-Caveat Lector-
>From www.reason.com/ogmyt.html
For Your Own Good
Ten Myths of the Anti-Smoking Movement
------------------------------------------------------------------------
These"Ten Myths of the Anti-Smoking Movement" appear as an appendix in For Your Own
Good.
1. The tobacco companies hid the truth about the hazards and addictiveness of
cigarettes from the American public. Industry double-talk notwithstanding, warnings
about the health risks of smoking go back hundreds of years
. James I, in his 1604 Counterblaste to Tobacco, called smoking "a custome lothsome to
the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs." In
every generation, tobacco�s opponents have echoed
him, attributing a long list of maladies to smoking. (See Chapter 1.) Persuasive
scientific evidence of tobacco�s hazards, which began to emerge in the early 1930s,
has received widespread attention since the �50s. (See C
hapter 2.) Likewise, the difficulty of giving up the tobacco habit
has been common knowledge for centuries. James I�s lord chancellor,
Sir Francis Bacon, observed, "In our times the use of tobacco is
growing greatly and conquers men with a certain secret pleasure, so
that those who have once become accustomed thereto can later hardly
be restrained therefrom." The 17th-century polemicist Johann Michael
Moscherosch called smokers "thralls to the tobacco fiend," while
Cotton Mather dubbed them "Slave[s] to the Pipe." Fagon, Louis XIV�s
court physician, described the tobacco habit as "a fatal, insatiable
necessity�a permanent epilepsy." (See Chapter 7.)
2. "Tobacco is tobacco." Although all tobacco products pose some
health risks, cigarettes are by far the most hazardous. Cigars and
pipes are considerably less dangerous. Research by the American
Cancer Society found that "[d]eath rates were far higher in cigarette
smokers than in nonsmokers," while "[c]igar smokers had somewhat
higher death rates than nonsmokers," and "there was little difference
between the death rates of pipe smokers and the death rates of men
who never smoked regularly." By one estimate, smokeless tobacco is 98
percent safer than cigarettes. (See Chapter 2.)
3. People smoke because of advertising. There is remarkably little
evidence that advertising plays an important role in getting people
to smoke, as opposed to getting them to smoke a particular brand. The
1989 surgeon general�s report conceded that "[t]here is no
scientifically rigorous study available to the public that provides a
definitive answer to the basic question of whether advertising and
promotion increase the level of tobacco consumption. Given the
complexity of the issue, none is likely to be forthcoming in the
forseeable future." The 1994 report, which focused on underage
smoking, also acknowledged the "lack of definitive literature." None
of the widely publicized studies that have appeared in recent years,
including the much-hyped research on Joe Camel, actually measured the
impact of advertising on a teenager�s propensity to smoke. (See
Chapter 3.)
4. Smoking imposes costs on society. Because smokers tend to die
earlier than nonsmokers, the short-term costs of treating tobacco-
related illness are balanced, and probably outweighed, by savings on
Social Security, nursing home stays, and medical care in old age.
Every analysis that takes such long-term savings into account,
including reports from the RAND Corporation, the Congressional
Research Service, and Harvard economist W. Kip Viscusi, concludes
that "social cost" cannot justify raising cigarette taxes. (See
Chapter 4.)
5. Secondhand smoke poses a grave threat to bystanders. The evidence
concerning the health effects of secondhand smoke is not nearly as
conclusive as the evidence concerning the health effects of smoking.
The research suggests that people who live with smokers for decades
may face a slightly higher risk of lung cancer. According to one
estimate, a nonsmoking woman who lives with a smoker faces an
additional lung cancer risk of 6.5 in 10,000, which would raise her
lifetime risk from about 0.34 percent to about 0.41 percent. Studies
of secondhand smoke and heart disease, including the results from the
Harvard Nurses Study published in 1997, report more-dramatic
increases in disease rates�so dramatic, in fact, that they are
biologically implausible, suggesting risks comparable to those faced
by smokers, despite the much lower doses involved. In any case, there
is no evidence that casual exposure to secondhand smoke has any
impact on your life expectancy. (See Chapter 5.)
6. If secondhand smoke really is dangerous, smoking ought to be
banned everywhere, except in private residences. Since almost all of
the epidemiological evidence about the health effects of secondhand
smoke relates to long-term exposure in the home, the fact that this
is the one place exempted from current and proposed smoking bans
suggests a residual concern for property rights. Yet business owners
have property rights, too. If the government respected their right to
establish rules about smoking on their own property, potential
employees and customers could take such policies into account when
deciding where to work or which businesses to patronize. Whether
secondhand smoke is a health hazard or merely a nuisance, such a
voluntary system is the most appropriate way to deal with the
conflicting demands of smokers and nonsmokers, since it allows for
diversity and competition, rather than simply imposing the will of
the majority on everyone. (See Chapter 5.)
7. States have a right to demand compensation from tobacco companies
for the costs of treating smoking-related diseases under Medicaid.
This claim ignores the long-term savings traceable to smoking (see
Myth #4) and the tobacco taxes smokers already pay to cover the costs
they supposedly impose on others. And by the same logic, states could
sue the manufacturer of any product associated with disease or
injury, including alcoholic beverages, fatty foods, candy, firearms,
swimming pols, bathtubs, skateboards, and automobiles. The makers
(and consumers) of such products should not be blamed because
politicians decided to pay for health care with taxpayers� money.
(See Chapter 6.)
8. The tobacco companies have been secretly manipulating the nicotine
in cigarettes to keep smokers hooked. Nicotine control was never a
secret. Several brands of denicotined cigarettes were introduced as
early as the 1920s. Claims of reduced tar and nicotine have been
conspicuous since the 1950s, and the yields of each brand have been
advertised since 1971. The very idea of a consistent nicotine yield
for a given brand implies control, which cigarette manufacturers
achieve through a variety of methods that have long been discussed in
trade journals, books, and government reports. (See Chapter 7.)
9. Smoking is "a pediatric disease." Although most smokers start as
teenagers, the vast majority are, in fact, adults. And while it
raises the risk of certain illnesses, smoking itself is a
behavior�something people choose to do�not a disease. As then-Surgeon
General C. Everett Koop noted in his 1984 speech calling for "a smoke-
free society," smoking "is a voluntary act: one does not have to
smoke if one does not want to." (See Chapter 7.)
10. Once people have started smoking, nicotine addiction prevents
them from stopping. This is so contrary to everyday experience that
it�s amazing politicians and anti-smoking activists can say it with a
straight face. In fact, there are about as many former smokers in
this country as there are smokers, and almost all gave up the habit
on their own, without formal treatment�usually by quitting cold
turkey. (See Chapter 7.)
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>From www.futureand.com/about.html
About The Future and Its Enemies
By Virginia Postrel
Today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at
any time in history - the fruits of human ingenuity, curiosity, and
perseverance. Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians loudly
laments our condition. Technology, they say, enslaves us. Economic
change makes us insecure. Popular culture coarsens and brutalizes us.
Consumerism despoils the environment. The future, they say, is
dangerously out of control, and unless we rein in these forces of
change and guide them closely, we risk disaster.
In The Future and its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes this myth,
embarking on a bold exploration of how progress really occurs. In
areas of endeavor ranging from fashion to fisheries, from movies to
medicine, from contact lenses to computers, she shows how and why
unplanned, open-ended trial and error - not conformity to one central
vision - is the key to human betterment. Thus, the true enemies of
humanity's future are those who insist on prescribing outcomes in
advance, circumventing the process of competition and experiment in
favor of their own preconceptions and prejudices.
Postrel argues that these conflicting views of progress, rather than
the traditional left and right, increasingly define our political and
cultural debate. On one side, she identifies a collection of strange
bedfellows: Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader standing shoulder to
shoulder against international trade; "right-wing" nativists and
"left-wing" environmentalists opposing immigration; traditionalists
and technocrats denouncing Wal-Mart, biotechnology, the Internet, and
suburban "sprawl." Some prefer a pre-industrial past, while others
envision a bureaucratically engineered future, but all share a
devotion to what she calls "stasis," a controlled, uniform society
that changes only with permission from some central authority.
On the other side is an emerging coalition in support of what Postrel
calls "dynamism": an open-ended society where creativity and
enterprise, operating under predictable rules, generate progress in
unpredictable ways. Dynamists are united not by a single political
agenda but by an appreciation for such complex evolutionary processes
as scientific inquiry, market competition, artistic development, and
technological invention. Entrepreneurs and artists, scientists and
legal theorists, cultural analysts and computer programmers,
dynamists are, says Postrel, "the party of life."
The Future and Its Enemies is a vigorous manifesto for the dynamist
world view, as well as a penetrating analysis of how our beliefs
about personal knowledge, nature, virtue, and even the relation
between work and play shape the way we run our businesses, make
public policy, and search for truth and beauty. Controversial and
provocative, Virginia Postrel's thesis heralds a fundamental shift in
the way we view politics, culture, and society as we face an unknown -
and thus invigorating - future.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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