Have we been lied to about secondhand smoke?

Great Debates
141

But they aren’t. They live here. So you aren’t “pointing out” anything, you’re speculating. Unfortunately, the facts differ from your speculation. One of them sits on the front steps, talks on his cellphone, and smokes. There are plenty more.

So are you asserting that objects that are not on fire behave exactly like those that are on fire? Because that was what I was talking about, but you appear to be trying to change the subject.

There are, and if you had followed the links I provided, you would have seen that.

:rolleyes:

First of all, don’t blame me if you can’t find cites to back up your assertions. Everyone here, being on the Internet and all, is equally capable of using Google. Second, it’s really unbecoming to accuse someone of saying the exact opposite of what they said, then get indignant when they call you on it.

142

These statistics don’t show anything. First of all, restaurants that serve alcohol are not the same thing as bars. I’m guessing bars are counted in that group, but the majority are restaurants. I don’t recall seeing smoking in a restaurant in California since the early '90s. Second, the growth in population between 1 April 2000 and 1 July 2001 was 1.9% (according to the Census). Also, the California economy grew during that period, and more people had more money to spend in restaurants. In fact, those numbers support the opposite conclusion. Restaurants that do not serve liquor grew by 5.4%, but those that do (which presumably include bars) grew by only 3.2%.

143

Are you sure about this? My understanding is that employee compensation is exactly as deductible as health insurance costs, and that the current state came about initially through competition (i.e., employer-provided healthcare arose before individual health insurance came about as an industry) and remains primarily because of the bargaining power of employers and continued competition.

I say that it’s my understanding – not that I’ve looked into it specifically. So I ask not as a challenge, but in an effort to eradicate some of my ignorance on this subject.

Any help you could provide I’d certainly appreciate.

144

Well quite, so why are you doing exactly that?

I never equated waitstaff as being equal to slave labour, that would be ridiculous. So why are you presenting that as my argument?

My point was; without employment health and safety legislation, as ivylass suggests (“Government should stay out of it”), many places of employment would be as bad as working on the pyramids, with employees being regarded as just about expendable as slaves. If they don’t like the risks, then they can go work someplace else. Tough luck if there are no other jobs and the only other option is starvation.

Of course it was hyperbole, and a ‘worse case senario’, I did that to emphasis the point. Was that what confused you?

Obviously working in a bar is not as potentially dangerous as many other jobs. But legislation shouldn’t make that distinction. It is not one law for the building site, another for the office. Regardless of the workplace, the employer has a responsibility to minimise risk to their employees and customers, regardless of what form it might take. And saying “they knew the risks, they could go elsewhere” is not an excuse that will stand up in court.

Previously, for some reason, SHS has appeared to be an exception to this. Current trends now suggest that people are accepting that there is no reason why it should be. “Sorry, he knew my bar was smoke filled, not my fault he contracted cancer” is no better than “Sorry, I told him that rope was broken, not my fault he fell 85 stories”.

145

A total aside for the liberterians out there …

Is the employer/employee relationship such that it can be considered a coercive situation and thus subject to regulation within a liberterian framework?

146

Speaking as a Libertarian, DSeaid I do not believe the employer/employee relationship is coercive at all. I choose to get up at 5:30 (okay 6:00…actually 6:20ish) get dressed, and drive to work. If my boss finds my productivity less than desirable, she will terminate me. Nobody is being forced to put up with anything. In exchange for my work for the company, I am given a paycheck.

Regulation…hmmm. Can you better define that? Regulating what?

147

Oh, as far as the impact the ban had on California businesses…I submit this for the thread’s consideration:

http://www.forces.org/evidence/files/ban-csr.htm

148

Regulating worker conditions. From minimum wage to any aspect of worker safety.

So if as an employer I go into extremely poor Apalachia and set up a factory which deals with extremely hazardous chemicals, should government have a right to regulate the conditions of my factory visavis exposure of workers to the hazards, or is any amount of risk allowed so long as workers are informed that such risks exist?

I know it is a hijack, sorry.

149

A few initial thougts on that link, ivylass:

  1. The writer does not link to his original data, and expects readers to take him at his word. Not good. I’m not saying he’s lying, but part of honest analysis is to allow others easy access to your original data to see if they can duplicate your results. I’ll take a look at the Calif. BoE site later to see if the historical data is accurate.

  2. He states that he examined two time periods, 1989-93 and 1994-99, and comes to conclusions based on that, but ignores the fact that the ban was introduced progressively. The ban did not go into effect for bars and clubs until 1998! That only gives him one year’s worth of data for those establishments.

  3. Assuming his statement that there were 1,093 fewer bars and restaurants in the second period is true, it assumes that correlation equals causation. This is the bugaboo of any statistical examiniation. Given that he himself alleges that the prio 9-year period resulted in zero net economic growth, it’s entirely possible that many of these establishments went out of business for economic or other reasons entirely unrelated to a smoking ban.

What’s more, he again doesn’t give us his data or break it down. How many fewer RBs were there the first year? The second year? The third year? If his numbers are accurate, but if the bulk of those 1,093 establishments stopped operating in the first year, my instincts tell me it would be due to a lagged effect of the preceding nine-year, no-growth period.

In short, thanks for the link, and it gives good places to start looking, but it doesn’t appear that Mr. Otto Mueksh understands much about economics, statistics, or causality.

150

It’s a lovely idea, if we lived in a perfect world. In this perfect world everyone knows everything there was to know about the job (risks included), everyone has total freedom to move anywhere to do any job and everyone has the ability to train and perform whatever job they like most.

Unfortunately we don’t. You cannot expect every employee to know everything their employer does, about what corners are being cut, about what the latest research in the industry says. Nor do most people have complete freedom to leave their job and head off anywere they wish in hope of a better one. Their financial or personal situation may make that impossible. Nor can everyone take their pick of jobs, they may not have the abilities to do much else.

It is in this real world that legislation protects people. The employee often has no choice except to trust the employer. They are in no position to either fully evaluate the risks of their job, or take their pick of another, especially if there are no guarantees that any other employer would be any better.

151

chula, that hardly supports the opposite conclusion. If all restaurants, which include those that do not sell beer, wine or liquor, were affected by the ban, and taxable sales at all restaurants grew after the ban, it still supports the suggestion that the ban did not hurt the restaurant business.

manny, I read something extensive about the employer-provided-healthcare world at one of the blogs recently . . . I think maybe it was janegalt.net (Hey, she works down the street from you!). I’ll see if I can dig it out of her archives.

152

Ah. Yes, it was indeed the hyperbole and the “work ethics have been in severe decline since the Pyramids were built” that confused me. I mean, I knew it was hyperbole, but it was so much so that I still have no idea what you were actually trying to say with the exaggeration that work ethics have gotten poorer since we used slave labor several thousand years ago. In any case, I should have used “is somehow analagous to” as opposed to “=” since that’s what I interpreted your post to mean Mea culpa.

Is this is still hyperbole? I sure hope so; it seems to me that few places of employment are even capable of being that bad and of course it is rather insulting to suggest that a substantial fraction of employers are that immoral.

But this is just plain wrong. “Sorry, he knew my bar was smoke filled and he chose to take that risk” is quite reasonable. So long as the employer clearly spells out the risks inherent in the job, and takes reasonable precautions, the employee can assume risk. In my opinion (and obviously not in yours), so long as the employer clearly spells out the risks, the employee should be able to assume any risk he wants.

Look, I fail entirely to see why it’s any of your business what risks I choose to take in my work environment. But I also fail entirely to see what we’re going to accomplish by debating this further, since it’s painfully obvious that we come at this from diametrically opposed world views and at this point all we’re doing is rehashing the same things over and over.

As an aside, the reason that ETS hasn’t been a major issue of concern historically is probably simply that most people didn’t think it was dangerous; even now many people don’t. I would strongly suspect that current trends are not that people are accepting that ETS is a workplace risk that should be banned but rather that some people feel this and many more feel that ETS is a nuisance that they don’t like and it would be awfully nice if it were banned. An aside the aside: why is this workplace risk to be banned when others are merely regulated?

153

I should reiterate also that if anecdotal evidence proves to be reliable, many of the employees of bars are smokers themselves, in which case regulating ETS for their benefit seems kind of stupid.

154

How about this for a “compromise” on SHS in restaurants/bars…

For about a year now here in Edmonton there has been a municipal ban on smoking in all public places, malls, restaurants, bars, etc… unless they restrict their clientele to people over the age of 18 (also the legal drinking age).

This helps to protect young children from SHS, and works as an easy guideline for those who don’t want to be around SHS.

“Would that restaurant allow kids in? Then they must not allow smoking.” Nice and easy to figure out.

Individual businesses can make to calculation of whether or not they are willing to give up having families/children/underage teenagers as customers if havings smoking customers is that important to them, for whatever reason.

As a result, virtually every bar allows smoking, since they have to ID you to get in anyways. Nearly all restaurants have banned smoking. A few restaurants (like a small cafe I go to often) have decided to allow smoking as part of the “environment” and thus do not allow children in. (Although I suspect that they’re not that stringent with checking the age of teenagers who come in.) All malls, offices, etc… are non-smoking. IIRC, restaurants with bars attached do not allow smoking if kids can use the restaurant, but smoking is allowed if there is a separate outdoor patio area for the bar.

Of course, this situation doesn’t really help the bar employees who are exposed to SHS. But, on the other hand it still leaves them with other possibilities for employment without SHS. If they are relatively unskilled and/or just entering the workforce, they can still get waitstaff jobs in the (numerous) non-smoking establishments.

I think it’s a pretty fair compromise, for now. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a smoking ban in bars as well. But, although I don’t have asthma, I don’t react very well to cigarette smoke if I’m in a smoking area for more than an hour or so, and it interferes with my breathing even then.

155

DSeid, would you mind starting another thread with this subject? You ask some interesting questions, and I’m sure there are other posters out there who would like to address this issue. Let’s not clutter up this thread.

I need to think about your question…you raise some interesting points. When you’ve started a new thread I’ll see what I can bring to the discussion table.

May I say again how much I enjoy SD? No matter what the subject, you’re bound to get a lively discussion with a lot of diverse viewpoints. I love this place!

156

OK, I check over at Forces and receive quite a few informative responses.

From this it is obvious one can not pool those studies without first knowing how they were done. Please explain in laymen’s terms how you reached the conclusion that most of those studies showed an increased relative risk when clearly they don’t. The only thing I can think of is you evaluated the “average” column in the charts instead of the “Min/Max” column as directed.

157

OK, I check over at Forces and receive quite a few informative responses.

From this it is obvious one can not pool those studies without first knowing how they were done. Please explain in laymen’s terms how you reached the conclusion that most of those studies showed an increased relative risk when clearly they don’t. The only thing I can think of is you evaluated the “average” column in the charts instead of the “Min/Max” column as directed.

158

You hit the nail on the head as did a cousin of mine a few years back when he said, if cigarette smoke had no odor, people wouldn’t care anymore about it than they do about all other odorless toxins in the air. It’s not about health, it about not having to smell it.

You’re both right. When is the last time you saw an all out campaign from TV ads to indoctrinating kids in schools with the same fervor against any other toxin?

BTW. Sorry to all about the double posting above, this is twice now. I click the Submit Reply button, and wait for what feels like 5 min., then get a message the server is not responding. So I try again only to find a double posting.

159

I mentioned in my post that restaurants in California were already non-smoking by 1998. Smoking has been banned in restaurants (except for bar areas) since 1995, and many local ordinances had already banned it by that time. The 1998 ban only affected bars and restaurants with liquor licenses.

160

Peter,
She doesn’t quite understand how meta-analyses are supposed to work.
You always cherry-pick, but based on critera set up ahead of time that determine if the study methods were sound. For example, we will only accept studies that have double blind controls and used such and such a dosing range.
What is important is that you choose your criteria before you review the studies; you can’t set up criteria to qualify the studies you like and to exclude findings that you dislike. Is there evidence that such was done?
It is exactly for small effects which fail to reach statistical significane that meta-analyses thought to be ideal tools for. A relative risk of 1.3 with a range of, say .9 to 1.7 at 95% confidence interval does not mean that the risk is not 30% increased. It means that the data in insufficient on its own to prove that the 1.3 is true to a level of 95% confidence and 90% in one study is not too impressive. A larger study may, or may not reach such a level of 95% confidence. Meta-analysis is designed as a tool to create virtual larger studies out of many individual studies. You may want to follow the meta-analysis thread to get some expert perspectives that I hope will weigh in on how valid this technique is.