Imagine how compelling the evidence must be that, even in an administration known for massaging the facts in favor of big donors, they said it anyway:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Separate smoking sections don’t cut it: Only smoke-free buildings and public places truly protect nonsmokers from the hazards of breathing in other people’s tobacco smoke, says a long-awaited surgeon general’s report.
Some 126 million nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand smoke, what U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona repeatedly calls “involuntary smoking” that puts people at increased risk of death from lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses.
Moreover, there is no risk-free level of exposure to someone else’s drifting smoke, declares the report issued Tuesday — a conclusion sure to fuel already growing efforts at public smoking bans nationwide. Fourteen states have passed what are considered comprehensive smoke-free workplace laws, those that include restaurants and bars.
But the surgeon general is especially concerned about young children who can’t escape their parents’ addiction in search of cleaner air: Just over one in five children is exposed to secondhand smoke at home, where workplace bans don’t reach. Those children are at increased risk of SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome; lung infections such as pneumonia; ear infections; and more severe asthma.
Something most people don’t realize is that even if parents don’t smoke when the kids are around, particulate matter still gathers on everything in the house or car, and the kids end up breathing it in anyway.
Duh.
(Caveat: I am smoker who actually enjoys smoke free environments, and enjoys “stepping outside” for a smoke - some people are civilized)
Yeah, and the other thing is that of course the nominal limits of a person’s private property aren’t the limits of the smoke as a hazard, any more than they are the limits past which a bullet won’t go. So people who live in apartment houses and smoke are putting *other* people’s children (and their neighbors) at risk even though those are nominally private spaces that they have a right to pollute.
aimai
Report Warns Against Secondhand Smoke…
A surgeon general’s report found only smoke-free buildings and public places truly protect nonsmoker…
As I like to point out, the comment answer to “do you mind if I smoke” (in your air implied) is:
“no - not so long as you do don’t mind if I piss in your drink”.
“A serious examination of the body of science (surrounding the second hand smoke) issue yields this conclusion: there is no reason to believe that ETS presents a (health) risk to nonsmokers.
In short, the health authorities and politicians have been telling us A WHOPPER. A whopper which, at this late date, supports a great many professional careers.
So why do they want you to believe that “second-hand smoke is killing you?” They want to encourage discrimination against smokers, as a way to make them stop smoking and thus create “a healthier society.” Examine your own core values and decide if this is a political technique that you would like to see normalized! ”
http://www.forces.org/evidence/ets-whop/whopper.htm
http://www.geocities.com/shelioness/shs.html
Something most people don’t realize is that even if parents don’t smoke when the kids are around, particulate matter still gathers on everything in the house or car, and the kids end up breathing it in anyway.
Sorry, Susie. I agree with you 99.9% of the time, but that’s just crazy talk.
I understand some people can be very sensitve due to allergies, but thinking damage will be done to a child because they are in a place where someone has smoked recently, is not quite…., I mean, come on!
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My GF and I went to an eatery in a small town in Texas. We where asked Smoking or Non? I usually say, It doesn’t matter, but having just bought a pack of cigs I said, Smoking. I started to head for the empty side of the restaurant, but the hostess went the other way to the packed side!
When we left there ~20 people on the smoking side and 3 on the nonsmoking.
GOD BLESS TEXAS!
(yeah, I know. Another reason to hate those Texans)
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agave,
nice quotes but you will have to do better. One was a quote regarding a single study regarding a single disease and the other propaganda without references (hard to take seriously). Most studies show that passive smoking has a small effect on the health of adults, but rather larger impact on small children and infants and there are some people who are allergic. And smokers make a mistake if they think that you NEED it to be damaging to health for restricting it to make sense. Can you have sex in public? Play loud music wherever you want? Drop rubbish wherever you like (and smokers are responisble for a big fraction on litter)?
My preferred rule - is unrestricted between consenting adults in private - just like sex.