Smokers need not apply

[Fnord]

Then perhaps try addressing my point instead of the one you wished I had made.

No thanks. You don't need my help.

Then why do we have a muti-page thread discussing the legal employment exclusion of someone because they smoke?

Because a lot of people seem interested in the topic.

Which is a right any individual non smoker or employer should be able to impose on their own property for what ever reasons they choose. Sadly smokers don't have the same rights to exclude non smokers or to provide an environment that makes it uncomfortable for non smokers.

So call the waaaaambulance!

Claiming "Smokers' Rights" makes as much sense as claiming rights for people afflicted with any other form of drug addiction. While I don't care if someone smokes, I do care when their addiction affects my health and the health of those around me.

Besides, the only stink more unpleasant than a smoker's breath and body odor is that of decaying organic matter, and no one should have to endure either one in a public or working environment.

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

I agree entirely. And I wouldn't want anyone thinking that I'm only campaigning for smokers rights (over those of non smokers). I fully believe non smokers have rights that smoking should not interfere with.
It's just that the ridiculousness of the law as it stands now and how it's shaping up to become over the next decade has no consideration for circumstance.

I think our laws are bit closer to balancing both sides. In Oregon you can still smoke in outside enclosures, so bars now tend to have an outdoor patio, almost always covered, usually with high fence/hedges, and sometimes heated.

But according to anti-smoking campaigners, would have meant an increase in business to the non smoking venue because all those people who were put off by smokey atmosphere would have gone there... If you believe what they tell you.

Actually, once law enforcement changed policies and started enforcing laws against underage smoking, the arcades did see increased business. It turned out a lot of kids were not allowed to go for that very reason. You actually started seeing girls there, which was really annoying at the time.

I wonder if they supported it or simply complied with it.

Both, though not all did. I had a friend who owned a bar that heavily opposed it. Yet a number of bar owners had donated to the yes campaign. The arguement was private bans were difficult to enforce, the state ban made easier to force smokers to only light up in the outdoor enclosures. It probably helps to understand that in the urban areas bars were already largely banning smoking inside, the ones that were not having trouble attracting business.

Figures since the bans (both in the UK and the US) don't get opinions from former bar owners who closed after the bans were introduced. So you are left with the one's who've ridden the storm and probably have a slightly more positive outlook. I can only talk from my experience in the UK that many landlords of public houses here think the smoking ban is the main cause (along with others such as excise duty rises and cheap alcohol being available at supermarkets) for their downturn in business.
http://takingliberties.squarespace.com/storage/Smoking Gun final1.pdf

A few bars in Oregon did close, but on the other hand more opened up as did a few more smoke shops. Overall alcohol sales at bars increased, but we had just entered a recession. There was a dip right after the ban and a stark return by the end of the month from what I understand.

My only experience in the US was that I lived in Vegas for three months, where kitchen staff were up in arms because the bars that sold food were closing the kitchens so that they could keep the smokers.

In Oregon we just moved the smokers outside. Despite what one of my friends worried about, he can still get a steak, brew and smoke a cigar at most any bar. He just has to sit in the outside enclosures now. Which can be a problem in inclement weather.

I'd like to think that common sense would prevail too, but in the climate of real apparent hatred (read some of it in the smoking threads here) towards smokers means that unless we actually fight for it, it isn't going to happen.

Well the UK did take more draconian measures than the half the US that took up public smoking bans have. Only in 5 states is it really limited to private residences only. It will take some adjustment to get things right. I have seen hatred, but uppity smokers that act like they are entitled to smoke anywhere anytime they want didn't help your side either. Best not to judge either opinion by the most emotional representatives.

 

[Uncle Otto]

I am an x-smoker. Gave it up Feb. 5th 1986. Haven't missed it since, although if someone lights up outside and I can smell it from 80 ft away------it still smells great!

But for an employer to attempt to regulate someone's off the job behavior is insane and wrong. Where does it end? OK let's evaluate all the high-risk behaviors that might cost society or an employer more money than a person who is not "at risk". And by the way, just who the hell is that?

Let's see now------------

People who qualify for any of the following-----------------

1) Pre-existing diabetes? Or any genetic pre-disposition for some other medical condition?

2) Anyone who drinks alcohol?

3) Anyone who is morbidly obese?

4) Anyone who eats anything considered unhealthy? You like pastry or deep fried foods? Unhealthy according to who?

5) You like to own a sports car? Danger by definition.

The list could go on indefinitely folks.

 

[JoelKatz]

Smokers are cheaper to insure, smokers are absent more, they often take time away from work to smoke (depending on the company).

It's an economic decision. Why do you hate the free market?

In a free market, employers would pay smokers lower salaries that compensate for the additional costs they impose. The ban is not the result of a free market but the result of a regulated market that prevents employers from 'discriminating' against things that cost them money. There's no reason not to hire smokers if you can pay them less.

What will probably happen is that some companies will hire both smokers and non-smokers. They'll offer slightly lower wages, and they'll wind up with lots of smokers as employees since the smokers will have a hard time finding employment elsewhere. This will be a less efficient result than a free market would produce, since it will reduce the choices available to both groups of workers. Smokers won't be able to work for the companies that pay higher wages (if they prefer them for reasons not relating to the wages they pay), even though they'd be willing to accept the lower wages it would take to make the employers willing to take smokers and the employers would be willing to pay them those lower wages. Non-smokers will get lower wages if they prefer to work at places that hire smokers, even though the employers would be willing to pay them higher wages because they cost them less to employ. But such is the cost of regulation.

You may also see a middleman market developing. What happens is that a company may employ smokers and provide their health care and benefits and so on. They then 'resell' these workers to companies that don't employ smokers directly. The end employer pays the same amount per hour of work whether they employ a non-smoker directly or a smoker through a middleman. The middleman pays the higher costs to employ a smoker but pays the smoker a lower wage. This avoids the inefficiencies I mentioned above but creates its own inefficiency -- the middleman will take a cut. Again, such is the cost of regulation. (This same technique is used to get around regulations that prevent government employers from paying high salaries for talented individuals. They instead contract for the services of those individuals from middleman companies that pay wages higher than the government can. Again, it's to avoid regulations that prevent the government from paying market salaries.)

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

In a free market, employers would pay smokers lower salaries that compensate for the additional costs they impose. This is not the result of a free market but the result of a regulated market that prevents employers from 'discriminating' against things that cost them money. There's no reason not to hire smokers if you can pay them less.

Employers hire people for less all the time. I am unaware of any such regulation that would apply to pay that does not apply to hiring. IE you cannot by class pay women less, but you also cannot refuse to hire them either. Most companies I have worked for hire the young and the elder less for example. Usually under the assumption they are less reliable and less likely to stick with the company long term.

Can you give an example of how regulation has actually prevented US companies from paying smokers less leading to them just not hiring smokers at all?

 

[gumboot]

Learn to remember what you said.

I know what I said. You clearly still don't.

Smoking in a public place != Harming someone else

Being drunk in a public place != Harming someone else.

Drinking isn't harmful?

No.

What about when I get in my car to drive to a public outdoor space just to smoke a cigarette? What vital function is my car providing then?

None.

So we'll just ban car usage for personal pleasure?

Why?

What magic stuff do they run on then?
Electricity.... generated by power stations that spew out poisonous chemicals by any chance?

Electricity generated by power stations that don't spew out poisonous chemicals.

No, it's the same as everyone else's. ie: Something that hasn't actually happened.

I honestly don't even remember what this point was about.

Ah right so the fact that police force's main concern in town centers is policing weekend drunks leads them to conclude that arresting weekend drunks isn't a good use of their resources... so they let people break the law.

Either it's their main concern specifically because they don't have sufficient free resources to address it, or they're an incompetent police force.

No, if it was enforced, I wouldn't come across large groups of drunken idiots in town centers on a weekend.

Or alternatively it is enforced but effectiveness is limited due to a lack of resources. Or alternatively if it wasn't enforced you'd come across even larger groups of drunken idiots in town centers on a weekend.

Where's here?

New Zealand.

And that's the hypocrisy.
Smoking does not affect ones judgment or perception in any way. Drinking alcohol has a cumulative effect on perception and judgment so no one who drinks alcohol can 100% guarantee that they will not have an effect on another person because the judgment of someone who's judgment has been affected by alcohol isn't worth jack.

I'm not expecting individuals to decide when they have an effect on others. In fact that's kind of my point. Regardless of your judgment or perception, in a public place no given individual can be absolutely sure of the impact their harmful activity could have on others sharing that public place. The influencing factors are too vast, and many of them impossible for a human to perceive in any state.

Hence why I am for taking that judgment out of the individual's personal control.

I should point out, at this juncture, that while I've only talked of banning drunkenness in public, and you've often used the strawman of equating smoking with drinking when I've been talking of drunkenness, I'd be perfectly happy to consider banning drinking alcohol at all in public (except licensed premises), and in fact that's something that once again is becoming increasingly widespread.

Smokers like to talk of this unfair singling out, and an attack against them, but it's just not true. Drinkers are getting the same treatment. It's illegal to even carry an unopened vessel containing alcohol on the streets of my city, unless you can demonstrate that you've just purchased it at an off-license and are carrying it home or similar. You can still smoke though. You can stand at a major intersection and breath as much second hand smoke into the faces of your fellow citizens as you like. But if you so much as sniff at a lite beer you're liable to find the TPU (Team Policing Unit) in your face.

Realising that we've got so far away from the topic, but I was still trying to keep broadly to the issue of smoking at home in one's own time is not harmful in any way what-so-ever to anyone at any potential workplace.
But even broadening it out, your prejudice against smoking in public is baseless, it is pandering to your perceived lowest common denominator (the smoker who doesn't show non smokers any consideration). And there is no scientific evidence that someone smoking outdoors is affecting anyone's health, further once the cigarette is finished, it leaves no adverse effect on the smoker that will cloud his judgment and potentially lead him to cause harm to a third party.

I disagree.

Hypocrisy again. Managing inconsiderate smokers who don't ensure that non smokers are not affected by their smoke is the problem, so ban inconsiderate smokers.
Of course that wouldn't work in the same way that banning drunks wouldn't work.
So in your preferred "keep it simple", let's just introduce a blanket ban, heck people can still get drunk at home if they want to, and they can still drink without getting drunk at home to. As long as they don't leave their house after they have been drinking I'm OK with that.

Fair enough.

Then you'll understand that smoking legislation doesn't actually come from the people we democratically vote for.

I'm not sure what you mean by "come from", but all legislation in a democracy is created by the people we democratically vote for. In fact I'm pretty sure a democratically elected legislature is one of the more essential characteristics necessary before a state can be considered democratic.

Smoking doesn't give you cancer, it only increases the risk of you developing cancer...

Okay.

Wriggle out of it how ever you want. Your implication was that playing violent video games increased a person's chances of acting out violence in a real world situation.

That's the inference you've made from my argument, because you don't understand it properly.

And yet the undeniable proof that people who have been drinking are more likely to commit violent crime escapes you.

You're making the same mistake here that people are making in the other thread. Making an action easier for the perpetrator != causing the action. Enabling factors are quite dramatically different from causal factors. We were discussing what causes a husband to beat his wife.

 

[gumboot]

I utterly fail to understand that statement. Perhaps it's me? It seems to suggest that if I walk around the garden for a smoke then someone apart from me might be harmed.

Can you explain?

If you mean a public garden, yes. Someone might be harmed. Specifically, because it's public you have no influence or control over other users in that space, nor any practical ability to maintain total awareness of other users.

If you mean a private garden, no. The only person who has any right to have a say in who can smoke there is the garden owner, and if anyone doesn't like that they can go someplace else where the owner's decision better reflects their preferences.

An owner of a private garden can say that smoking is compulsory in their garden for all I care.

 

[Stray Cat]

Claiming "Smokers' Rights" makes as much sense as claiming rights for people afflicted with any other form of drug addiction. While I don't care if someone smokes, I do care when their addiction affects my health and the health of those around me.

Besides, the only stink more unpleasant than a smoker's breath and body odor is that of decaying organic matter, and no one should have to endure either one in a public or working environment.

Mmmm and there was me thinking you may have a valid point to make.

 

[Stray Cat]

Both, though not all did. I had a friend who owned a bar that heavily opposed it. Yet a number of bar owners had donated to the yes campaign. The arguement was private bans were difficult to enforce, the state ban made easier to force smokers to only light up in the outdoor enclosures. It probably helps to understand that in the urban areas bars were already largely banning smoking inside, the ones that were not having trouble attracting business.

Yes, I have no problem what-so-ever with individual businesses deciding for themselves to implement a smoking ban. What I am against is the state interference taking the decision out of their hands.

A few bars in Oregon did close, but on the other hand more opened up as did a few more smoke shops. Overall alcohol sales at bars increased, but we had just entered a recession. There was a dip right after the ban and a stark return by the end of the month from what I understand.

I'll have to take your word on that because I don't have any stats on hand.
But a quick Google tells a different tale:
http://oregoncapitolnews.com/blog/2010/01/21/smoking-ban-the-one-year-anniversary/

In Oregon we just moved the smokers outside. Despite what one of my friends worried about, he can still get a steak, brew and smoke a cigar at most any bar. He just has to sit in the outside enclosures now. Which can be a problem in inclement weather.

My time in LA was pleasant and being outdoors to smoke was never a problem because the climate suits being outdoors (I was there for a few weeks one summer). Here in the UK, not so pleasant, even in our unpredictable summers. However, I wouldn't want to go back to the bad old days of eating my steak in a smoke filled restaurant. Why someone can't sit for an hour to eat a meal without wanting a cig I'll never know. However, going to a public house (bar) for four or five hours is a different kettle of fish.

Well the UK did take more draconian measures than the half the US that took up public smoking bans have. Only in 5 states is it really limited to private residences only. It will take some adjustment to get things right. I have seen hatred, but uppity smokers that act like they are entitled to smoke anywhere anytime they want didn't help your side either. Best not to judge either opinion by the most emotional representatives.

Indeed, I realise that years of inconsideration by smokers towards non smokers hasn't helped at all. That's why I'd rather find common ground instead of inciting the polarisation that seems to be generated by the prevalent demonising of smokers by various organisations.

 

[Stray Cat]

I know what I said. You clearly still don't.

Gaawd, I even quoted it to remind you. If this is the level of your discussion then it hardly makes replying to you necessary.

I'll spell it out one last time:
You said: "So what? You can get utterly hammered without it affecting anyone either. The difference is you can drink without there being any
possibility of that causing harm to anyone else. You can't say that for smoking." Which is saying that I can not smoke without the possibility of it harming anyone else. Which is simply wrong, because I can smoke without it causing any harm to anyone else. So I answered with:
"Yes I can.
It is possible to smoke in public without it harming anyone else."

At which point you went into some nonsensical post about that not being what you'd said...

Now I'm quite happy to entertain the possibility that that is not what you meant. But it is most certainly what you said. If it was not what you meant, then explaining it clearer would have been more help than making out like it's my reading ability that's at fault.

Being drunk in a public place != Harming someone else.

Agreed. So now we have a situation where smoking does not equate to necessarily harming anyone else and drinking does not equate to necessarily harming anyone else either.

So if we can't take the risk of a smoker not harming anyone else, we also can't take the risk of a drinker not harming anyone else?
Remembering that it's only going to be inconsiderate jerks who harm anyone else anyway (whether by inconsiderate smoking or through clouded judgment and increased likelihood of aggression under the influence of alcohol).

No.

Wow.... just wow, You deny that I could provide a long list of harmful side effects of drinking alcohol?

None.
Why?

I'm just trying to follow your illogical argument justifying the banning of something because it serves no "vital function"
You cite cars as having a vital function without considering that sometimes they "serve no purpose whatsoever other than personal pleasure"
More double standards.

Electricity generated by power stations that don't spew out poisonous chemicals.

Luck them for being able to choose exactly what is used to generate their electricity. But I think your argument to be highly spurious.
It shows how you will stretch anything to support whatever you want and use some very odd and sometimes complete nonsense arguments to justify your double standards.

I honestly don't even remember what this point was about.

Imagine my suprise!. It's still there if you look back through the thread. Just because it's on a different page doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore.

Either it's their main concern specifically because they don't have sufficient free resources to address it, or they're an incompetent police force.

Or they just don't enforce the 'drunk in public' law because no one takes any notice of it and because of that, the number of drunks in public in towns and cities is too great. All because drunkenness is still socially acceptable.

Or alternatively it is enforced but effectiveness is limited due to a lack of resources. Or alternatively if it wasn't enforced you'd come across even larger groups of drunken idiots in town centers on a weekend.

You're just making this up as you go along aren't you?

New Zealand.

Where the police can legally arrest a drunk person as long as they are causing a public nuisance right?

I'm not expecting individuals to decide when they have an effect on others. In fact that's kind of my point. Regardless of your judgment or perception, in a public place no given individual can be absolutely sure of the impact their harmful activity could have on others sharing that public place. The influencing factors are too vast, and many of them impossible for a human to perceive in any state.

Hence why I am for taking that judgment out of the individual's personal control.

But you seem to be making an exception for alcohol.
I don't expect any individual who drinks alcohol to be absolutely sure their drinking has no affect on others.

I should point out, at this juncture, that while I've only talked of banning drunkenness in public, and you've often used the strawman of equating smoking with drinking when I've been talking of drunkenness, I'd be perfectly happy to consider banning drinking alcohol at all in public (except licensed premises), and in fact that's something that once again is becoming increasingly widespread.

Yes, if only we could have licenced smoking premises eh?
But to make this relevant to the OP, apparently we can't even smoke at home or in our own time without employers refusing us jobs, when our smoking has zero affect on anyone. It does not take circumstances and reality into consideration, it is simply a baseless prejudice.

Smokers like to talk of this unfair singling out, and an attack against them, but it's just not true. Drinkers are getting the same treatment. It's illegal to even carry an unopened vessel containing alcohol on the streets of my city, unless you can demonstrate that you've just purchased it at an off-license and are carrying it home or similar. You can still smoke though. You can stand at a major intersection and breath as much second hand smoke into the faces of your fellow citizens as you like. But if you so much as sniff at a lite beer you're liable to find the TPU (Team Policing Unit) in your face.

That's your strawman. I'm not saying (and I don't think anyone else has said either) that smokers are the only ones being singled out. In this thread I couldn't give a stuff about drinkers, my concern is with what's happening to smokers (which regardless of common perceptions of some people takes into consideration the thoughts and rights of non smokers to not have to breathe my smoke). We happen to be concentrating on smokers in this thread because that's what the topic is about.

I disagree.

You forgot to to qualify that with "ner-ner-n-ner-ner"

Fair enough.

Of course that would have extensive ramifications on the hospitality industry.

I'm not sure what you mean by "come from", but all legislation in a democracy is created by the people we democratically vote for. In fact I'm pretty sure a democratically elected legislature is one of the more essential characteristics necessary before a state can be considered democratic.

Yes the elected leaders take advice from civil servants. The same civil servants which advised the previous government. So a change in politicians does not necessarily mean the advice given to the newbies is going to be any better or any different, although they may choose to act upon it differently.

That's the inference you've made from my argument, because you don't understand it properly.

Or maybe that you didn't explain it well enough?
But that's another thread, so perhaps we;ll leave it alone in this one.

You're making the same mistake here that people are making in the other thread. Making an action easier for the perpetrator != causing the action. Enabling factors are quite dramatically different from causal factors. We were discussing what causes a husband to beat his wife.

You may have been discussing that. I was more concentrating on what could be done to help prevent a husband beating his wife. As the many medically acknowledged, potentially harmful side effects of alcohol increase the risk of violent behavior, it seems like a good place to start looking for a solution.

 

[JoelKatz]

Employers hire people for less all the time. I am unaware of any such regulation that would apply to pay that does not apply to hiring. IE you cannot by class pay women less, but you also cannot refuse to hire them either. Most companies I have worked for hire the young and the elder less for example. Usually under the assumption they are less reliable and less likely to stick with the company long term.

Can you give an example of how regulation has actually prevented US companies from paying smokers less leading to them just not hiring smokers at all?

It depends on the jurisdiction. Currently, twenty-seven states have laws that prohibit pay 'discrimination' based on legal activities that occur during off-duty hours.

Federal law makes many causes of action for salary differences, including 'adverse impact'. There are several safe harbor exceptions such as seniority, workplace productivity and the like, but cost of employment or cost of health care isn't one of them. So if a policy of paying smokers less disproportionately affects one gender, one race, older people, or the like, you're going to have a problem since you don't meet any of the safe harbors that justify the adverse impact.

 

[Trakar]

That's a very curious definition, if you don't mind me saying. Oerhaps I am misunderstanding, if so then please correct me. So if someone uses a drug on special occasions, I'm thinking of club goers who might take ecstasy maybe two or three times a year, as a special treat, does that classify them as an addict?

They take it because they enjoy the effects of the drug, but know that it takes several days to recover, therefore taking it frequently can lead to absenteeism from work and depressive episodes. They look forward to their high but go in for delayed gratification based on knowledge the dis-benefits of greater use.

Would you class this as addiction?

Apologies, somehow I missed this response earlier.

No, addiction isn't identified by frequency so much as by motivation or control. A social user begins developing a pattern of usage to "blow off some steam," because they are "stressed out", or just feeling depressed and feel a need get out and "go a little crazy" every now and again should be aware that these can be early indications of a developing psychological dependence, even if it only happens a few times a year, it is conditioning the body and creating a feedback in the brain that the appropriate way to deal with these issues (pressure, stress, boredom, etc.,) is through the self-medication with these substances. Usually not a big problem or apparent, until life piles on the stressors, which happens in every one's life periodically. When this happens we reach into the mental toolkit to deal with the problem and the handy, effective, tool that has helped us many times in the past without drastic negative effect on smaller and infrequent occassions, fits quickly and easily into our hands,...it may not be "the" answer to our problem, but it is familiar and it may help us to at least temporarily step-back from the problem... and that can be the start of a bigger problem. The main thing that seperates an addict from a chronic user (especially with psychological addictions) is the fact that neither the substance nor the frequency of use are as important as the mental state and rationalizations of actions that are the roots of addiction, that "stinking thinking," as some of the treatment groups and organizations label it. Or at the least, such is at the root of much of my understandings and experience.

 

[GlennB]

So what? You can get utterly hammered without it affecting anyone either. The difference is you can drink without there being any possibility of that causing harm to anyone else. You can't say that for smoking.

I utterly fail to understand that statement. Perhaps it's me? It seems to suggest that if I walk around the garden for a smoke then someone apart from me might be harmed.

Can you explain?

.....
If you mean a private garden, no. The only person who has any right to have a say in who can smoke there is the garden owner, and if anyone doesn't like that they can go someplace else where the owner's decision better reflects their preferences.

So can we take it that you have abandoned the absolute position made in your original statement (bolded, above) ?

 

[Stray Cat]

No, addiction isn't identified by frequency so much as by motivation or control. A social user begins developing a pattern of usage to "blow off some steam," because they are "stressed out", or just feeling depressed and feel a need get out and "go a little crazy" every now and again should be aware that these can be early indications of a developing psychological dependence, even if it only happens a few times a year, it is conditioning the body and creating a feedback in the brain that the appropriate way to deal with these issues (pressure, stress, boredom, etc.,) is through the self-medication with these substances. Usually not a big problem or apparent, until life piles on the stressors, which happens in every one's life periodically. When this happens we reach into the mental toolkit to deal with the problem and the handy, effective, tool that has helped us many times in the past without drastic negative effect on smaller and infrequent occassions, fits quickly and easily into our hands,...it may not be "the" answer to our problem, but it is familiar and it may help us to at least temporarily step-back from the problem... and that can be the start of a bigger problem. The main thing that seperates an addict from a chronic user (especially with psychological addictions) is the fact that neither the substance nor the frequency of use are as important as the mental state and rationalizations of actions that are the roots of addiction, that "stinking thinking," as some of the treatment groups and organizations label it. Or at the least, such is at the root of much of my understandings and experience.

That's not exactly how the American Society of Addiction Medicine define it... though admittedly I only have Wikipedia's word for that.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you're only painting half the picture.

 

[23_Tauri]

I like how you ignore all of the other points and jump on the weakest criticism, even ignoring the pertinent aspect of that criticism, which is the US District Court finding. The US District Court didn't see it as a poor researching having to go to the Tobacco industry because they had no choice.

Not at all. The anti-smoking lobby accuse Enstrom of being partisan because he accepted funding from the tobacco companies in the final year of his research. That the TRDRP withdrew its funding when it knew that Enstrom's work would not support the existing consensus indicates that it was the public health movement that was being partisan. The consensus is not based on demonstrated health effects, but is politically-motivated, pushed through by moral crusaders since the turn of the century (see below).

There is a consensus. It's just that the consensus isn't true, remember? Because of that "anti-smoking establishment". There is irrefutable consensus amongst the scientific community and world governments about second hand smoke. Your claim is they're wrong. If you want to change your claim to an argument that there's no consensus you're welcome to, but bear in mind that's exceedingly easy to refute.

But that consensus has only come about because of the decades of lobbying by powerful prohibitionist groups.

It is not the first time that governments and their associated public health bodies have been persuaded to forbid the use of intoxicating substances on the grounds of spurious evidence. The alcohol prohibitionists of the 19th and early 20th century were motivated by a desire to keep the poor away from vice and in church on Sundays, not by a paternalistic consideration for their health.

However, they were able to convince the state to make the sale, manufacture and import of alcohol illegal by grossly exaggerating the cost of alcohol use to society in terms of lost work productivity, sclerosis of the liver and wife battering, because as everyone knew at the time, making alcohol available automatically led to drunkenness, thereby affecting not just the user but those around them and society as a whole. Sound familiar? It should, because now tobacco prohibition is justified on the basis of ‘cost to society’ and ‘damage to the health of the innocent’.

And gumboot, you would be the first person to tell me that drinking does not equal drunkenness, right?

On achieving alcohol prohibition in 1919, The Anti-Saloon League’s new slogan became ‘Nicotine Next’, after the title of a book by Frederich Roman. In those days there was scant evidence that smoking was bad for the health of the smoker, let alone any concept of it being bad for the health of non-smokers. But, as with alcohol, this didn’t matter to the prohibitionists because their crusade had always been a moral one based on Puritanism, and not based on real health effects.

The anti-smoking lobbyists of today are the direct descendents of the moral crusaders of the early 20th century. There modus operandi has not changed, and nor has their ultimate goal.

 

[Darat]

Maybe form your own church, where the burning of tobacco is required for worship.

That way, when someone slams you for practising your religion, you can cite Britain's laws against religious slander, and maybe collect a few thousand pounds for damages.

Well apart from the fact no such laws exist...

 

[Cuddles]

And these are individuals exposed to SHS being surrounded by second hand smoke day in, day out, 365 days a year for the whole of their married life.

Evidence? The actual studies seem to be of people who were married to smokers, not people who were exposed to smoke 365 days a year. I know many people who smoke (although admittedly I'm not married to any of them), but I don't know a single person who smokes inside their house. Even people who like smoking don't tend to want the inside of their house coated in stale smoke. Unless you deliberately follow them outside to inhale their smoke, being married to a smoker doesn't necessarily imply you're exposed to any more smoke than anyone else.

 

[Stray Cat]

Evidence? The actual studies seem to be of people who were married to smokers, not people who were exposed to smoke 365 days a year. I know many people who smoke (although admittedly I'm not married to any of them), but I don't know a single person who smokes inside their house. Even people who like smoking don't tend to want the inside of their house coated in stale smoke. Unless you deliberately follow them outside to inhale their smoke, being married to a smoker doesn't necessarily imply you're exposed to any more smoke than anyone else.

Although this seems to be the trend nowadays. surely you are old enough to remember the 60's and 70's when there was no such consideration and people smoked where ever they were?
When these studies were done, it was normal to smoke indoors, out doors, in bars, restaurants, on trains, planes, in cinemas etc.

So yes it maybe seems like an assumption that someone married to a smoker is going to be exposed to SHS more than a non smoker when you try to compare it with today's more considerate smoker's attitude towards their homes and others around them, but it's a logical assumption based upon the reality of the situation at that time.

 

[23_Tauri]

Evidence? The actual studies seem to be of people who were married to smokers, not people who were exposed to smoke 365 days a year.

These brief summaries indicate that length of time of exposure was controlled for in at least some of the studies. E.g. under the Zaridze study, it states "Risk also fell as the duration of exposure rose" implying that duration of exposure was measured by the researchers.

There is nothing to suggest, at least to me, that this variable wasn't controlled for in the others. Most control for occpation, age, type of tobacco (cigar, cigarette) so one would expect researchers to ask the subjects about how much time they spent in the company of their partner when smoking, how much their partners smoked indoors etc.

Also, Stray Cat makes a valid point. The concept of passive smoking wasn't even invented until the early 1970s, so in decades gone by there was much less sense that one shouldn't smoke near non-smokers.

 

[brodski]

surely you are old enough to remember the 60's and 70's

I don't think he is.