Join us as we thrust into house music..

Written on 01 26 03

I am not a smoker but I am virulently opposed to New York City's smoking ban. People are no longer allowed to smoke in restaurants, bars or clubs. This is yet another example of the government intruding into our personal lives. It is a disgrace.

Granted, I have radical views on drugs, of which tobacco is one. I believe that all drugs should not only be legal but free (for me at least). Yet the smoking ban is an issue that should rile even the most conservative of thinkers. Why doesn't it?

Normally intelligent people actually support the smoking ban. They believe that second hand smoke is dangerous. They believe this because the anti-smoking lobby and the media perpetuate this myth.

Many people watch news stories and believe whatever propaganda is thrown at them. I, however, have an advanced sense of humor, beauty and skepticism, a skepticism that I apply to everything. The internet is essential in this regard because critical research can be done at will. To be skeptical about everything, even things you believe in (perhaps especially), is wise.

Information is at once easier to get than ever - because of the internet - and harder, because mass media and news outlets are increasingly censored by the conglomerates that own them. One must actively seek out the truth.

Bloomberg loves to talk about the thousands of waiters, waitresses, and bartenders' lives the new law will save, but the danger of second hand smoke is infinitesimally small, if it exists at all.

Quite simply, there is no valid statistic that shows a link between second hand smoke and cancer, illness or death. The one most often quoted comes from a 1992 EPA report which reported 50000 deaths a year due to second-hand smoke. This study was funded by the American Cancer Society, yet the raw data of this study was never released or independently verified.

An activist named Gian Turci made a request under the Freedom of Information Act for details on the study and all he got back were blank, crossed out and censored pages. In Mr. Turci's words: "If the mountain of evidence is so real, why are the scientific community and the public denied the possibility of verification?"

Indeed. In 1998 the American Cancer Society finally retracted this statistic, stating in a press release: "The American Cancer Society will no longer use.. the statistic because we too have been unable to acquire the documentation to support this citation."

In other words, it was a lie.

If you repeat something often enough, especially in this anti-scientific world, people will believe it.

RSP or "Respirable suspended particulate matter" is the crap, or amount of pollutants, in the air. Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules state that a workplace must have a RSP rating of 5000 micrograms per cubic meter over eight hours in order to be considered officially dangerous to workers.

A Department of Energy study in 1999 found that the average RSP level in a bar or restaurant that allows smoking to be only 67 or 135 micrograms, respectively. In 2000, the Oak Ridge national laboratory, a part of the Dept of Energy, found RSP ratings of just 9.41 and 14.9. In 1993 the American Medical Association found 117 or 348 micrograms, the highest of the bunch and yet still far below the OSHA minimum danger rating of 5000.

I'm not selectively giving you statistics that suit my position. When I first heard Bloomberg speak on the issue, he seemed to make sense. If second hand smoke is harmful to workers, then indeed it ought to be banned. But it isn't.

My position is based on the facts; facts are not bent to the will of my position. In 1998, the World Health Organization concluded flatly there there is no link between second hand smoke and cancer, and that in fact, second hand smoke could actually have a protective effect against cancer.

There are plenty of other independent sources out there about the true effects of second hand smoke:

Regulation - The Cato Institute
The British Medical Journal
International Journal of Cancer
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
Independent Public & Health Policy Research Group
UK News
The Cato Institute

On the other hand, anti-smoking webpages, like anti-drug webpages, are often quite simplistic and lacking in any kind of scientific basis. This one suggests the anti-drug parody I once posted!

The other day I argued with a friend who insisted that second hand smoke was dangerous and that I was wrong, even while acknowledging that she had never known me to be wrong before.

"How do you know its dangerous?" I asked.

"It was on the news. Its everywhere!" my friend said.

The news should not be mistaken for fact. Again, every scientific study has reached the same conclusion: that there is no statistically significant increased health risk for non-smokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke, at home or in the workplace.

Some quotes:

"..not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer, but that it could even have a protective effect."
World Health Organization, March 1998

"The results are consistent with there being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer.."
London Telegraph, 1999

"In general, there was no elevated lung cancer risk associated with passive smoke exposure in the workplace. ..."
- Brownson et. al.
American Journal of Public Health, November 1992, Vol. 82, No. 11

"...  no evidence of an adverse effect of environmental tobacco smoke in the workplace."
- Janerich et al. New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 6, 1990

"... the association with exposure to passive smoking at work was small and not statistically significant."
- Kalandidi et al.
Cancer Causes and Control, 1, 15-21, 1990

"We did not generally find an increase in CHD [coronary heart disease] risk associated with ETS [environmental smoke] exposure at work or in other settings."
Steenland et al.
Circulation, Vol. 94, No. 4, August 15, 1996

"... no statistically significant increase in risk associated with exposure to environmental tobacco smoke at work or during social activities...."
- Stockwell et al.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 84:1417-1422, 1992

"There was no association between exposure to ETS at the workplace and risk of lung cancer."
Zaridze et al., 1998
International Journal of Cancer, 1998, 75, 335-338

How is it that the media can be so wrong about the dangers of second hand smoke? They're wrong about many things and perpetuate many myths. Remember the story about razors hidden in Halloween candy? It never happened. Do you think school shootings increased during the 90s? They decreased.

The media, especially the television media, is out to get ratings, and ratings come from spreading fear and hysteria regardless of the truth. None of the dry, scientific reports I quoted above would make for thrilling television. Heaven forbid anyone do actual research or reporting.

The media's continued rejection of scientific findings is nothing more than political correctness gone awry as they deliberately suppress data which fails to support their own "politically correct" beliefs.

What is the media wrong about that we don't know of? How much of their reporting is from reporting, and how much of it is hand-fed by propagandist lobbying machines? These are the questions everyone should ask.

The anti-smoking hysteria is as pervasive and seemingly unassailable as the anti-pot hysteria; bogus scientific claims and unsubstantiated rumors are spread by radically conservative organizations whose goal is to control our behavior.

Ironically, my aforementioned friend is an avid pot smoker and a regular visitor to Amsterdam's pot cafes.

"So I suppose then that you'd be supportive of a law banning pot smoking in Amsterdam's cafes because the pot smoke might bother some people there?"

"But that's different. Marijuana smoke doesn't cause cancer," my former friend said.

Arrgh!

It is impossible to argue logically with people who are flatly incapable of logical thought. Scientific studies show that second-hand smoke has no cancer-causing effects. There is not a single scientific study to support that it does. I say this as someone who does not smoke and has had cancer. Do we live in a world entirely devoid of reason? Not yet anyway.. the House of Diabolique is still here.

Lets say you believe the conclusions of science; you understand that second-hand smoke is not harmful enough to merit a ban, and yet you still want it banned because second hand smoke simply bothers you. You don't like the smell.

I say to you this:

It is fine for a community to ban smoking in public spaces for that reason, but what right does the government have to tell people how to behave on their private property? If I own a bar or a club, isn't it my prerogative to smoke there if I want to, just like I can at home? Furthermore, I should have the right to determine if others can smoke there or not. Its MY property; and if I want to risk the social stigma attached to owning a smoke-filled bar or club, it is my right to do so.

Do you find smoking annoying? Then don't go to crowded, overly smoky bars. Find a bar with better ventilation than the others. Go to a health-conscious cafe. Or, go to a cavernous venue like Sound Factory or Roxy, where ambient smoke can hardly even be smelled let alone considered harmful. I don't like rock music and no one is forcing me to go to CBGBs. I don't particularly like lesbians, either, but when I go to a lesbian bar I grin and bear it. (That's a joke in case you're humor challenged.)

So what about the workplace? The workplace is normally private property, and so it should be up to your employer whether smoking is allowed or not. In a free world, most employers would probably not allow smoking in deference to those who are bothered by the smell. This is their right. Those who did allow smoking would probably choose to have smoking areas; and besides that, the smokers I know are actually very mindful of the needs of their co-workers and wouldn't be blowing it in their face. Leaving the office for a cigarette break is often a delight for these people.

The anti-smoking lobby is right to bring the past misdeeds of the tobacco industry to light. I am certainly no fan of big tobacco. Their crimes are the main reason smokers are in such a weak position. Smokers have no liberal defenders because liberals can't fathom the idea of siding with tobacco, despite the fact that smokers should have the right to smoke on private property regardless of the tobacco industry's misdeeds.

The tobacco industry itself can offer no help; it has been bitchslapped into a coma by the government. Indeed, they ought to be so regulated that we know what color underwear the CEO is wearing.

The anti-smoking lobby is right to point out the ill-effects of smoking cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes greatly increases your chances of dying a long, slow, painful death. But they are VERY wrong to exaggerate and lie about the dangers of second hand smoke and to harass those adults who choose to smoke anyway.

They lie to move government control of our lives forward. Inch by inch they grab what they can so that the next step doesn't seem so harsh. Will surveillance cameras be forced into clubs and other private properties next? Will the bars be forced to close at 2am? How will the drug laws ever be relaxed if people can't even smoke cigarettes? We're not even allowed to dance in some establishments!

Anti-smoking advocates are less interested in public health and more interested in social control. This is fascism and they are health Nazis.

Interestingly, it is the Nazis who first attacked a person's choice to smoke. In the fascinating book Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis , Robert N. Proctor notes that Gerhard Wagner, head of the Nazi medical plan, constantly complained about smokers and cigarette advertising. Nazi health officials believed that personal health was essential to German nationalism, and that according to Nazi philosophy, "the good of the whole comes before the good of the individual."

Hitler desired "a secure and sanitary utopia...a smoke-free Germany" and ordered cigarettes airbrushed out of photos that appeared in Third Reich publications. The Nazis instituted draconian rules against smoking in many places and began to ration cigarettes, close tobacco shops and force people to quit. (Interestingly, smoking among Germans increased 50% during this time while remaining steady in bordering France, who had no such rules and respected its citizens right to choose to smoke.)

Does that sound familiar? Ridiculously high taxes, warning labels, smoking bans on private property, attacks on advertising. All familiar.

Is our government going to start arresting parents who smoke at home in front of their children? How much longer until emboldened anti-smoking propagandists falsely label this child abuse? Save the children!

Again, scientific studies give us the truth. The International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded in 1998 that there is "no association between childhood exposure to environmental smoke and lung cancer risk."

If an offensive smell is the only justification to ban smoking, then why not ban cologne? I know the guys in Jersey love to wear it, but I hate the smell. Can we ban that from their nightclubs? I hate the smell of farting. Should we ban beans?

Many people find gay sex offensive. I would guess that two men kissing in a bar would bother many straight people all across the south. Should gay kissing, then, be banned? Gay sex is illegal in Texas, even on private property. This is not a dormant law. In 1998 two men were arrested in Texas for doing just that.

It is all connected. You're either for personal liberty or you're not. I am, and I take a stand whenever personal liberties are threatened whether they involve me or not.

Personally, I find smoking filthy. I'm also appalled by some forms of abortion. But I support the right of pregnant women to decide what's right for them, and likewise for smokers.

The government should not be allowed to spread lies in order to control our behavior. It is a sovereign right for adults in a free society to think for themselves about what actions they will or will not take when the course of such actions can harm no one but themselves. Think. Freedom .

The pseudoscience behind the smoking ban is an insult to my intelligence, the ban itself is a disgrace to all who love liberty, and those who support it are either ignorant, selfish or just plain stupid.

The House of Diabolique.
Better fierceness through rationality.

Read part II of this essay, go back to the archives or home .