Health Care: Smoking ban!

[wirenut]

Maryland's smoking ban just today. It doesn't seem right at all. People goto bars, clubs. etc just to drink eat and smoke. People who own there bars should be able to decide this kind of stuff not our government. I hate our government so much.

 

[nightlight]

Smoking is Good for You

This issue isn't black and white. The reason is that smoking doesn't just affect one person, it affects everyone around that person.
...
Does the free market principle of choosing places that don't allow smoking instead of places that do overide the fact that smoking harms everyone around the smoker? I don't know, which is why I'm asking.

Tobacco is an ancient medicinal plant used for over ten thousand years by over two billion humans. It was precisely the empirically observed health benefits to smokers that helped it spread around the world as a medicine. The oldest people in the world are life long smokers, including the oldest person ever, Jeanne Louise Calment who smoked since her teens and died at the age of 122.

Smoking is strongly protective against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases (especially for early onset cases, where it is as much as 12 and 10 times less frequent among smokers than non-smokers of the same age). It is not known what component tobacco smoke is responsible for this medicinal magic (it is not nicotine), although it is known that some unknown components of tobacco smoke nearly double the levels of principal antioxidants and detox enzymes in human body (glutathione, catalase, SOD), increase telomerase activity (enzymes promoting cellular longevity), increase and slow down decline with aging of key neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine and dopamine...

Schizophrenics, who are nearly all smokers (over 90 percent of them smoke, mostly as chain smokers, since smoking alleviates their symptoms; it also reduces the odds of schizophrenia in half if started before the onset of the disease) get 30-40 percent fewer cancers of any kind, including lung cancer, than the general population. Similarly, Japanese men, who smoke at the 2-3 times higher rates than Americans have 2-3 times lower lung cancer rates American men. In USA, the number of cigarettes smoked per year in 1950 was the same as today, yet there are 8 times more lung cancers in USA today than in 1950.

For the health reasons, smoking was compulsory for students of the elite schools in the British Empire, such as Eaton. Armies around the world have promoted smoking among solders, for performance, phsyical and mental resilience reasons. Conventional medical textbooks until 1950s recommended smoking for, among others, asthma and allergies.

Semai people of Maylasia start smoking at the age of two, that's how they get weaned from nursing, then continue smoking throughout their long and healthy lives. As reported in BMJ, in 1970s team of doctors examined thoroughly the adult Semai, all 20,000+ of them, took X-rays and blood samples, and not a single case of lung cancer or other "smoking related" disease was found.

You can read about these and many more surprising facts they won't teach you at school or show on TV, in a book by Australian medical doctor and lawyer (he excelled in both professions), Dr. William T. Whitby "Smoking is Good for You" (more recent edition "The Smoking Scare Debunked"), who prescribed tobacco smoking to his patients for variety of ailments, especially for bronchitis, asthma, allergies, depression, brain fog, CFS,... He, of course, smoked into the ripe old age, retaining excellent health and quick witt throughout.

The antismoking "science" which emerged in recent decades is purely a money making fraud thriving on public ignorance of science. After about fifty years of intense experimentation on animals, not a single case of lung cancer was induced by smoking. In fact, smoking animals live longer and get fewer lung cancers (dramatically so when exposed to radiation, when virtually 100% of non-smoking rats get lung cancer, while only 60% of smoking rats do).

That's why all that antismoking "science" has to show against smoking are non-randomized statistical correlations between smoking and various health problems. While indeed, there are such correlations (but see Colby's online book on data fudging here), they are of the same nature as the statistical correlations between medicinal/therapeutic substances or procedures and the health problems they alleviate or protect against. For example people who have used more aspirin or tylenol last year also had more headaches last year. Or people who use sunglasses are more likely to have sunburns. Does that mean aspirin causes headache? Or that sunglasses cause sunburns? For more info on how this kind of junk science is done check the online book "Science Without Sense: The Risky Business of Public Health Research".

Any time they tried to probe for causal relations behind the statistical connection via random intervention trials, the test group instructed and helped to quit smoking ended up with worse health, including more heart attacks, more strokes, more cancers, including more lung cancers and overall higher mortality. Hence, all that you will hear about it are claims that smokers have more of this or that disease. The hard science, the kind of research which can disentangle causal relations behind such correlations is off limits in antismoking "science" because it invariably goes the "wrong way" showing that tobacco smoke is therapeutic or protective against the very diseases (or their causes) it is blamed for.

Last year I got entangled into a months long debate on this topic in a nootropic (smart drugs) forum, where the entire forum of quite intelligent and medically well educated folks sought to disprove my observation that "smoking is good for you" (a similar long discussion took place in another medicinal topics forum around the same time).They dug out the latest research, papers and studies, textbooks,... and after rational in-depth debate they had nothing left, not a single alleged "fact" held against the careful analysis. Their best experimental papers, claiming in the introduction and abstract to demonstrate some grave harm from smoking, turned out, after looking at the actual data buried in the paper itself, to show that smoking prolongs life of experimental animals and protects them against the very harm claimed to cause. If you wish to learn more, go read that long thread (I post there as "nightlight"), which contains dozens of links to scientific papers and books from conventional scientists) backing up my statements (see also my few hundred posts on usenet).

In short, tobacco is not merely harmless to smokers (let alone non-smokers), but it is the single most beneficial medicinal substance and a youth elixir humans have ever known, the true 'gift of gods' as the ancients knew for thousands of years.

 

[nightlight]

Ron Paul stands for protecting all innocents and a smoke ban would improve the protection of all innocents both born and unborn. What do you think?

Unfortunately, you and much of the public have been brainwashed on this subject, just as they are on Ron Paul. See my post above for the rest of the story you won't see on TV or hear about at school.

 

[familydog]

There is a clear difference between smoking pure tobacco and smoking the chemical ridden nicotine filled cagarettes you buy at the store. Sorry to ruin your talking points.

 

[driller80545]

If cigarette smoke is unhealthy, then how about the yellow cloud over the city. Maybe we should be more concerned about the elephant than the flea.

 

[pinkmandy]

Good point. I would make a distinction between perfume and secondhand smoke though like you pointed out because one is harmful, the other annoying.

Nope, both are harmful. Perfume is full of carcinogens. So is laundry detergent, floor polish, dish soap, shampoo....should we have govt agents standing outside grocery stores checking our carts for us, too? To protect the kids from the dangerous stuff mom and dad are exposing them to?

I also worked with a girl who was severely allergic to perfume. We had to call 911 numerous times because she quit breathing. God help her if she ever steps into an elevator w/someone wearing too much perfume- she'd be dead before getting to the next floor. So...should perfume be illegal, too? Asthmatics tend to have perfume/cologne issues as well. Some people get migraines from them.

A govt mandated smoking ban is ridiculous. If your neighbor is harming you, stay off his property. Don't ride in a car with him. Don't eat next to him. And don't try to convince me that we need to ban smoking because some people can't figure out how to avoid prolongued contact w/second hand smoke.

 

[familydog]

Nope, both are harmful. Perfume is full of carcinogens. So is laundry detergent, floor polish, dish soap, shampoo....should we have govt agents standing outside grocery stores checking our carts for us, too? To protect the kids from the dangerous stuff mom and dad are exposing them to?

I also worked with a girl who was severely allergic to perfume. We had to call 911 numerous times because she quit breathing. God help her if she ever steps into an elevator w/someone wearing too much perfume- she'd be dead before getting to the next floor. So...should perfume be illegal, too? Asthmatics tend to have perfume/cologne issues as well. Some people get migraines from them.

A govt mandated smoking ban is ridiculous. If your neighbor is harming you, stay off his property. Don't ride in a car with him. Don't eat next to him. And don't try to convince me that we need to ban smoking because some people can't figure out how to avoid prolongued contact w/second hand smoke.

Still no one answered my question.

 

[pinkmandy]

Still no one answered my question.

What's your question? I didn't see it.

 

[nightlight]

There is a clear difference between smoking pure tobacco and smoking the chemical ridden nicotine filled cagarettes you buy at the store. Sorry to ruin your talking points.

There is a grain of truth in that observation. But, there are plenty of cigarettes and rolling tobaccos which use pure additive free tobacco, after the pioneering American Spirit brand became a wild success with such products. Winstons are also additive free. I stuff my own from additive free organically grown tobacco.

Most of the supermarket brands, such as Marlboro, don't even use tobacco leaf, let alone addive free, but rather the 'tobacco sheets' which are made of tobacco and other plant scraps, artificially flavored and colored to look like tobacco. That stuff, of course is not the same medicinal miracle or 'gift of gods' that the ancients smoked.

But, what antismoking propaganda won't tell you, one can object in the exactly same manner to much of the processed junk food and beverages we buy in supermarkets. They're surely nothing like the foods your grand-grandmother prepared from her farm produce. The only difference is that with tobacco, you absorb about 1 gram of matter, including all the harmful additives, into your system per pack of cigarettes, while with foods you will absorb thousand times more matter, the good and the bad stuff, every day.

If you read the thread I mentioned, this subtopic was discussed in much greater detail in reference to oxidative stress, AGE and glycotoxins (see sub-discussion with 'cnorwood' there who provided the initial scientific papers on these subjects).

 

[driller80545]

Ron Paul stands for protecting all innocents and a smoke ban would improve the protection of all innocents both born and unborn. What do you think?

I think you should check out George Carlin's ideas about protecting the "children"

 

[MattMinnesota]

This goes back to property rights. People can choose to avoid smoke filled areas. Business owners can ban smoking on their property. People can sue others who smoke on their property. If you don't want to go to a smoke filled restaurant, then don't go. If enough people don't go, the business owner will ban smoking. (Research shows anyways that banning smoking doesn't decrease the customer base in restaurants or bars.)

Governments only have the authority to ban smoking on government property or in government buildings. States and cities could also administer smoking bans and many have already.

Personally I like smoking bans because I hate smoking, but the federal government and many state governments don't have the authority to do it based on their constitutions.

 

[nightlight]

Nope, both are harmful. Perfume is full of carcinogens. So is laundry detergent, floor polish, dish soap, shampoo....should we have govt agents standing outside grocery stores checking our carts for us, too? To protect the kids from the dangerous stuff mom and dad are exposing them to?

There is nothing harmful in tobacco smoke from a pure, additive free leaf. As for additives in junk brands, that's no different than for additives in foods and beverages, except that the amount of potentially harmful additives absorbed from cigarettes is thousands times smaller. The natural tobacco smoke contains only organic molecules of the same kind one would havel found in the primordial soup where life arose (intelligently or otherwise) couple billion years ago. The live cells have been happily metabolizing such molecules for hundreds of millions of years. They are perfectly adapted to such molecules.

Further, unlike perfumes or car exhausts or any other kind of vapor, smoke, dust, fibers,... you are inhaling all day every day, tobacco was cultivated and honed for over six thousand years precisely for the inhalation of its smoke, for its medicinal and tonic properties.

Hard experimental science, despite enormous efforts and investement of anti-tobacco racket over the last fifty years, has not yet been able to demonstrate any harm to lab animals by tobacco smoke. The smoking animals live longer and have better health than non smoking ones, even when smoking in highly unnatural way (no dosing feedback, no cycles,...) and at doses many times greater than those of human smokers.

 

[TonySutton]

This is a private property issue. Property owners should make this decision for their property.

I am a non-smoker but I can separate my desires from constitutional law.

 

[BreakYourChains]

Ron Paul stands for protecting all innocents and a smoke ban would improve the protection of all innocents both born and unborn. What do you think?

No way he would vote for a smoking ban. The parents can protect their children and innocent unborn by not going to places which allow smoking if they are concerned. The business owner owns the property, and should have the say so.

We are either for freedom all of the way, or not. We cannot ban some things for all people, and allow other things which also might be distasteful to others. Again, it boils down to the property rights of the individual.

 

[Fox McCloud]

Federal level, I'd totally oppose it.

At the State level...it's one of the few issues that I break my Libertarian code on....I'd vote for a ban on smoking in restaurants.

basically, I live in a small town, and there aren't a whole lot of places to eat....back when it was "all smoking", someone would light up in a closed room...and I'd instantly start plugging up, etc....and I'd have to leave (if they lit up right when my meal began, it wasn't fun at all).

I respect people's civil liberties...but people also have no right to damage my private property (my body) either....kinda like how Ron says with pollution...how we need to respect other people's private property more.

people will probably rant and rail on me about "oh well then you can just leave!" well, that may be true, but when you're in a small town and there's very few places to eat...it creates problems. Still, the ban I'd vote on would be for closed areas only...open areas are fine; it's easy to move away from the person/stand upwind/etc. In small areas though? Can't really escape it.

Now, if a restaurant had a completely sealed/filtered area for smokers...then by all means, allow them to smoke in that section.

Like I said, I'll probably catch heck for this....but, as I said, keep in mind, it's one of the very few thing I'll ever break my Libertarian code on.

 

[pinkmandy]

I agree, Nightlight. I assumed we were discussing the cigs most people smoke. Either way, though, I don't care. Not the place of govt at all.

 

[thuja]

Good point. I would make a distinction between perfume and secondhand smoke though like you pointed out because one is harmful, the other annoying.

commercial perfume is made with chemicals, including phthalates, which are especially damaging to health.

from what i have read, perfume is more harmful than cigarette smoke.

 

[Crickett]

Well, I'm playing the devil's advocate, and I really have spent more time in this thread than I ever intended, and I myself am "just asking" . . .

But, suppose you go into another citizen's private business and demand that he kick out all of the smokers and provide you a smoke free environment, wouldn't that be an infringement of the rights of the establishment's owner, if not including all of the smoking patrons as well?

My opinion is that the issue was plenty 'black and white' until we asked the government to step in and take control, and now it's all 'faded and blurry.' Typical government work, no doubt.

I have never understood this guy's arguments. It is ok to pitch out people who smoke, instead of leaving them alone and eating somewhere else. If the owner loses too much business from that he will make it non-smoking himself. Forcrying out loud , that was the thing that freaked me out about Huck. He told me to my face he would never force a small businessman to prohibit smoking in his own business. Oh yeah..and tobacco is what helped this country begin. None of the tobacco companies seem to be listed as a member of CFR.

 

[Sauron]

The Nightclub scene is hit really hard by the smoking bans. I notice lots of people still sneak a few puffs while walking around. People get ticketed all the time in bars in Illinois this past month. I wonder how many tickets were written for smoking last month? Will any be contested in court?

 

[nightlight]

Forcrying out loud , that was the thing that freaked me out about Huck. He told me to my face he would never force a small businessman to prohibit smoking in his own business. Oh yeah..and tobacco is what helped this country begin. None of the tobacco companies seem to be listed as a member of CFR.

He did just that as a governor of AK. And he said he would do naitionally if elected.