In 1975, British delegate Sir George Godber informed the World Health Organization how to get smokers to quit: “foster an atmosphere where it was perceived that active smokers would injure those around them, especially their family and infants or young children who would be exposed involuntarily to the smoke in the air.” Recently, opponents of smoking have taken that advice to heart in an effort to ban smoking, not only in privately owned bars, restaurants, and other “public” places, but also in private homes.
Where does the purported additional 60,000 deaths come from? Primarily from the imagination of Stanton Glantz, founder of the Berkeley-based Americans for Non-Smokers Rights, a group whose avowed purpose is to turn smokers into “social outcasts.” In the ’80s, Glantz successfully lobbied for a tax hike on California smokers, with a stipulation that a portion of the revenue be earmarked for groups such as his. In succeeding years, the groups take from this taxation has run into the tens of millions of dollars. Starting in 1985, Glantz tried to get the EPA to claim that secondhand smoke was the cause of cardiovascular disease with a death rate of greater than 50,000 annually. The EPA rejected the figure as unlikely. Subsequently, in a 1994 memo the Congressional Research Service dismissed the figure as “implausible.”
What I’m saying is that the current environment of public perception that secondhand smoke constitutes a significant risk to those who are casually exposed to it is based primarily on junk science promoted by those who have a fanatical (and sometimes financial) motivation for scaring the public.
And when public policy becomes based on irrational fears, it usually means bad legislation coupled with an undermining of civil liberties. Secondhand smoke may represent a health hazard, if present in a large enough concentration. There’s no indication that casual exposure in most settings exceeds that threshold. As a result, legislation that exceeds the regulation of public spaces, and intrudes into private domains such as businesses and homes seems nothing more than an hysterical over-reaction to tales promoted by those with a “moral” axe to grind.
Filed under: anti insanity, health issues, reality check | Tagged: ASH, Health.Health Issues, smoking bans, stanton glantz
While many studies do conflict with each other, the reliable ones USUALLY are in agreement. The reliable ones meet the basic scientific standard of being a double blind. peer reviewed study. ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT MEET THIS STANDARD SHOULD BE CONSIDERED JUNK!
common sense,
I have probably been through this with you but here we go. All of the ETS studies are observational studies, rather difficult to do double blind. Peer reviewed does not give a study scientific credibility. I have pointed out numerous times in the past no cause of a disease has ever been declared conclusive with a Relative Risk of less then 2. I have had this challenge out their since I started my fight against the bans. NAME ONE! Yes I know the ban activists say that 2 was picked by the tobacco companies to discredit the ETS studies. But even the courts require a minimum of 2 as causal. Simply having several studies agree are not enough given the bias and confounders involved. The award winning article “Epidemiology faces its limits” agrees with me on this one.
Add to that the fact that the majority of the studies include 1 in the CI which shows that the risk was statistically insignificant and where does that leave you? The only way that activist can come up with anything at all is to use Meta-analysis and the use of Meta’s on observational studies has been highly questioned by many experts.
Much has been written about meta-analysis recently, and some experts consider the problems of meta-analysis to outweigh the benefits at the present time. For example, Bailar has written the following:
You add that to the fact that according to the ACS’s own study, the lung cancer rate in non-smokers has remained unchanged since the 1930’s. If ETS were truly the cause of lung cancer in non-smokers you would have seen an increase in cases correlating with an increase of exposure. That is not the case so where does this 20% increase of lung cancer in non-smokers come from???
So I contend that until they come up with something more conclusive it is all Junk science!
No studies,just the facts,I do point out that a lower adult smoking rate(50%) and a greatly reduced SHS exposure rate(87%) over the last 40 years have led to a 121% increase in lung cancer deaths, a 20% increase in COPD(emphysema) deaths since 1990, and since 1980 a 50% increase in asthma deaths.
Whatever is causing more and more of our children and adults to contract and die from asthma, lung cancer, and COPD -it’s not tobacco smoke and smoking bans will do nothing to stop the slaughter.
Gary K.
Adult Smoking rate in the early 60’s was about 44%,by 1990 that rate had fallen to 23%,a 48% decrease.We can expect that SHS exposure levels were down by the same 48%; thus, SHS exposure levels in 1990 were only 52% of what it was in the early 60’s.
2006 Sur.Gen’s Report quotes the CDC thusly:
(note:cotinine is used to measure SHS exposure-GK)
The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke(SG’s 2006 Report)
Table 10.1, page 575
2005
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues the Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, which documents that cotinine levels decreased 68 percent for children, 69 percent for adolescents, and 75 percent for adults from the early 1990s to 2002.
75% of 52 is 39, 52 minus 39 = 13.
Thus SHS exposure levels are only 13% of what they were in the 60’s, this is an 87% decrease!!
Health,United States,2006
Page 229
Table 39 (page 1 of 3). Death rates for malignant neoplasms of trachea, bronchus, and lung, by age: United States, selected years 1950-2004
Lung Cancer deaths (age adjusted) were:
1960
24.1 per 100,000
2004
53.2 per 100,000
This is a 121% increase.
http://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=8⊂=42
The prevalence of asthma has been increasing since the early 1980s across all age, sex and racial groups.
Mortality:
Since 1980 asthma death rates overall have increased more than 50% among all genders, age groups and ethnic groups.
COPD Age Adjusted Death Rates Population, 1979-2002
Age-Adjusted Death Rate per 100,000 Persons
1990 = 35.1
2002 = 42.0
This is a 20% increase.
Source: Age Standardization of Death Rates: Implementation of the Year 2000 Standard. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 47 No. 3.
Additional Calculations Performed by the American Lung Association, Epidemiology and Statistics Unit. “