can almost justify a 'polluter pays' fee on firewood and charcoal in major metros.
And seriously, could we put a little more effort into nuclear.
cricket | November 18, 2008, 8:09pm | #
There is no danger from second-hand smoke. The babyboom period produced a billion kids exposed to SHS everywhere they went: in homes, yards, playgrounds, shopping areas, grocery stores, in post offices and banks; in cars, buses, planes, trains and taxis. There were smokers in barber shops, beauty salons, drugstores, diners, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, waiting rooms; lobbies, airports, vacation spots; at summer camps, swimming pools, bowling alleys, beaches, parks, and all the ball games – at adult gatherings, meetings, church events, parties; smoke from their neighbors, visitors, aunts, uncles, grandparents; from maids, babysitters, older siblings – even coaches, teachers, scout leaders and den mothers.
It was widespread exposure to second-hand-smoke, and it was every day of their lives.
According to modern paranoia, none of these kids should have made it past the crib. Actually they managed quite well, even got through the massive drug scene of the 60s and 70s – with smokers around them all the time, for decades.
So who’s kidding whom?
One billion people in China, and children there are exposed to much more smoking than you ever saw in America – and they don’t die. They don’t get sick. There is no threat. There is no epidemic. Because there are no ASHoles, no agendas, no money trails. No Banzhafs, no Glantzes, or Carmonas; no vapid TV ads offering pills for diahhroemic paramiestudapidalisis – none of these dreary lifestyles that embrace fear, hypochondria and pharma.
American society isn’t healthier, it gets sicker every day. It stems from a time when Pharma discovered no more big epidemics coming down the road: no diphtheria, cholera, flu, polio – gee how to survive, sell Geritol? So they came up with a cool idea: what if smokers eventually bought all their nicotine from us instead of Phil Morris? Think of the huge profits! Let’s call up the lawyers & marketers and draft a future plan: first get Joe Senator to put warnings on cigarette packs, bide our time, then go with plan B. Slow process, just raise the bar an inch at a time, cultivate an image: first make smokers look like addicts, then outcasts, lepers, and finally like criminals and baby-killers.
I look for where the money’s going. Because this isn’t about smoking. It never was about smoking.
Smoking has just become a tool in the hands of many.
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