I think often the case is not so much with "bad science" - as science is really just a process, a process of theory, testing, retesting, discussing (publishing), retheorising, retesting ad nauseum. The problem is often with the reporting of the science... either misunderstanding of, misreprensentation of (deliberate or not), or just plain shallow reporting of - then of course there is our often layman understanding of the reporting of... etc etc. You get my drift.

I am as guilty as the next person of saying "I read somewhere once that [insert generalised fact here]". When really I am recalling my possibly flawed memory of a re-reporting of a reporting of a summary of a preliminary study that is really just the first step in a long process of scientific study. People often take scientific studies as the final step in the process, when they are more often than not, the first or early step in a possibly never ending process of research and understanding. Plus - how often do we read the actual primary source?

I can't remember the last time I ran into a pipe smoker. But if I recall correctly, a pipe doesn't smell as bad as cigarettes. My lungs react much more angrily to packet cigarettes than roll-ups. This is, I am told, because the packet-brand companies put loads of perfume in the paper. Don't know what would happen if you set fire to Chanel No. 5, but I don't want to be around when you try. :)

Oh no! That has been done in Spain. The rule is that every large establishment has to have two zones, while every small establishment can choose, and put an "Abandon breathing all ye who enter here" notice in the door. Result, every establishment considers itself small and puts the Dante notice up. So far in Madrid I have found one (1) restaurant in which I can eat, a sushi joint. In the south of the country, it gets worse.

Even as a passionate clean-indoor-air person, I would in fact be open to niche smoking restaurants, clearly labelled, provided that they were very much in the minority. Or else we'll slide all the way back to the period, not so long ago, when non-smokers were actually in the majority but had either to stay at home or go out and be smoked at; the time when smokers would take no prisoners.

Datapoint, the main movers behind the total ban in the bar/restaurant scene in Norway were the trade unions: apparently the poor respiratory health of waiters and barpeople -- in smoke all their working day -- was by no means junk science.

A most reasonable solution. Don't think it would have come to this if the public places had been reasonable about accommodating everybody.... for example a physically separated smoking section (separated by walls or such) with proper ventilation and separate heating and ventilation systems.

Unfortunately, a reasonable solution is not what we got. Only bars can allow smoking and only then if the bar prohibits entry of anyone under 21. A young GI returning from war not only cannot have a beer with his Army buddies, he can't even go into the bar with them to be the designated driver. The risk of second hand smoke is too great for the young soldier.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me, especially since they haven't been paying nearly enough for the damage they cause.
If that's true, then costs will drop faster than revenue, so it still works out well.
I don't know what logic you're using to come to that conclusion. Higher fines usually mean stricter enforcement.

I don't see where both sides are using "Junk" science. All I see is the Tobacco industry seizing on mistakes made by individuals who oppose them, and then presenting those mistakes as if they're representing the main thrust of the opposition. It's a classic use of a straw man, and it's disappointing that it has worked here.

Halifax is a small city (330K) and a college town (4 universities and a divinity school) so there's a vigorous bar scene. The governments of Nova Scotia and Halifax managed to bungle the whole smoking scene entirely (in their usual business-unfriendly manners). A few years ago, they decided that bars, coffee shops etc. could permit smoking in designated, completely separated (including ventilation) areas (which I found appalling, so never used).

The norm, I'm told by younger kin, was that everybody partied in the main bar and popped into the smoking area only for an occasional smoke. Then, long before those establishments had paid for those upgrades, the city decided to ban smoking indoors anywhere in the city and the Province followed suit, so the bars all took down their interior walls and built exterior sidewalk cafes. In winter, folks huddled in doorways).

Not satisfied, the anti-smoking lobby (Halifax is run almost entirely by its most rabid special interest groups -- the greens, anti-smoking, heritage trust, etc. -- no one else speaks up or attends public consultations), so no sooner had a season of café living passed that smoking on them was banned as well, so smokers stand in the streets outside. These moves have cost these establishments a ton of money AND they have lost custom. Even a cigar club was forced to shut down, church bingo joints lost players, Legions lost bar customers, the Yacht Club I belong to (run by the Navy) had to build a huge new second-floor deck, etc., so while folks in Johnny shirts clutched their kelly poles outside hospital doors for a quick puff, the Province, not wanting to lose any revenue themselves, permitted smoking in the Casino. Sounds typical, no?

No smoking anywhere on hospital property here, by law.... don't care if you're a quarter mile away at the far corner of a huge parking lot in your car with the windows rolled up at 2am in the morning and a 40 mile breeze outside. It is not about second hand smoke, obviously. It is about hating smokers and behavior modification. Ridicule people enough and they will change to the desired behavior. Obese gonna be next.... already started.... running up health costs... it's an epidemic.... take the coke machines out of the schools. And studies prove...... Yada, yada, yada.

Like your casinos, special interest got special treatment.... horse track, dog track, and gaming establishments (only have one... video gaming only because those are games of skill by law... unlike poker, which is a game of chance you understand) are all exempt from the law.

I sense there is a huge generational difference on these issues. For us old guys, the people we looked up to.... Eisenhower, McArthur, Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill, Kennedy.... were smokers. All of them. If one were anti-US, you could add Hitler and Stalin to the list of smokers. So was Clinton, except of course he didn't inhale. Obama was a smoker, too, until he decided to run for President.... rumor is he still backslides a little now and then. Nobody knew or cared who the Marlboro Man or Joe Camel were or what they were advertising.

I also sense a lot of intolerance from the younger generations. My and my parents' generation taught tolerance... we understood that government controlling someone else's behavior we didn't like put us in a position of having our behavior made illegal by a simple majority vote of some body of elected cronies. Better to live and let live lest we all be controlled. That kind of thinking would be outrageous in some of our more liberal states. Apparently, my state, too.

You say these things as if they were bad! :eek: The fact is that smoking has no redeeming qualities. It's an addiction that kills, and would never be allowed if it weren't already entrenched in the culture.

You can whine about hating smokers all you like, but the fact is that smokers not only kill themselves, but they take others with them, and they cost us all a great deal in higher taxes and higher health insurance rates. Even if they were to pay the health costs, which would probably mean a tax of $30 to $40 per pack, they'd still be killing innocent people, and that's worth hating.

Ahh, CWT; It's always easy to say: "The fact is that smoking has no redeeming qualities" as if most smokers didn't know that. I know a number of smokers who have taken years to quit (including relapses) because quitting an addiction is not easy, even with expensive aids like nicotine patches or gum. My wife quit several times before she "made it".

Take a look at this little chart plotting dependance versus physical harm of various addictive substances and notice how high on the vertical scale nicotine is. Further note that these are population averaged positions; not all folks are equally dependent. My mother smoked very occasionally and entirely at will going weeks without, then smoking 3 or 4 and stopping again. My wife's mother (my wife is the eldest of 5, her mother just turned 92) smoked one cigarette per day with her tea after supper for about 50 years. An old mentor of mine smoked a pipe until he was 92 and macular degeneration of his retinas got him. He used to stride into class with his pipe clenched firmly in his jaws, put it down for the lecture and relight it during the end of class questions. He quit because he couldn't see a spark any more and didn't want to burn his house down.

My point is that folks who have never had a serious addiction always assume that common sense would see all smokers quit immediately. Many of them want to, but can't. Call them weak if you like; I'll just guess that you've never experienced addiction.

See. You've started down the slippery slope. All human behavior must now have "redeeming qualities." Would you care to list the social redeeming value of alcohol, please? How about a meal of more than 400 calories (overeating causes obesity which causes diabetes, strains the heart, kills, etc., etc.)? What about coke or candy machines? What about gambling? What about not exercising regularly?

Where do you stop the government dictatorship of individual behavior?

I think I've already stated before on another thread... I don't care if smoking is banned forever, everywhere. Smoking kills a lot of people. Non-smokers should not have to put up with smoke in their presence while in public establishments or at work.

Protecting non-smokers is one thing.... but we've gone way, way past that to government directed behavior modification under the banner of science, some of which is junk science. It is indeed a very slippery slope.

It may be easy to say, but it seems that it is more easily forgotten by smokers. If they didn't forget that fact, they wouldn't defend smoking as if it were a right. It is not a right and should not be one, anymore than firing a gun in public should be one. Both send out something that may or may not take a life, depending on the luck of the draw.

I don't have anything against smokers who are trying to quit, but find it difficult. What I find offensive is the idea that smokers have more rights than I do. If they want to smoke, that's fine with me as long as they pay for their own health care without increasing my costs, and they guarantee that their smoke won't affect me or any other nonsmoker. That means that until smokers and/or the smoking industry prove that third, fourth, fifth, etc., hand smoke does no damage, it shouldn't be allowed. It should not be necessary for the rest of society to prove that it is harmful, or even demonstrate that it might be harmful.

A ridiculous assertion. Smoking needs a redeeming quality specifically because when used as directed, it will kill you. It's the only 'legal' product that does that.

Really? What about alcohol?

Again, my issue is not about smoking... 2nd or 3rd hand other than the junk science aspect. It is government interference with human behavior that does not harm anyone other than the person engaging in that behavior. It is okay for government to protect non-smokers.... it is not okay for government to protect smokers from themselves.

Government should not be involved in modifying anybody's behavior where that behavior does not present a risk to the the public. (My opinion, obviously. No "rights" involved.)

Not wearing a seat belt, for example, presents no risk to the public. Neither would being in a boat without a life preserver AND a flotation device that can be thrown. Both against the law.

Riding a motorcycle, mountain climbing, sky diving.... all risky behavior. Should government protect these people from engaging in these activities? What, exactly, is the difference between banning these activities and making me wear a seat belt?

Not sure I agree with that aehurst. Yes, they may indeed die sooner, but they use the heck out of the system on their way out! All those cancer treatments, lung surgeries and doctor's appointments...

Quite so. That was tried for years in many countries. The bar/restaurant industry took no notice. In my city, as late as the Nineties, I could show you a restaurant on three floors, of which one was designated no-smoking; trouble was, they kept this closed until the rest of the establishment was full. In one establishment, the staff even used the NSZ as their smoking-room! In general, waiters would respond to an enquiry about non-smoking zones by removing an ash-tray from one table, or by denying that they were obliged to provide a NSZ, even though the legislation was passed almost before they were born. :mad:

I can't prove it, but I have a suspicion that all this was not the result of any rational market appraisal, as about 80% of the population were non-smokers, but rather because the proprietors of, and most of the workers at, bars and restaurants themselves smoked, all their friends smoked, and they thought of non-smokers in terms of unicorns and griffins. (That is why I find the trade-union argument I mentioned upthread a trifle hypocritical: employees were not, on the whole, innocent victims of smoke, but more aiders and abettors.) The industry prophesied ragnarok if a total ban was imposed, but to their great surprise, all us unicorns and griffins who had hitherto stayed at home started coming out to eat. :)

Aehurst, I tend to agree with your general philosophy: the distinction between protecting me from you and protecting you from yourself has been greatly eroded. Even though I am in general an evil European liberal pinko socialist etc. etc., I have always been queasy about this, for precisely the reason you cite -- where does it stop?

I'm only using this as an example because I happened to read it (sorry cwt, I doubt you're the only one). Isn't this just what we proposed we were going to avoid right at the beginning of the thread? $30 or $40 a pack to cover the costs? Not only do you not have any idea what the actual numbers are, but that's a very highly exagerated claim (I think).

Let's say someone smokes a pack a day, that would mean:
One Year: $30 x 365 days = $10,950
Multiplied by Average Time Spent Smoking ( Average Lifespan of a Smoker (Average Lifespan - 10 years)(67.8) - (Average Starting Age(13). Or, 55 years of smoking.
And then, just to temper the numbers, take 10% off those years, so 49 years.)
That bring us to $10,950 * 49 years = $536,550

I tried to lowball it as best I could, but $536,550 is still a pretty high number... Maybe I'm just not familiar with the average cost of healthcare for smokers, but...

And this isn't the only example being thrown around in this thread (seriously cwt, no harm intended, I just happened to decide I wanted an example when I read your post). Look, folks, I thought we were trying to keep this conversation tempered by sticking to obvious facts and staying away from grandiose claims and numbers. I think we have two very valid points of view in this thread, we should be nice and listen to each other. We might all learn something.

Let me say this about the current discussion. I'm not a fan of public smoking. I have a few reasons. First, cigarette smoke makes me cough and it makes my eyes water, so I don't like it. Second, there's enough evidence that second hand smoke is bad for me that I really don't want anything to do with it on any level, big or small. Lastly, there are plenty of places to smoke that don't involve standing next to me...so go find them ;).

But, there are some complications. I think pipe smoke smells sweet and it reminds me of this nice old man I knew when I was young. And, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I think a pipe will always make you look like a thinker.

To me it's not a clear cut issue. But, I usually solve the problem by either removing myself or politely asking people to leave or put out the cigarette if I can't leave myself. I don't see any reason to make a law against it, common decency should fix most of these problems, right?

What does concern me is that it seems people are trying to use legal recourse to stop people from smoking. It didn't work for Alcohol, so I'm confused as to why people think this might work... The only real cure is to convince teenagers that smoking really isn't cool, so they never start. Most rational adults (at least in this era of mass knowledge) would never start smoking, but teenagers do all the time, despite the knowledge, because being socially accepted is just more important. Death seems really far off for teenagers, and there's alway the "It won't happen to me" mentality or the "I'll just quite later" thought...

I remember the book "The Tipping Point" having a novel suggestion for stopping smoking amongst teens as well...but I don't recall what it is. I should go look it up and post that as well.

I know a lot of folk think I am way out in right field on this... worrying about nothing. Just this month, our legislature made not wearing a seat belt a primary offense where it had previously been a secondary offense. Difference being you can be pulled over and ticketed for not wearing a seatbelt vs being ticketed for no belt after you've been stopped for another offense or been in an accident. The noose got a little tighter.

The same legislative body, however, voted down legislation that would require motorcycle riders to wear a helmet and carry medical & liability insurance. Go figure.

They put a curfew (11pm) on drivers under 18 and the number of teenagers that could be in a car driven by an under 18 driver.... driver plus 1. So much for double dating before 18.

All kinds of proposals still being kicked around surrounding text messaging and cell phones. One bill, likely to pass, would prohibit all cell phone use by a driver under 18, drivers 18-21 could use a hands free cell phone only, and over 21 can do whatever they like.

Needless to say, junk science is flying all over the capitol on all these issues.... each and every proposal guaranteed to save lives and they have studies to prove it. It has gotten so bad that 95 percent of our citizens cannot tell you what the law is regarding infant car seats.... it's just too complicated and is nothing like the federal guidelines which get aired daily on TV.

I haven't had a ticket or an accident in the last 45 years. I don't need government to tell me how to live my life. I don't need government to help me be a parent by telling me what I can and cannot allow my soon to be teenager to do.

Junk science... ala "studies indicate" .... just is not the answer. Neither is government intervention based on these often flawed studies. Individual freedoms are restricted daily in my very conservative state. Can't imagine what California and New York are doing... no doubt in Boston they are still trying to ban serving eggs over easy (yeah, they once banned that as unsafe and they had studies to prove it!)

:rolleyes:
A glass of wine or beer each day has been shown to be good for the heart.
First, it's unreasonable to assume that the average smoker will live long enough to smoke for 50 years. Your statistics are for the average person, which includes the roughly 75% who do not smoke. Thirty would seem more reasonable, but even that may too long, as smokers do harm to nonsmokers that they spend significant time with. Second, during the years that they do survive, they will take more sick days and more frequent and longer breaks during the work day, costing business money and therefore reducing the tax base, costing taxpayers money. Many of those sick days will include trips to doctors, which adds stress and more cost to our health care system. These costs eventually find their way to taxpayers as well, especially with so many uninsured. Next, you have to add the same type of costs for people affected by second/third hand smoke. These costs will be lower, but they're still significant. After these costs, you can begin to consider the health care costs when the smoker or some one they've harmed becomes truly sick, with something like heart disease, emphysema, lung cancer, leukemia, cancer of the larynx, etc. It's well documented that even a short stay in a hospital can run forty to fifty thousand dollars, but these diseases tend to be treated for longer periods and cost much more. Patients can spend thousands per year just on medicine, and that doesn't included doctors visits, hospital stays, or operations.

With all this in mind, I think an estimate of $200,000 in cost over thirty years is probably overly conservative, but we'll use that as a starting point. Naturally, since the smoker isn't paying that cost up front, it needs to be financed. If we use 5% as an interest rate to keep up with inflation (it's been lower, but very likely to be much higher in the future) we can use a loan calculator to see what the monthly cost would be. This shows us a cost of $1073.64 or $35.79 per day. Even if we use 50 years, the cost is still high at $908.28 or $30.28 per day. This while using a very conservative estimate of $200,000 for total costs and a very low interest rate of 5%, when actual medical costs have been rising at a rate of something like 20%!

Truthfully, I have no idea what the cost is to taxpayers, if any. As long as we are getting bombarded with very questionable, unprovable studies indicating this or that nobody will know. Kinda what NovaScotian was saying in the OP.

The link I posted from the New England Journal of Medicine is a respectable study and unbiased. This study includes smokers.... not just second or third hand smoke. How can this very respectable group come to a totally opposite conclusion than others? Obviously, somebody is doing bad science. But who?

The studies on 2nd hand smoke are all over the place. How can we possibly put a dollar amount on that? IMHO.... 3rd hand smoke studies are pure garbage.

Indeed, and I protect my heart regularly using that advice. I would also add that tobacco has been shown to reduce stress... a major contributor to heart attacks.

We both know that tobacco AND alcohol can cause death, right?

Thing about being alive is, the longer you keep doing it, the greater your chances of dying. So we'd better stop, right?