I’ll explain it. Regulating secondhand smoke presents its own set of challenges, since it applies rather intense withdrawl symptoms (of mind and body) to millions of addicted smokers. So it’s different than mandatory vaccines, which involve at most a moment’s sting (ignoring the Swine Flu fiasco of the 1970s).
Sorry for being dense but holy guacamole Polycarp smokes?!?!?! Jeez guy, don’t take this the wrong way but… I for one would prefer to share the planet with Poly for a longer period, as opposed to a shorter one. I know, I know: your call, your decision.
Anybody have any insight? I would think that firsthand smoking would be more than 4-5 times worse than secondhand smoking. There’s something wrong with this picture.
For completeness, [46,000 / (134,235 + 46,000)] = 26%.
England & Scotland, in 1604. See the decree by King James I of England (VI of Scotland): “A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco”. (Available online from Project Gutenberg.)
This was later repealed, due to the other influence you mentioned (“MONEY!”). Specifically, the money from the companies growing, importing & selling tobacco.
I see your point, but in the case of secondhand smoke regulations there is no demand that smokers go without entirely. If one views having to go out into a parking lot rather than smoke in a restaurant as an outrageous infringement on one’s personal rights, then a major loss of perspective is involved.
Let me rephrase my question, since Polycarp seems intent on continuing to view the topic as a personal liberty issue.
Do the people, through their elected representatives, have the right to outlaw dumping used oil from a do-it-yourself oil change in the local creek? What if the weekend mechanic is a contentious person who only dumps oil more than 50 miles from the closest household or city? Is it within the people’s rights to forbid ANY dumping of said used oil, even if they may never be exposed to it?
Just to point out a couple things. Environmental contaminants, like used oil or cigarette smoke, are always a hazard. 50 miles from the closest household, or outside in the “open air” is not enough to prevent those contaminants from polluting the general environment we all share. A 1994 study of the fire particulate matter in the air of Los Angeles had this to say.
Personally I’m not in favor of flat out prohibition, but I fail to see why cigarette smoking should be protected as a personal liberty. I think it is a fine area to regulate in the name of public health, and the body of evidence indicating such regulation is a good idea is growing daily.
Forgive me, but I keep losing the thread of this argument. I thought Poly had opined that banning smoking from workplaces, restaurants and doorways was ok.
Now I see from page 5 that Poly pushed the freedom issue, which seems a little overdrawn to me. But when there’s agreement on fairly narrow policy details, I find it difficult to get too excited about questionable (as opposed to objectional) theoretic justifications.
In New Zealand (some) of the taxes go straight to the general tax pool but some are used for cessation programmes like this one. Quitline has worked VERY well for some people I know.
High costs from tax might discourage some people? Don’t worry they have that one covered. My friend is an air hostess and she brings me duty free now and then. One carton/Eight packets=$NZ 20-ish, bought here they cost $90-ish dollars.
The govt has tried it’s very hardest to dissuade me with the price! It has absolutley helped bring down the rate of smokers (I could well be wrong but I believe the NZ adult rate of smokers is at 24%, a new all time low).
When I talk about banning smoking I’m talking hard core smokers like myself. Alcohol is legal and it could be said that it has many positives but also many negatives. Heroin is illegal. Does it have any positives? No! So it is illegal! Does smoking have any positives (other then to we nicotine addicted fools?). Ummmmmm NO.
Not banning smoking when it is CLEAR that it really damages pretty much everyone seems stupid, especially when there are people in society who will NEVER give up.
So it comes down to everyones health or money…we all know who will win.
I fully expect Emphysemia on the horizon and have only myself to blame.
Actually, it makes perfect sense to me. If a group is overstating its position in one area, it increases the possibility that they are doing so in other areas as well.
Wouldn’t you do the same with the Tobacco Institute?
So the answer is yes, SHS definitely causes SIDS. Is that correct? Or is there some difference between causation and “it’s a risk factor”?
I realize this is the Pit and everything, but I am still mildly surprised that even raising a question would set you off.
I see it is a subject which you find difficulty in discussing calmly. That’s unfortunate.
The 430 figure probably was derived by coming up with the attributable risk percent (AR%) for SIDS and SHS. I’d imagine that they looked at a representative sample of SIDS households, compared the rates for smoking households and non-smoking households after controlling for confounders, and then found the relative risk attributable to SIDS. The AR% would simply be the percent of SIDS victims in the sample whose deaths were attributable to SHS.
So chances are 430 was derived by multiplying the AR% by the total number of SIDS victims in 2005. This is all a hunch, though.
The Surgeon General’s report is not a position paper. It is summarizing the positions of ~900 studies. Luckily they present the database of studies they drew from and citations to the original publications so you can judge for yourself if they are inaccurately summarizing said studies. So far I haven’t seen any such inaccuracies in any of the background studies I have looked into. If you have evidence of such a discrepancy I’m sure we’d all like to see it.
Otherwise you could demonstrate a significant percentage of the ~900 studies overstated their findings, thereby throwing the summary off.
Evidence of either occurance would be very interesting, might even get you on the talk radio circuit or a job at the Cato Institute.
Having completely misinterpreted the purport of a few comments by Jackmaniii and Monty as suggesting the banning of smoking anywhere, and their having corrected that misunderstanding above, I’d like to apologize to them for being snarky at what I thought was being said by them and in fact was not.
Steven: Let me change your analogy a bit. Suppose the issue is not the dumping of oil in streams. But rather, Mike Mechanic changes his own oil at home, running the car up on those little ramps. He’s conscientious about not spilling much, but some inevitably goes into the soil in his yard. Further, he does oil changes for the cars of old Mr. and Mrs. Elderly and the single-mom Ms. Neighbor, as their neighbor and friend. Natural dispersion and filtration by soil mean that minimal amounts do end up in the stream – not very much, but a fraction of an ounce per oil change, every month or so.
Yes, that’s pollution, in the raw definition of the word. But it’s minimalistic, in comparison to the general problem. This would be the parallel which comes closest to a real-world analogy.
Ideally, nobody should pollute air and water with anything. But in a world where we live in temperate zones and people need heat in the winter, and electric power year round, and transportation which in general is powered by internal combustion motors, and insist on using products made from metal or plastics, which require smelters and cracking plants and fabricators – some pollution will inevitably occur. The job of the environmental regulator is to ensure that it is minimal and as little threat to health as possible. And on that basis I can agree with intelligent anti-smoking regulations that do not prohibit it everywhere and under any circumstances, but keep the air clean for those who don’t smoke except in areas designated for smokers to smoke in.
Bottom line: I don’t think a smoker should smoke anywhere where he will offend or threaten the health of a non-smoker. But I don’t think a non-smoker has the inherent right to say that he has the right to go into a designated smoking area and not have to breathe smoke (what I misconstrued the strenuous arguments against any exposure to second-hand smoke as advocating). And, of course, some intelligence needs to go into setting off those designated smoking areas. I went to a restaurant once where the designated smoking tables were just inside the main entrance – which compelled the non-smokers to walk through air more than slightly smoky to get to the non-smoking area. That was absurd. But saying, you may smoke on the paved area outside this secondary door, where nobody goes except those wishing to smoke, or in this designated room vented to the loading dock and effectively sealed and airlocked, is not causing unreasonable exposure.
I accept pollution from cars, factories, etc. as necessary evils. They should still be minimized whenever possible, or outright eliminated if possible. I guess where the analogy fails for me, when extended to smoking, is the “necessary” part.
The question is, where are these places where someone can smoke without threatening the health of non-smokers? I was a bit shocked myself to find ambient smoke levels at 1% in LA. If the Surgeon General’s report is correct in their finding of “no safe levels” then 1% is probably already over the line when it comes to potential harm to non-smokers.
I’m on record as favoring designated smoking areas and making the boundries between them require explicit consent to cross. What I don’t see is the “rights” angle. The old saw “your rights end where my nose begins” seems to apply here. Smokers can’t control where their smoke goes, and some of it certainly gets up the nose of non-smokers.* I think everyone should have the right, by virtue of their vested interest in the environment we all have to share, to control what other people voluntarially put into the environment. This can be accomplished through regulation, just like we do with industry and other sources of pollutants. In general these sources of pollutants are trade-offs with the useful products which are the primary goal of the pollution-generating activity.
I can’t see a parallel there with smoking. The primary goal is satisfying the smokers addiction or individual desire. Whereas Mike Mechanic may be lauded for helping the elderly couple by changing their oil, with the regrettable pollution which accompanies the act, Sam Smoker is probably not going to get a pat on the back for lighting up and producing his regrettable pollution.
Enjoy,
Steven
One of these days I’m going to regret my policy of using double entendres whenever possible. Today is not that day.
If there is no safe level of exposure to SHS, then there are no places where someone can smoke without threatening the health of non-smokers.
Which is sort of the problem. At what point is the chance of you dying horribly small enough to allow me to engage in some avoidable activity?
If society allows me to smoke in my backyard, and that raises the chance that my next-door neighbor’s child will die of something from one in a million to one in 999,999, is that worth it? If not, is it worth the effort to stop me from smoking, given that smoking is not easy to stop doing even with the best intentions?
That still leaves us with an unproven allegation that the Surgeon General is overstating the case with regard to SIDS. And the illogic of implying that one can dismiss research findings in unrelated areas if the allegation were found to have merit.
Not precisely stated, but essentially correct. SHS has been found to be one of the major preventable risk factors for SIDS.
You and at least one other poster, having failed to refute the scientific findings on SHS and the need for appropriate public policy to deal with it, seem to be falling back on trying to provoke your opponents by declaring that they’re hysterical or overly emotional on the subject.
If you read the thread, the most highly charged and over the top responses are coming from smokers.
I noted that your reasoning is poor, your arguments unconvincing and your responses evasive (how about answering that question regarding Iraq war justifications and other Administration foreign policy positions, for example?). I don’t find that upsetting (I’m used to your performance on these boards in recent times), just disappointing.
I could have written the very same thing, almost word for word, in another thread in which a crew of posters repeatedly kept displaying their failure to understand how statistics work. Needless to say, I’m not surprised to see who is arguing against you right now.
If past experience is any indication, any minute now your opponents are going to accuse you of wanting to get lung cancer due to second-hand smoke, so be prepared for it. Oh yeah, and whatever you do, DO NOT MENTION THAT YOU ARE A DOCTOR. I know, I know, this is a counterintuitive admonishment. But trust me on this.
That is in the hands of the people, through their legislatures. The question I’m interested in is if smoking is a right the legislatures are not allowed to restrict. I’m thinking it is not, but I’m open to discussion.
I’ve given my own view a couple times. I think phasing smoking out of society, as is the current trend, is probably the best approach. Barring that, the smokers should bear the cost of dealing with the burdens their habits inadvertently impose on the rest of society. This means funding public health costs with cigarette taxes, and the like. If your neighbor’s kid comes down with lung cancer from SHS, then the least which the smoking community can do is take care of them.
The neighbor’s infant dying from SIDS because of SHS is a pricklier question. I’m honestly not sure how I would feel about that, or what my own personal sense of justice would demand.
