Time is right for smoking ban in Wisconsin

There was a time when most people would have needed to squint through a cigarette- and cigar-induced cloud to read this.

[CONFEDERATE_1978]

Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger
Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D.
Published In: Environment & Climate News
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) is an unpleasant experience for many nonsmokers, and for decades was considered a nuisance. But the idea that it might actually cause disease in nonsmokers has been around only since the 1970s.

Recent surveys show more than 80 percent of Americans now believe secondhand smoke is harmful to nonsmokers.

Federal Government Reports

A 1972 U.S. surgeon general's report first addressed passive smoking as a possible threat to nonsmokers and called for an anti-smoking movement. The issue was addressed again in surgeon generals' reports in 1979, 1982, and 1984.

A 1986 surgeon general's report concluded involuntary smoking caused lung cancer, but it offered only weak epidemiological evidence to support the claim. In 1989 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged with further evaluating the evidence for health effects of SHS.

In 1992 EPA published its report, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking," claiming SHS is a serious public health problem, that it kills approximately 3,000 nonsmoking Americans each year from lung cancer, and that it is a Group A carcinogen (like benzene, asbestos, and radon).

The report has been used by the tobacco-control movement and government agencies, including public health departments, to justify the imposition of thousands of indoor smoking bans in public places.

Flawed Assumptions

EPA's 1992 conclusions are not supported by reliable scientific evidence. The report has been largely discredited and, in 1998, was legally vacated by a federal judge.

Even so, the EPA report was cited in the surgeon general's 2006 report on SHS, where then-Surgeon General Richard Carmona made the absurd claim that there is no risk-free level of exposure to SHS.

For its 1992 report, EPA arbitrarily chose to equate SHS with mainstream (or firsthand) smoke. One of the agency's stated assumptions was that because there is an association between active smoking and lung cancer, there also must be a similar association between SHS and lung cancer.

But the problem posed by SHS is entirely different from that found with mainstream smoke. A well-recognized toxicological principle states, "The dose makes the poison."

Accordingly, we physicians record direct exposure to cigarette smoke by smokers in the medical record as "pack-years smoked" (packs smoked per day times the number of years smoked). A smoking history of around 10 pack-years alerts the physician to search for cigarette-caused illness. But even those nonsmokers with the greatest exposure to SHS probably inhale the equivalent of only a small fraction (around 0.03) of one cigarette per day, which is equivalent to smoking around 10 cigarettes per year.

Low Statistical Association

Another major problem is that the epidemiological studies on which the EPA report is based are statistical studies that can show only correlation and cannot prove causation.

One statistical method used to compare the rates of a disease in two populations is relative risk (RR). It is the rate of disease found in the exposed population divided by the rate found in the unexposed population. An RR of 1.0 represents zero increased risk. Because confounding and other factors can obscure a weak association, in order even to suggest causation a very strong association must be found, on the order of at least 300 percent to 400 percent, which is an RR of 3.0 to 4.0.

[CONFEDERATE_1978]

Scientific Principles Ignored
An even greater problem is the agency's lowering of the confidence interval (CI) used in its report. Epidemiologists calculate confidence intervals to express the likelihood a result could happen just by chance. A CI of 95 percent allows a 5 percent possibility that the results occurred only by chance.
Before its 1992 report, EPA had always used epidemiology's gold standard CI of 95 percent to measure statistical significance. But because the U.S. studies chosen for the report were not statistically significant within a 95 percent CI, for the first time in its history EPA changed the rules and used a 90 percent CI, which doubled the chance of being wrong.
This allowed it to report a statistically significant 19 percent increase of lung cancer cases in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers over those cases found in nonsmoking spouses of nonsmokers. Even though the RR was only 1.19--an amount far short of what is normally required to demonstrate correlation or causality--the agency concluded this was proof SHS increased the risk of U.S. nonsmokers developing lung cancer by 19 percent.
EPA Study Soundly Rejected
In November 1995 after a 20-month study, the Congressional Research Service released a detailed analysis of the EPA report that was highly critical of EPA's methods and conclusions. In 1998, in a devastating 92-page opinion, Federal Judge William Osteen vacated the EPA study, declaring it null and void. He found a culture of arrogance, deception, and cover-up at the agency.
Osteen noted, "First, there is evidence in the record supporting the accusation that EPA 'cherry picked' its data.... In order to confirm its hypothesis, EPA maintained its standard significance level but lowered the confidence interval to 90 percent. This allowed EPA to confirm its hypothesis by finding a relative risk of 1.19, albeit a very weak association.... EPA cannot show a statistically significant association between [SHS] and lung cancer."
In 2003 a definitive paper on SHS and lung cancer mortality was published in the British Medical Journal. It is the largest and most detailed study ever reported. The authors studied more than 35,000 California never-smokers over a 39-year period and found no statistically significant association between exposure to SHS and lung cancer mortality.
Propaganda Trumps Science
The 1992 EPA report is an example of the use of epidemiology to promote belief in an epidemic instead of to investigate one. It has damaged the credibility of EPA and has tainted the fields of epidemiology and public health.
In addition, influential anti-tobacco activists, including prominent academics, have unethically attacked the research of eminent scientists in order to further their ideological and political agendas.
The abuse of scientific integrity and the generation of faulty "scientific" outcomes (through the use of pseudoscience) have led to the deception of the American public on a grand scale and to draconian government overregulation and the squandering of public money.
Millions of dollars have been spent promoting belief in SHS as a killer, and more millions of dollars have been spent by businesses in order to comply with thousands of highly restrictive bans, while personal choice and freedom have been denied to millions of smokers. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, all this has diverted resources away from discovering the true cause(s) of lung cancer in nonsmokers.
Dr. Jerome Arnett Jr.([e-mail]) is a pulmonologist who lives in Helvetia, West Virginia.

[youou]

It is over time. By 2010 youou believes all states should be on board.

youou believes....those who are not will be deprived of certain federal fundings.

ATTENTION remaining states Govenors......

youou says...take the best of the best and just do it. Get er done. Do not re-invent the wheel. If not, a lot of time, effort and money will be wasted by you and your state.

[CONFEDERATE_1978]

Poor uuseless,he doesnt understand the people are against bans and agaist anything that limits the freedom of the people.The tide is turning as the green political movement collapses and freedom and liberty become the new voice of the people.The people DEMAND that the shackles of big brother be thrown off.

[Free_America]

Comrade Doyle knew there wasn't enough support for the ban through normal channels so he slipped it in to his budget. There will be public hearings. Attend and fight back!

Sparta
Monday, March 23
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
American Legion Hall
1116 Angelo Road

Milwaukee Metro
Wednesday, March 25
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
State Fair Park
Banquet Room #2
640 S 84th St West Allis

Eau Claire
Friday, March 27
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
UW- Eau Claire
Haas Fine Arts Center
Gantner Concert Hall
121 Water Street

Racine
Monday, March 30
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Case High School
Theater
7345 Washington Avenue

Appleton
Wednesday, April 1
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Lawrence University
Stansbury Theater
Music Drama Center
420 E College Ave

Cambridge
Friday, April 3
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Amundson Community Center
200 Spring Street

http://banthebanwisconsin.wordpress.com/2009/...

[youre outa here]

CONFEDERATE_1978 wrote:

Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is Dangerous

You do not even understand what you have posted. You do not understand epedemiology OR statistics or you would question this man's conclusions. The conclusion that second hand smoke is not dangerous is erronious at best and misleading in it's entirety. You need to read up on the law of large numbers. The insurance companies understand what you do not and they are able to use the law of large numbers to accurately predict illness, accident rate, death and a host of other things for groups. The prediction becomes more accurate as the size of the group grows. You may not be able to tell much about a specific individual in a group, but you can tell a whole lot about the group itself. Using the law of large numbers you can accurately predict things like SIDS occuring in households that smoke. You are not able to predict which specific infant will die, but you can predict the number that will die in a large group based on past experience. SIDS deaths, when they occur in a home where smoking is allowed, are preventable deaths and EVERY SINGLE SIDS ORGANIZATION today will tell you NOT to smoke around infants, and also not to smoke when you are pregnant.

The most important thing that YOU need to get from this post is that WE do not believe the science that absolves second hand smoke of all blame in all deaths. YOU do not respect the fact that WE see SHS as a significant health hazard and therefore WE are compelled to legislate YOUR behavior when it comes to smoking. YOU are an addict, plain and simple and an a$$hole on top of that. WE do not like you. We will not like you even if you quit smoking, because then you will be a smoke free a$$hole.

[Free_America]

youre outa here wrote:

<quoted text>
You do not even understand what you have posted. You do not understand epedemiology OR statistics or you would question this man's conclusions. The conclusion that second hand smoke is not dangerous is erronious at best and misleading in it's entirety.

How about some proof of this. I have seen a lot of propaganda and some very weak statistics but nothing that rises to the level of proof. So if you have something that rises to the level of proof we would all love to see it.

[Happy Contented Soul]

youre outa here wrote:

<quoted text>
You do not even understand what you have posted. You do not understand epedemiology OR statistics or you would question this man's conclusions. The conclusion that second hand smoke is not dangerous is erronious at best and misleading in it's entirety. You need to read up on the law of large numbers. The insurance companies understand what you do not and they are able to use the law of large numbers to accurately predict illness, accident rate, death and a host of other things for groups. The prediction becomes more accurate as the size of the group grows. You may not be able to tell much about a specific individual in a group, but you can tell a whole lot about the group itself. Using the law of large numbers you can accurately predict things like SIDS occuring in households that smoke. You are not able to predict which specific infant will die, but you can predict the number that will die in a large group based on past experience. SIDS deaths, when they occur in a home where smoking is allowed, are preventable deaths and EVERY SINGLE SIDS ORGANIZATION today will tell you NOT to smoke around infants, and also not to smoke when you are pregnant.
The most important thing that YOU need to get from this post is that WE do not believe the science that absolves second hand smoke of all blame in all deaths. YOU do not respect the fact that WE see SHS as a significant health hazard and therefore WE are compelled to legislate YOUR behavior when it comes to smoking. YOU are an addict, plain and simple and an a$$hole on top of that. WE do not like you. We will not like you even if you quit smoking, because then you will be a smoke free a$$hole.

Um no, actually you are a smoke free butthole.

CONFEDERATE_1978 will still be a great person, whether he continues to smoke or quits.

next...

[CONFEDERATE_1978]

youre outa here wrote:

<quoted text>
You do not even understand what you have posted. You do not understand epedemiology OR statistics or you would question this man's conclusions. The conclusion that second hand smoke is not dangerous is erronious at best and misleading in it's entirety. You need to read up on the law of large numbers. The insurance companies understand what you do not and they are able to use the law of large numbers to accurately predict illness, accident rate, death and a host of other things for groups. The prediction becomes more accurate as the size of the group grows. You may not be able to tell much about a specific individual in a group, but you can tell a whole lot about the group itself. Using the law of large numbers you can accurately predict things like SIDS occuring in households that smoke. You are not able to predict which specific infant will die, but you can predict the number that will die in a large group based on past experience. SIDS deaths, when they occur in a home where smoking is allowed, are preventable deaths and EVERY SINGLE SIDS ORGANIZATION today will tell you NOT to smoke around infants, and also not to smoke when you are pregnant.
The most important thing that YOU need to get from this post is that WE do not believe the science that absolves second hand smoke of all blame in all deaths. YOU do not respect the fact that WE see SHS as a significant health hazard and therefore WE are compelled to legislate YOUR behavior when it comes to smoking. YOU are an addict, plain and simple and an a$$hole on top of that. WE do not like you. We will not like you even if you quit smoking, because then you will be a smoke free a$$hole.

your the addict, addicted to social causes that have no foundtion in a free society,perhaps you should move to russia or cuba or venezuala..........freedom always wins especilly against tyranny that you support.All the groups you say that say this or that are all under one banner pushing prohibition in the name of socialism........health scares are but a tool a tactic to move socialism forward..we are in your faces..........

[CONFEDERATE_1978]

As a matter of fact I think I will take this 45 round to an engraver and have smoke free engraved on it..........a small personal memento you could say.It will look great as the doc cuts it from your lifeless commie azz, Then I can melt it down and make another smoke free commie meet god.

You getting it yet,we the people aint gonna take your shit or even comming into our homes.......

[CONFEDERATE_1978]

for comming into our homes.

[Birdman]

So, when will car exhaust be banned? Children inhale diesel fumes at school while boarding, and waiting to board buses outside. Cars spew mass quanities of smoke into the air as well. You also breath some not so great things in while sitting in your car. Let us ban all motor vehicles while we are at it, followed up by banning horses since the smell of their manure would become a problem if we used them, and it tends to attract flies which are also a problem.

We'll go even further, and let people lose any bit of gov. income (SSI and such) they may recieve since much of that money comes from tobacco sales.

Do not forget to ban microwave ovens. The radiation they give off can be harmful, and we will block out the sun as well, since its rays cause cancer too.

Caffine will also be outlawed as it is a very addictive drug that has numerous side effects. Hairspray must go to. No more fireplaces, they need to go, factories must shut down, trains need to be stopped.

I understand many people find smoking offensive, but it should be up to the business establishment to choose whether they will allow it or not. Afterall if a place is too smokey for you, don't go! I rank this stupidity right up there with the people who think humans are the only cause of global warming because they buy into Al Gore.

Oh yeah...ban alcohol. Alcohol causes the death of how people every year due to drinking and driving and other incidents? Too many to count.

Ban stpuidity Mr. Doyle...you friggin idiot!

[Freedom]

youre outa here wrote:

<quoted text>
You do not even understand what you have posted. You do not understand epedemiology OR statistics or you would question this man's conclusions. The conclusion that second hand smoke is not dangerous is erronious at best and misleading in it's entirety. You need to read up on the law of large numbers. The insurance companies understand what you do not and they are able to use the law of large numbers to accurately predict illness, accident rate, death and a host of other things for groups. The prediction becomes more accurate as the size of the group grows. You may not be able to tell much about a specific individual in a group, but you can tell a whole lot about the group itself. Using the law of large numbers you can accurately predict things like SIDS occuring in households that smoke. You are not able to predict which specific infant will die, but you can predict the number that will die in a large group based on past experience. SIDS deaths, when they occur in a home where smoking is allowed, are preventable deaths and EVERY SINGLE SIDS ORGANIZATION today will tell you NOT to smoke around infants, and also not to smoke when you are pregnant.
The most important thing that YOU need to get from this post is that WE do not believe the science that absolves second hand smoke of all blame in all deaths. YOU do not respect the fact that WE see SHS as a significant health hazard and therefore WE are compelled to legislate YOUR behavior when it comes to smoking. YOU are an addict, plain and simple and an a$$hole on top of that. WE do not like you. We will not like you even if you quit smoking, because then you will be a smoke free a$$hole.

You hypocrites never cease to amaze me.

Tell us oh self righteous one...would you be willing to apply your sides ridiculous standard of "no safe level" to all forms of indoor smoke that contain known carcinogens...or only to those you do not like?

[Birdman]

I meant to add to my previous post that a ban on George Forman grills is also a necessity since they smell bad.

Farting is another list of things to ban.

Politicians have run out of tactics to gain votes, and approval so they have decided to use fear, and to instill in us an uneccessary level level of measures to protect us from ourselves. They do things like this because they believe the general public to be too stupid and ignorant, and incapable of making a decision on their own.

The founders of this nation would rollver in their graves if they were let in on how the people of the US have become bigger push overs than the original colonists.

[generalsn1234567]

Jakarta has the best ban of all. The ban lobbyists here are timid.
www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/03/13/jakart...

[generalsn1234567]

Birdman wrote:

I meant to add to my previous post that a ban on George Forman grills is also a necessity since they smell bad.
Farting is another list of things to ban.
Politicians have run out of tactics to gain votes, and approval so they have decided to use fear, and to instill in us an uneccessary level level of measures to protect us from ourselves. They do things like this because they believe the general public to be too stupid and ignorant, and incapable of making a decision on their own.
The founders of this nation would rollver in their graves if they were let in on how the people of the US have become bigger push overs than the original colonists.

There are many bars in my area that ignore the ban. They aren't pushovers. many of their patrons are city workers, police, and politicians.

[Pragmatic1]

Yeah, these smoking bans don't affect me (nor do the ridiculously high tobacco taxes) because I switched to an electronic cigarette, and I love it! I've regained my freedom to smoke wherever I want, and I'm saving cash in the process. I found this blog really helpful when I was trying to figure out which e-cigarette to buy (I decided on the Luci e-cig. I love it!):

http://greensmokes.blogspot.com

[member of society]

I live in a smoke free city and let me tell you, I think that it is nice to enjoy a few drinks and not have to cough and smell like an ashtray when I get home. Yes, a ban will cause yet more of the freedoms we take for granted. But, at the same time it is a freedom NOT to have to inhale second hand smoke when we don't want to. People can still smoke...just that they have to smoke outside is all. Here in Marshfield alot of the bars have enclosed areas for smokers. With the current health care costs and cost of cigarettes this is actually a positive thing (the ban).

[Lil Ticked]

Free_America wrote:

Comrade Doyle knew there wasn't enough support for the ban through normal channels so he slipped it in to his budget. There will be public hearings. Attend and fight back!
Sparta
Monday, March 23
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
American Legion Hall
1116 Angelo Road
Milwaukee Metro
Wednesday, March 25
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
State Fair Park
Banquet Room #2
640 S 84th St West Allis
Eau Claire
Friday, March 27
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
UW- Eau Claire
Haas Fine Arts Center
Gantner Concert Hall
121 Water Street
Racine
Monday, March 30
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Case High School
Theater
7345 Washington Avenue
Appleton
Wednesday, April 1
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Lawrence University
Stansbury Theater
Music Drama Center
420 E College Ave
Cambridge
Friday, April 3
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Amundson Community Center
200 Spring Street
http://banthebanwisconsin.wordpress.com/2009/...

I would like to know why these things are scheduled during normal people's working hours? Makes it hard for the working class to attend. Most of the people that will be able to show up are retirees, brain-washed college students, and non-working busy-bodies.
But I WILL make a point o attend the L.U. meeting.
(I used to work there)

[generalsn1234567]

Lil Ticked wrote:

<quoted text>I would like to know why these things are scheduled during normal people's working hours? Makes it hard for the working class to attend. Most of the people that will be able to show up are retirees, brain-washed college students, and non-working busy-bodies.
But I WILL make a point o attend the L.U. meeting.
(I used to work there)

The professional lobbyists behind these bans don't need to have a real job. Those ARE their normal working hours. They recruit all the people you mentioned.