The_Techie
Resident Techie
Even if I'm not killed by passive smoking, I'd prefer not losing 2 - 6 years of my life 
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Passive smoking a real danger
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Nick333
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Even if I'm not killed by passive smoking, I'd prefer not losing 2 - 6 years of my life
You've missed the point. There maybe a difference of 2-6 years of life expectancy between non-smokers and smokers.
The evil, selfish smokers aren't taking 2-6 years of your life with their secondhand smoke.
The_Techie
Resident Techie
You've missed the point. There maybe a difference of 2-6 years of life expectancy between non-smokers and smokers.
The evil, selfish smokers aren't taking 2-6 years of your life with their secondhand smoke.
Well, even if secondhand smoke shortens my life expectancy by one hour I'd rather they didn't smoke near me.
Ok, out of curiosity and hypothetically speaking, what is an acceptable amount of time you'd allow someone to take from your life expectancy so they could feed their habit?You've missed the point. There maybe a difference of 2-6 years of life expectancy between non-smokers and smokers.
The evil, selfish smokers aren't taking 2-6 years of your life with their secondhand smoke.
Velenoso
Expert Member
Even if I'm not killed by passive smoking, I'd prefer not losing 2 - 6 years of my life
The last 2 - 6 years? You mean the bed wetting, senile, walking on crutches, unable to walk/drive/have a good time years? You can have 'em.
The_Techie
Resident Techie
The last 2 - 6 years? You mean the bed wetting, senile, walking on crutches, unable to walk/drive/have a good time years? You can have 'em.
Or what about the difference between a 24-year-old and an 18-year-old? Who has the right to decide whether that person is allowed to die 6 years earlier because of someone else's habit?
Velenoso
Expert Member
Or what about the difference between a 24-year-old and an 18-year-old? Who has the right to decide whether that person is allowed to die 6 years earlier because of someone else's habit?
That is 6 years off your life if you smoke, not second hand smoke.
The_Techie
Resident Techie
Shall we work on a one day difference in life expectancy, then? Who decides whether it's morally correct to shorten another person's life to feed a habit, albeit by one day?
Velenoso
Expert Member
I guess it's up to that non-smoking person to decide. Is there any real evidence that second hand smoke definitely decreases a person's life expectancy?
The_Techie
Resident Techie
No, I think it's up to the smokers to do the responsible thing and not smoke near non-smokers.
By inhaling that smoke, a smoker's life expectancy is reduced, no? Why won't a person inhaling that same smoke 5 seconds later not have a reduced life expectancy?
I'm convinced that secondhand smoke has a negative effect on a non-smoker one way or another...
Nick333
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Well frankly I'm not going to sweat a couple of hours or days.
Is there evidence that second hand smoke reduces the life expectancy of non-smokers?
What I find amusing is that they've done this study becuase of residual sceptism. IOW they've only just come up with conclusive evidence that secondary smoke is somewhat harmful. In the mean time anti-smoking laws have been pushed through on the strength of what is essentially propaganda and hysteria.
Since the first round of anti-legislation in this country I've noticed that some non-smokers have gotten a little over zealous. As a smoker I wasn't overly bothered by not smoking in shops and public places or having to sit in a smoking section in resteraunts. In fact I think smokers have become pretty damn considerate with a minimum of complaining. But its just getting a bit stupid now. We now have to stand 10 feet (or whatever it is) from doors or windows when we smoke outside a public building. How damaging could trace elements of tabaco smoke in the open air be if you have to be in a smokey night club to register some lung damage? Not to mention that any bit of my smoke that drifts through a door or window is going to be negligible compared to the toxins being spewed out by transport and industry.
And if you don't like smoking in night clubs you don't go into night clubs that allow smoking. You don't ban smoking in night clubs.
Non smoker whiney, whiney spam
Should have a button for that.
Spam would imply that it was an unsolicited ad which it's not.
You're welcome to post studies which prove that smoking is NOT
harmful, if you can find any.
Nick333
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No, I think it's up to the smokers to do the responsible thing and not smoke near non-smokers.
By inhaling that smoke, a smoker's life expectancy is reduced, no? Why won't a person inhaling that same smoke 5 seconds later not have a reduced life expectancy?
I'm convinced that secondhand smoke has a negative effect on a non-smoker one way or another...
Because its not the same smoke. Its diluted.
Ppl go to night clubs to have fun not to smell your stinking cigarettes. You see YOUR pleasure is disrupting someone else's life, what does the other person get in return for your high? If you really want to smoke go to the non-smoking section or step outside.
Non smoking spouses of smokers commonly suffer from ailments such as
chronic bronchits, heart attacks and lung cancer (the cigarette smoke type). I'm sure there are studies proving this and if not there's a huge load
of anecdotal evidence going for it.
Nick333
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There are plenty of non-smokers who aren't bothered about a bit of smoke, especially in social settings. Ever been to a braai?
What I'm saying though, is that night club owners should have the right to cater for smokers and those who do not mind secondary smoke. If you don't like smoke, go to a night club that caters soley for non-smokers.
Nick333
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I'm sure the same could be said for non smoking spouses of non smokers. Did you not notice that the atmosphere is massively polluted?
killadoob
Honorary Master
plz back up your statement with actual facts
when i grew up my parents smoked, all my friends parents smoked
not a single person i know who has grown up around smoke has problems
i think this whole second hand smoke is such a load of rubbish
its more dangerous driving on the highway with all the smoke from cars
second hand smoke cannot be bad for you unless your inhaling the smoke directly from someone's cigi
go to these asians countries that surrounded in smog and then come tell me second smoke is bad
fumes are bad in general but unless you sucking them directly in your lungs i cannot see the problem
smoke comes off a cigi into the air, its not like your sucking direct smoke off the cherry
Nick333
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Here's a question: Why is it that anti-smoking legislation doesn't allow for the owners of establishments to cater for smokers? Why can't I open a restaurant and put up a sign saying "This is a smoking area" and allow adult human beings to make the decission whether or not to be in a smoke filled environment for themselves?
Because the anti-smoking issue is just another bandwagon for crypto-facists and control freaks to jump on thats why.
Because the anti-smoking issue is just another bandwagon for crypto-facists and control freaks to jump on thats why.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Smoking Out Bad Science
By Lorraine Mooney
For the past 15 years the antismoking lobby has pushed the view that second hand cigarette smoke is a public health hazard. This was a shrewd tactic. For, having failed to persuade the most committed smokers to save themselves, they could use proof that passive smoking harms non smoking wives, children and co-workers to make the case for crimin- alizing smoking.
But the science fell off the campaign wagon two weeks ago when the definitive study on passive smoking, sponsored by the World Health Organization, reported no cancer risk at all. Don't bet that will change the crusaders' minds. The anti-smoking movement after all, has slipped from a health crusade to a moral one.
It is now obvious that anti-smoking activists have knowingly overstated the health risk of second hand smoke. The only definitive large- scale study on the subject was designed in 1988 by a WHO subgroup called the International Agency on Research on Cancer. It compared 650 lung-cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people in seven European countries. The results were expressed as "risk ratios," where the normal risk for a nonsmoker of contracting lung cancer is set as 1. Exposure to tobacco smoke in the home raised the risk to 1.16, and exposure to smoke in the workplace increased it to 1.17. This supposedly represents a 16% or 17% increase. But the admitted margin of error is so wide- 0.93 to 1.44 that the true risk ratio could be trivial or nonexistent.
This is what anyone with common sense might have expected. After all, the dose makes the poison, and a pack-a-day smoker is exposed to a lot more smoke than his wife or office mate. Nonetheless in 1988, the International Agency on Research on Cancer decreed tobacco smoke a carcinogen, fully expecting that the secondhand product would have a similar, lower effect that could be extrapolated from what we know about the risk to smokers.
Anticipating that science would confirm this hypothesis, many countries have been adopting antismoking policies in the name of public health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has confidently stated that 3,000 Americans die annually from inhaling second hand tobacco smoke. The state of California has imposed a total smoking ban in all public places, which took effect on Jan. 1. California is not the first jurisdiction to enact such a ban: Iran did so in 1996- but it was overturned as unconstitutional.
Before the International Agency on Research on Cancer Study, no other reliable study on second hand smoke was available. In trying to detect such a modest increase, the margin of error is very high, which means the number of cases in the study must be very high. Acting in the most unscientific manner, The EPA decided to pool the results of 11 studies, 10 of which found no statistically significant risk, to arrive at a risk ratio of 1.19. As is always a problem with this kind of "meta-analysis," the studies were all different from each other in various ways, so that they were not measuring the same thing. Last October, the British Medical Journal published the results of a similarly flawed study by a known antitobacco crusader, Nicholas Wald, who heads Britain's Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health. Mr. Wald's study claimed a 26% increase in the risk of lung cancer from secondhand smoke. The study was accompanied by an editorial that described the findings as "shocking".
But Robert Nilsson, a senior toxicologist at the Swedish National Chemicals Inspect- orate and a professor of toxicology at Stockholm University, has dismissed the study as a "statistical trick." He says there are so many unacknowledged biases in the analysis that the alleged risk figure is meaningless. For example, Mr. Wald relies on the memories of widows and widowers as to how much their dead spouses used to smoke. Survey bias is often considerable, potentially far higher than 26% estimate of increased risk, a fact the Wald report doesn't even mention.
Mr. Nilsson also explains that Mr. Wald's meta-analysis has pooled data from incomparable studies. His most stinging criticism is aimed at the British Medical Journal's editorial board members, who he says must be "innocent of of epidemiology" to have allowed publication of the paper in its existing form.
Nevertheless, Britain's chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Kalman, said last week that the Wald report established a "definitive link" between second hand smoke and cancer, which the Labor government will use in developing antismoking proposals. Science notwithstanding, antitobacco hysteria is alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic. Ms. Mooney is a medical demographer for the Cambridge based European Science and Environment Forum.
Smoking Out Bad Science
By Lorraine Mooney
For the past 15 years the antismoking lobby has pushed the view that second hand cigarette smoke is a public health hazard. This was a shrewd tactic. For, having failed to persuade the most committed smokers to save themselves, they could use proof that passive smoking harms non smoking wives, children and co-workers to make the case for crimin- alizing smoking.
But the science fell off the campaign wagon two weeks ago when the definitive study on passive smoking, sponsored by the World Health Organization, reported no cancer risk at all. Don't bet that will change the crusaders' minds. The anti-smoking movement after all, has slipped from a health crusade to a moral one.
It is now obvious that anti-smoking activists have knowingly overstated the health risk of second hand smoke. The only definitive large- scale study on the subject was designed in 1988 by a WHO subgroup called the International Agency on Research on Cancer. It compared 650 lung-cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people in seven European countries. The results were expressed as "risk ratios," where the normal risk for a nonsmoker of contracting lung cancer is set as 1. Exposure to tobacco smoke in the home raised the risk to 1.16, and exposure to smoke in the workplace increased it to 1.17. This supposedly represents a 16% or 17% increase. But the admitted margin of error is so wide- 0.93 to 1.44 that the true risk ratio could be trivial or nonexistent.
This is what anyone with common sense might have expected. After all, the dose makes the poison, and a pack-a-day smoker is exposed to a lot more smoke than his wife or office mate. Nonetheless in 1988, the International Agency on Research on Cancer decreed tobacco smoke a carcinogen, fully expecting that the secondhand product would have a similar, lower effect that could be extrapolated from what we know about the risk to smokers.
Anticipating that science would confirm this hypothesis, many countries have been adopting antismoking policies in the name of public health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has confidently stated that 3,000 Americans die annually from inhaling second hand tobacco smoke. The state of California has imposed a total smoking ban in all public places, which took effect on Jan. 1. California is not the first jurisdiction to enact such a ban: Iran did so in 1996- but it was overturned as unconstitutional.
Before the International Agency on Research on Cancer Study, no other reliable study on second hand smoke was available. In trying to detect such a modest increase, the margin of error is very high, which means the number of cases in the study must be very high. Acting in the most unscientific manner, The EPA decided to pool the results of 11 studies, 10 of which found no statistically significant risk, to arrive at a risk ratio of 1.19. As is always a problem with this kind of "meta-analysis," the studies were all different from each other in various ways, so that they were not measuring the same thing. Last October, the British Medical Journal published the results of a similarly flawed study by a known antitobacco crusader, Nicholas Wald, who heads Britain's Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health. Mr. Wald's study claimed a 26% increase in the risk of lung cancer from secondhand smoke. The study was accompanied by an editorial that described the findings as "shocking".
But Robert Nilsson, a senior toxicologist at the Swedish National Chemicals Inspect- orate and a professor of toxicology at Stockholm University, has dismissed the study as a "statistical trick." He says there are so many unacknowledged biases in the analysis that the alleged risk figure is meaningless. For example, Mr. Wald relies on the memories of widows and widowers as to how much their dead spouses used to smoke. Survey bias is often considerable, potentially far higher than 26% estimate of increased risk, a fact the Wald report doesn't even mention.
Mr. Nilsson also explains that Mr. Wald's meta-analysis has pooled data from incomparable studies. His most stinging criticism is aimed at the British Medical Journal's editorial board members, who he says must be "innocent of of epidemiology" to have allowed publication of the paper in its existing form.
Nevertheless, Britain's chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Kalman, said last week that the Wald report established a "definitive link" between second hand smoke and cancer, which the Labor government will use in developing antismoking proposals. Science notwithstanding, antitobacco hysteria is alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic. Ms. Mooney is a medical demographer for the Cambridge based European Science and Environment Forum.