The reason is that the majority club/bar goers would be in the 25% of bars that allow smoking. I’m guessing the average club/bar attendee is not concerned with health risks. Thus the Free Market would force the majority of the non-smoking clubs and bars to change or die.
On the SIDS shouting match.
I don’t want infants Bungee Jumping, Hang Gliding, Motorcycling, White Water Rafting, Sweat Lodging, Sharp Shooting, or starting Camp Fires but I also don’t want folks stopping me from engaging in these ‘risky’ activities.
Not even the author of the EPA ETS report chapters on asthma, Dr. Fernando Martinez of the University of Arizona, believes in the garbage he wrote anymore. Quote:
“Like most people, I assumed tobacco smoke and pollution were the problem – this was the politically correct way to think. But these factors turned out not to play a major role.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/o/issues/2000/05/shell.htm
This article in The Atlantic May 2000 fails to note that Martinez was the author of those words the anti-smokers continue to beat smokers over the head with.
And, this is not to say that his new fad beliefs, that inner city kids suffer more asthma because they’re not exposed to pathogens (!) is any better than his old ones.
The EPA, incidentally, did not address the issue of “allergy” to cigarette smoke, because THERE IS NO SUCH THING. The “allergy” studies were done with extracts of unburned tobacco, which showed reactions to allergens which are also found in tomatoes and potatoes. There are no allergens in cigarette smoke itself. But the anti-smokers have certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of this myth.
There have been more cracks in the stonewall of political correctness. At the American Lung Association /American Thoracic Society conference, April 1999:
Passive cigarette smoke often has been thought to increase the risk of asthma, but studies to date have not demonstrated this association convincingly." (D. Stempel)
http://www.medscape.com/medscape/cno/1999/ALA_ATS/Story.cfm?story_id=543
“Until recently, bacterial pathogens were not suspected as important contributors to asthma, except by a handful of epidemiological investigators who noted a strong association between serological evidence of infection with C pneumoniae and asthma.”
“Most asthma, especially in children, appears to involve allergic inflammation of the airways mucosa. But clinicians have long suspected that viral infection of the respiratory tract might be important not only as a cause of asthma exacerbations, but perhaps also as a cause or contributor to the pathogenesis of asthma itself.” (Homer A Boushey, MD)
http://www.medscape.com/medscape/cno/1999/ALA_ATS/Story.cfm?story_id=555
Not even the author of the EPA ETS report chapters on asthma, Dr. Fernando Martinez of the University of Arizona, believes in the garbage he wrote anymore. Quote:
“Like most people, I assumed tobacco smoke and pollution were the problem – this was the politically correct way to think. But these factors turned out not to play a major role.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/o/issues/2000/05/shell.htm
This article in The Atlantic May 2000 fails to note that Martinez was the author of those words the anti-smokers continue to beat smokers over the head with.
And, this is not to say that his new fad beliefs, that inner city kids suffer more asthma because they’re not exposed to pathogens (!) is any better than his old ones.
The EPA, incidentally, did not address the issue of “allergy” to cigarette smoke, because THERE IS NO SUCH THING. The “allergy” studies were done with extracts of unburned tobacco, which showed reactions to allergens which are also found in tomatoes and potatoes. There are no allergens in cigarette smoke itself. But the anti-smokers have certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of this myth.
There have been more cracks in the stonewall of political correctness. At the American Lung Association /American Thoracic Society conference, April 1999:
Passive cigarette smoke often has been thought to increase the risk of asthma, but studies to date have not demonstrated this association convincingly." (D. Stempel)
http://www.medscape.com/medscape/cno/1999/ALA_ATS/Story.cfm?story_id=543
“Until recently, bacterial pathogens were not suspected as important contributors to asthma, except by a handful of epidemiological investigators who noted a strong association between serological evidence of infection with C pneumoniae and asthma.”
“Most asthma, especially in children, appears to involve allergic inflammation of the airways mucosa. But clinicians have long suspected that viral infection of the respiratory tract might be important not only as a cause of asthma exacerbations, but perhaps also as a cause or contributor to the pathogenesis of asthma itself.” (Homer A Boushey, MD)
http://www.medscape.com/medscape/cno/1999/ALA_ATS/Story.cfm?story_id=555
The fact that there is a strong linkage in SIDS is a dead giveaway that the anti-smokers are falsely blaming smoking for an illness that is really caused by infection.
The cervical cancer studies proved this. It is now known that 100% of cervical cancer is caused by HPV. There are no HPV negative cervical cancers left to be independently caused by anything. (“Independently” means, in the absence of any other risk factors.) Contrary to anti-smoker claims, smoking cannot be an independent risk factor.
Nor is smoking a plausible synergistic risk factor. The anti-smokers’ own claims that passive smokers are at nearly the same risk disprove this. It is not biologically plausible that the effects of a small amount of secondhand smoke are similar to the effects of a large amount of firsthand smoke, plus secondhand smoke. It is biologically plausible that smokers and passive smokers are similarly exposed to the true, infectious risk factor, namely HPV.
The anti-smokers manufactured fraudulent smoking risks by means of confounding. In their studies, only a fraction of that 100% rate of HPV involvement was detected. And so, because smokers (and passive smokers) were more likely to be infected for lifestyle reasons, they falsely blamed the false negatives on tobacco.
In fact, the techniques of multivariate they routinely use to boast that they have “controlled” for confounders not only don’t do so, they actually CAUSE this confounding. This was explained in detail in a landmark paper by AN Phillips and George Davey Smith, “Cigarette smoking as a cause of cervical cancer: Has confounding been controlled?” Int J Epidemiol 1994;23:42-49.
This paper showed that bogus risks of the magnitude of those claimed for smoking can be generated by inadequately measured true risk factors with odds ratios as low as 10. Since this paper was published, the OR for HPV has been established to be higher than 350 (three hundred and fifty.
ORs this high are not unusual for infectious disease, in contrast to the wishy-washy ORs of 2 or 3 or so for supposed possible confounders such as diet, which may themselves be the product of confounding! And there is a probable infectious confounder behind the anti-smokers’ SIDS lie, namely Pneumocystis carinii.
Although this organism causes pneumonia in AIDS patients, in immunocompetent people it seldom causes disease. In infants, its effects are more severe because of their immunological immaturity. (Vargas et al. Clin Infect Dis 1999;29:1489-1493.)
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CID/journal/issues/v29n6/990281/990281.html
The anti-smokers’ biggest health lie against smoking, and the source of 94% of the pretended “53,000 ETS deaths,” comes from falsely blaming smoking for cardiovascular disease that is actually caused by Chlamydia pneumoniae and other infections.
Once again, there is a strong socioeconomic linkage to the disease. And once again, the anti-smokers are claiming that passive smokers have a risk intermediate to smokers, which is completely disproportionate to the exposure.
The evidence implicating Chlamydia pneumoniae is accumulating just as it did for HPV in cervical cancer, and for Helicobacter pylori in ulcers and stomach cancer. There is a supplement devoted to the subject of CP and atherosclerosis in this month’s Journal of Infectious Disease:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JID/journal/contents/v181nS3.html
There is already far more than the flimsy circumstantial evidence blaming smoking (and much of the public is deceived that mechanisms discredited even among the anti-smokers such as nicotine and carbon monoxide are certainties!)
Cecil saith:
From reading this, I thought oh my gosh, a deathbed confession, Dr. Kawachi feels there’s no linkage, which seems to be the intent of Cecil’s column. How did Kawachi conclude his article?
Ichiro Kawachi and Graham A. Colditz
“Workplace Exposure to Passive Smoking and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: Summary of Epidemiologic Studies,”
Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 107, Supplement 6, December 1999
http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1999/suppl-6/847-851kawachi/abstract.html
Cecil is corect. There is a big difference between proving an association and proving a causal relationship. Quoting my wife, a professor of bio-statistics, one generally would like to see at least a doubling of incidence before one concludes that there is a causal relationship. A 20% to 25% increase is too small to lead to a secure conclusion of causality.
Note that statistical significance is not the same thing as the possible existence of explanitory co-factors or confounding factors. Statistical significance measures random variation, since one is making decisions based on a sample. The possibility of co-factors refers to the chance that that there may be some other causal agent that was not reflected in the study.
Consider an overly simple example: Suppose someone ran a large study of SIDS vs. height. They would discover that humans dying of SIDS were much shorter than average. If the sample were large enough, this conclusion would satisfy a 95% confidence requirement. Of course it would be ridiculous to conclude that SIDS was caused by being short. The missing co-factor is that SIDS aaffects babies, not adults.
The smoking case is more subtle. There are any number of conceivable co-factors, including neighborhood, economic class, occupation of parents, genetics, diet, parental education, etc., etc. No study could possibly reflect every possible co-factor. With an increased incidence of only 20% to 25%, scientists cannot conclude that second hand smoke caused the difference, rather than some missing factor. This is true no matter how high the statistical confidence level is.
On the other hand FIRST HAND smoke definitely does harm people in many, many significant ways. It may be in the public interest to exaggerage the risk of SHS in order to discourage FHS. However, for the Straight Dope, we must stick to the truth, even if it’s not in the public interest.
Those supposed “co-factors” such as “neighborhood, economic class, occupation of parents, genetics, diet, parental education, etc., etc.,” are all nothing but crapola. They are bogus confounders that the health establishment wants people to believe are important, precisely because they are NOT.
The anti-smokers know that they have the data to soundly trash anyone who attempts to assail them with such flimsy speculations, and nothing would be better propaganda for them than the appearance of a triumphant victory over this worthless claim.
The only big confounder that matters is INFECTION. THIS is what the anti-smokers have systematically left out of their studies, or else inadequately measured.
The ORs human papillomavirus in cervical cancer, for example, are over 350. Those other supposed “confounders” have sniveling little ORs of perhaps 2 or so. They are not only not sufficient to confound anything, they should be suspected of being the result of confounding by infection themselves!
Furthermore, lack of education does not cause cancer, no matter what nonsense statistical analyses purport to show. It is so commonplace for infections to be more prevalent among the lower socioeconomic class, that it should be presumed unless proven otherwise. Because smoking is also more commonplace, that is how confounding occurs. And anyone who pretends that this confounding is controlled by “adjusting” for surrogate measures of exposure to the relevant infection is a liar, plain and simple. The bogus smoking risks generated by the cervical cancer studies proved this beyond a doubt.
And it’s because those incompetent, traitorous tobacco companies swallowed the health establishment’s deceitful lines instead of challenging them, that the anti-smokers have gotten away with their criminal frauds.
I've got a problem with this assertion--I certainly do react to tobacco smoke, even at levels below being aware of it. It's not the traditional runny nose etc (which I will experience at higher levels), but rather a mental dulling (which other allergens also can do to me.) More than once I've had the experience of having a hard time with the problem at hand by the end of lunch--and then noticing that I was downwind of a smoker.Well, I grew up in a smoking houshold. I have allergies and asthma. I am not allergic to cigarette smoke, but when exposed to a lot of second hand smoke for more than a few hours I sometimes have asthma attacks and I seem to be more sensitve to my allergens. I also get nauseated after a while. The smell of someone chewing tobacco though will make me vomit everytime.
Everytime i visit my grandmother’s i somehow end up trapped in a car with her and even opening the window a crack is frowned upon. Air is recycled to save heat or AC, my lungs be damned. I don’t visit her often partially because of this and partially because of the constant criticism.
I hate walking through the clouds of smoke near building entrances, but just one person smoking in a room that has some ventilation is not bad, as long as the person is not constantly blowing smoke in my face.
Loren Pechtel:
Your claim that you “certainly do react to cigarette smoke, even at levels below being aware of,” supposedly consisting of “mental dulling,” merely means that any time you don’t feel good, you look around for a smoker to blame; which reinforces your prejudice when you find one, while forgetting it when you don’t.
It is the same irrational mechanism by which people convince themselves that full moons cause craziness or whatever. And a moral society would protect its members from being victimized by this kind of malicious irrationality, instead of pandering to it.
I'm aware of this sort of bias and I don't think it's applicable here. I usually find the smoker. Given that restaurant customers don't stay forever, finding them all the time would not be expected.
Furthermore, it's not merely a matter of not feeling good, but a specific thing--not being able to think as well as normal.Loren- when you do not have that specific feeling do you look just as hard for smokers and never find them?
I’m not trying to defend second hand smoke- just trying to clarify this particular argument.