Tobacco control and thought control

The great judge Learned Hand once said, "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." If so, the tobacco regulation bill recently passed by Congress indicates that the spirit of liberty is even scarcer than usual in the halls of government.

[The Fonz]

Wow, if all this wasn't about tax money, we could just go ahead and ban tobacco, like any other narcotic. But that would force politicians to admit that they are more addicted to the money than smokers to their cigarettes.

[Happy Contented Soul]

The Fonz wrote:

Wow, if all this wasn't about tax money, we could just go ahead and ban tobacco, like any other narcotic. But that would force politicians to admit that they are more addicted to the money than smokers to their cigarettes.

Interesting, though tobacco is not a narcotic.

[Freedom Lover]

Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

Doubleplusungood, Almost as good as " Patriot Act" or " Piece Keeper Missile" or " Defence of Marriage Act"

Keep up the good work, Government. I feel more safe and more free every day.

[rogallowing]

the government wants full control of everything, fact is in 2007 tenn took in over 147,000,000 in tobacco revenue from msa accounts, this does not include sales tax. these people want to cut their nose off to spite there face. they all talk from both sides of there mouth,when are we the americian public who out number these so called representatives going to take this country back over, and stop these people and left winged liberals from running us?

[generalsn1234567]

These smoking bans will probably go down in history as one of the greatest marketing scams ever. They want to "hurry up and pass the bans" before people find out who is paying the lobbyists pushing for them.
Here's the beginning of the ban movement in the USA.
www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp...

Here are the instructions from Johnson and Johnsons'(makers of cessation products) RWJ Foundation for their tax exempt political action committees. They are getting enough money from the RWJ Foundation, plus using MY tax money. They aren't getting any more money from me.
www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf

[lnbee]

I quit smoking 17 years ago. I was a 3-1/2 pack a day, 25 year smoker at the time. I did it cold turkey, no crutches. I was motivated because the increasing ban on places you could lawfully smoke was driving me crazy, and these places are even fewer in 2009.
My point is this. The "government interference" worked in my favor, and I'm grateful they gave me a push. That's just my opinion.

[Freedom vs Gov Control]

First of all I just want to say that it is not the responsibility of tobacco companies to raise our children nor is it the Governments. This so called tobacco control takes freedom away from adults that should be mature enough to make their own decisions and not have the government make choices for them. Parents should be raising and making decisions for their children not the FDA. If the government wants to truly help then fix the country's economy so that parents do not have to work 2 jobs and can stay home after school and raise their children not to smoke!
Further more, I have quit smoking using electronic cigarettes and this new bill is threatening to ban those as well. Why would I endorse a bill that is threatening to take away the only thing that has removed cigarette smoking from my life in over 24 years? If the FDA really is really concerned about our health they will not ban electronic cigarettes. If anyone wants to know more about electronic cigarettes go to www.invisismoke.com

[Bob]

"...and its health effects are almost entirely confined to the individual making the choice. "
OK, then, let's pass a law that any smoker who gets lung cancer or emphysema gets no payments at all from Medicare or other insurance policies. That will keep the rest of us from paying higher premiums to care for these "individual choices."

[generalsn1234567]

Freedom vs Gov Control wrote:

First of all I just want to say that it is not the responsibility of tobacco companies to raise our children nor is it the Governments. This so called tobacco control takes freedom away from adults that should be mature enough to make their own decisions and not have the government make choices for them. Parents should be raising and making decisions for their children not the FDA. If the government wants to truly help then fix the country's economy so that parents do not have to work 2 jobs and can stay home after school and raise their children not to smoke!
Further more, I have quit smoking using electronic cigarettes and this new bill is threatening to ban those as well. Why would I endorse a bill that is threatening to take away the only thing that has removed cigarette smoking from my life in over 24 years? If the FDA really is really concerned about our health they will not ban electronic cigarettes. If anyone wants to know more about electronic cigarettes go to www.invisismoke.com

The fact that they want to ban e-cigs, and smokeless tobacco, which have no dangerous side effects, is proof that the main goal is the bottom line of Johnson and Johnson. Second hand smoke and personal safety have nothing to do with these bans.

[Monte]

This stuff is so hard to stop. It rests in your subconcious. I quit for two months, then bought one pack today, and i feel like a guilty failure, all for one pack....

[Barry]

Bob wrote:

"...and its health effects are almost entirely confined to the individual making the choice. "
OK, then, let's pass a law that any smoker who gets lung cancer or emphysema gets no payments at all from Medicare or other insurance policies. That will keep the rest of us from paying higher premiums to care for these "individual choices."

Are you in the Obama adminstration? Tax,limit,control all-it's all for your own good as we define it. Sieg Heil!!

[Carol Southard]

Even though my letter opposing the recently passed Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was published in the 6/19/09 Chicago Tribune, I could not disagree more with many of your statements in your 6/21/09 column. What motivates advocates such as myself for tobacco regulation is indeed public health. But I am also absolute in my conviction that I am completely right and the tobacco companies and all that support same are completely wrong and yes, evil! What else can you say about companies that significantly profit from a product that kills more than 1200 people a day in this country alone (more than 10,000 people a day world wide)?
It is undeniable that the individual decision to try a cigarette is a “private event”. However for the vast majority of smokers that event occurs prior to the age of 19! Hardly an educated decision at that point. You forgot to mention that the 6.4% of teen smoking you quote is the percentage of middle school students. In 2007, 20% of high school students in the United States were current cigarette smokers - approximately 19% of females and 21% of males. According to the CDC, approximately 3,600 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 years initiate cigarette smoking every day and an estimated 1,100 young people become daily cigarette smokers. This is much more reflective of the addictive nature of nicotine than choice. Of course this warrants government intervention!
You need to check the facts regarding the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke. Our government declared secondhand smoke a human A carginogen over 10 years ago! Those exposed to secondhand smoke are at increased risk for cancers, cardiopulmonary problems, including decreased lung function, chronic cough and ischemic heart disease. As many as 60,000 annual heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers result from secondhand smoke in the United States. Approximately 3000 lung cancer deaths per year among adult nonsmokers in the United States are linked to second hand smoke
Exposed children are more likely to have reduced lung capacity, serious lower respiratory tract infections, severe asthma, and middle ear infections. The risk for sudden infant death syndrome is higher among babies exposed to smoke and babies born to women exposed to second hand smoke are more likely to have low birth weight and to be premature. There is a clear link between childhood tooth decay and parental smoking. I could go on!
You also need to do more research on the influence of marketing – it is well documented by both the tobacco companies and those advocating tobacco control that tobacco ads do impact prevalence. I do not consider myself a zealot. I am a RN who specializes in tobacco cessation and truly cares about the health of my clients and public health. I am opposed to the new law because it does not go far enough. Legitimate governmental control of tobacco does not equate to regulation – it would result in elimination.

[ProfessorGAC]

Barry wrote:

<quoted text>Are you in the Obama adminstration? Tax,limit,control all-it's all for your own good as we define it. Sieg Heil!!

Sounds to me more like a Bush/Cheney worker.
GAC

[Confederate1989]

THE AIR ACCORDING TO OSHA

Though repetition has little to do with "the truth," we're repeatedly told that there's "no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke."

OSHA begs to differ.

OSHA has established PELs (Permissible Exposure Levels) for all the measurable chemicals, including the 40 alleged carcinogens, in secondhand smoke. PELs are levels of exposure for an 8-hour workday from which, according to OSHA, no harm will result.

Of course the idea of "thousands of chemicals" can itself sound spooky. Perhaps it would help to note that coffee contains over 1000 chemicals, 19 of which are known to be rat carcinogens.
-"Rodent Carcinogens: Setting Priorities" Gold Et Al., Science, 258: 261-65 (1992)

There. Feel better?

As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:

"Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997

Indeed it would.

Independent health researchers have done the chemistry and the math to prove how very very rare that would be.

As you're about to see in a moment.

In 1999, comments were solicited by the government from an independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke.

Using EPA figures on the emissions per cigarette of everything measurable in secondhand smoke, they compared them to OSHA's PELs.

The following excerpt and chart are directly from their report and their Washington testimony:

CALCULATING THE NON-EXISTENT RISKS OF ETS

"We have taken the substances for which measurements have actually been obtained--very few, of course, because it's difficult to even find these chemicals in diffuse and diluted ETS.

"We posit a sealed, unventilated enclosure that is 20 feet square with a 9 foot ceiling clearance.

"Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from the EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.

"Our chart (Table 1) illustrates each of these substances, but let me report some notable examples.

"For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold.

"For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes would be required.

"Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.

"At the lower end of the scale-- in the case of Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up simultaneously in our little room to reach the threshold at which they might begin to pose a danger.

"For Hydroquinone, "only" 1250 cigarettes are required. Perhaps we could post a notice limiting this 20-foot square room to 300 rather tightly-packed people smoking no more than 62 packs per hour?

"Of course the moment we introduce real world factors to the room -- a door, an open window or two, or a healthy level of mechanical air exchange (remember, the room we've been talking about is sealed) achieving these levels becomes even more implausible.

"It becomes increasingly clear to us that ETS is a political, rather than scientific, scapegoat."

[Confederate1989]

Toxic Toxicology" Littlewood & Fennel

Coming at OSHA from quite a different angle is litigator (and how!) John Banzhaf, founder and president of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

Banzhaf is on record as wanting to remove healthy children from intact homes if one of their family smokes. He also favors national smoking bans both indoors and out throughout America, and has litigation kits for sale on how to get your landlord to evict your smoking neighbors.

Banzhaf originally wanted OSHA to ban smoking in all American workplaces.

It's not even that OSHA wasn't happy to play along; it's just that--darn it -- they couldn't find the real-world science to make it credible.

So Banzhaf sued them. Suing federal agencies to get them to do what you want is, alas, a new trick in the political deck of cards. But OSHA, at least apparently, hung tough.

In response to Banzhaf's law suit they said the best they could do would be to set some official standards for permissible levels of smoking in the workplace.

Scaring Banzhaf, and Glantz and the rest of them to death.

Permissible levels? No, no. That would mean that OSHA, officially, said that smoking was permitted. That in fact, there were levels (hard to exceed, as we hope we've already shown) that were generally safe.

This so frightened Banzhaf that he dropped the case. Here are excerpts from his press release:

"ASH has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against OSHA...to avoid serious harm to the non-smokers rights movement from adverse action OSHA had threatened to take if forced by the suit to do it....developing some hypothetical [ASH's characterization] measurement of smoke pollution that might be a better remedy than prohibiting smoking....[T]his could seriously hurt efforts to pass non-smokers' rights legislation at the state and local level...

Another major threat was that, if the agency were forced by ASH's suit to promulgate a rule regulating workplace smoking,[it] would be likely to pass a weak one.... This weak rule in turn could preempt future and possibly even existing non-smokers rights laws-- a risk no one was willing to take.

As a result of ASH's dismissal of the suit, OSHA will now withdraw its rule-making proceedings but will do so without using any of the damaging [to Anti activists] language they had threatened to include."
-ASH Nixes OSHA Suit To Prevent Harm To Movement

Looking on the bright side, Banzhaf concludes:

"We might now be even more successful in persuading states and localities to ban smoking on their own, once they no longer have OSHA rule-making to hide behind."

Once again, the Anti-Smoking Movement reveals that it's true motive is basically Prohibition (stopping smokers from smoking; making them "social outcasts")--not "safe air."

And the attitude seems to be, as Stanton Glantz says, if the science doesn't "help" you, don't do the science.

[rogallowing]

i think the best thing we can do,after reading all of this,is to ban humanity, the reason the hype on tobacco is that it is easy to tax, period, money, as this nurse said her peace, i ask about radon poisioning,how about air polution, why do they have differnt codes for air ouality? workplace carcinogens, if you read medical reports, you will see that 47% of people that die from lung cancer do not smoke,or have not been around second hand smoke, i do not say that smoking does not hurt you,i am saying those bunch of liberals that don't like what you do are the ones pushing.did you know that there are no death certificates for second hand smoke deaths. give me a break,now the fda takes over soon, thats all we need a unit that cannot mange themselves,let alone someone elses life. there is to much government in our lives and soon just wait if you carry a bible with you that will constitute a hate crime. people need to stand up and do something about all this mess,before it messes us up anymore

[sheesh]

Bob wrote:

"...and its health effects are almost entirely confined to the individual making the choice. "
OK, then, let's pass a law that any smoker who gets lung cancer or emphysema gets no payments at all from Medicare or other insurance policies. That will keep the rest of us from paying higher premiums to care for these "individual choices."

Ok, then lets make the same laws concerning those people with heart disease from eating too much fast-food. How about alcohol? I can not drink a drop in my entire life, live healthy, not smoke...and still get killed in an instant, with my entire family by a drunk driver. Why do bars have parking lots?!?

This is about one thing, and one thing only... MONEY.

Villify the smokers, no one likes them anyway, and they can pay for our other bad habits.

[youou]

People have been warned for decades of the dangers of smoking. Overeating and not eating the right foods has been spoken about too.
The only major difference is...people do not have to smoke to survive.

youou says if you smoke and have a smoking related illness and do not have insurance.....don't let the door hit you on the ole' butt going out the door.

[Gordon]

I could agree with you, so long as the health care costs of that choice are paid by the same people who have made the choice to smoke.

[rogallowing]

i agree wholeheartedly with the health care, i think you should be responsible for your own habits,whatever they may be, i do not see someone having to pay more for insurance if they don't have a habit, it's wrong, but then again the health and life insurance companies shouldn't have stock in the tobacco companies, they make money on both ends. again we all agree money.