Whether she wishes to join the debate or not, Ms. Heller has asked the questions (see below). I'll also address my friend, Mike Hohmann's purported civil libertarian view below that. (It's long, but that's the nature of controversy):
On 5/10/04 3:15 PM, Victoria Heller wrote: >> Statistics posted by Chris Johnson.... > >> "Tobacco usage results in 100,000(Cato Institute estimate) to 400,000 (CDC >> estimate) deaths per year." > > Vicky wonders.... > > What is the average age of these people who die "smoking" deaths? Winston > Churchill was 94. > > How many total people die each year in the U. S.? > > If a person has diabetes, colon cancer, and smokes, is his/her death counted > as a "smoking" death? > > Just curious - I'm not joining the debate. > > Vicky Heller > North Oaks and Cedar-Riverside Here's a set of data from the University of Minnesota: Secondhand Smoke Facts Secondhand smoke, also known as passive or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a combination of: * Mainstream smoke: exhaled by smokers * Sidestream smoke: given off by the burning end of a cigarette, cigar, or pipe Between 70% and 90% of non-smokers in the American population, children and adults, are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke. It is estimated that only 15% of cigarette smoke gets inhaled by the smoker. The remaining 85% lingers in the air for everyone to breathe. If a person spends more than two hours in a room where someone is smoking, the nonsmoker inhales the equivalent of four cigarettes. Secondhand smoke is the third leading preventable cause of disability and early death (after active smoking and alcohol) in the United States. For every eight smokers who die from smoking, one innocent bystander dies from secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke contains over 4000 chemicals including more than 40 cancer causing agents and 200 known poisons. Secondhand smoke has been classified by the EPA as a Class A carcinogen - a substance known to cause cancer in humans. Secondhand smoke contains twice as much tar and nicotine per unit volume as does smoke inhaled from a cigarette. It contains 3X as much cancer-causing benzipyrene, 5X as much carbon monoxide, and 50X as much ammonia. Secondhand smoke from pipes and cigars is equally as harmful, if not more so (Mayo Clinic release, Aug 97). Over the past two decades, medical research has shown that non-smokers suffer many of the diseases of active smoking when they breathe secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and contributes to the development of heart disease. Never smoking women who live with a smoker have a 91% greater risk of heart disease. They also have twice the risk of dying from lung cancer. Never-smoking spouses who are exposed to secondhand smoke have about 20% higher death rates for both lung cancer and heart disease. Secondhand smoke increases heart rate and shortens time to exhaustion. Repeated exposure causes thickening of the walls of the carotid arteries (accelerates atherosclerosis) and damages the lining of these arteries. When a pregnant woman is exposed to secondhand smoke, the nicotine she ingests is passed on to her unborn baby. Women who smoke or are exposed to secondhand smoke during pregnancy: * have a higher rate of miscarriages and stillbirths * have an increased risk of low birth weight infants * have children born with decreased lung function * have children with greater risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) Children exposed to secondhand smoke are more likely to experience increased frequency of: * asthma, colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, and other lung diseases * middle ear infections * sinus infections * caries in deciduous teeth Ventilation systems and designated smoking sections do not protect patrons from ETS. Current estimates of how smoking increases the risk of various diseases are dramatically underestimated because the ill effects of secondhand smoke inhalation are not taken into account. Now this - also from the University of MN (Did you say the ONLY chemical we can get too much of is nitrogen, Swift?) Here�s what OSHA says, too: If you are exposed to hazardous chemicals you have the right to be informed of their effects. �Occupational Safety and Health Administration With each puff of smoke, the body is exposed to over 4000 chemicals, over 50 of which are known to cause cancer. A few of the chemicals in cigarette smoke are listed below. Compound Released � Additional Information about Compound ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Nicotine � Insecticide/addictive drug > Cresol � Main ingredient for industrial plastics and > adhesives > Pyrene � A main constituent of coal tar > DDT � A pesticide that has been banned from use > Carbon Monoxide Bonds with oxygen in blood cells to cause suffocation Car > exhaust fumes > Ammonia � Used for stripping wax from floors, removing varnish > Often a toilet bowl cleaner > > Hydrogen Cyanide A fumigation poison banned from international use > Acetone � Main ingredient in fingernail polish remover > Methanol � Used as rocket fuel > Formaldehyde � Embalming fluid > Butane � Cigarette lighter fluid > Naphalene � Moth balls > Nitrobenzene � Gasoline additive > Arsenic � Poison > Cadmium � Found in batteries > Toluene � Industrial solvent > Isoprene � Natural base for tire rubber > There�s more � a whole list of sites at: <http://www1.umn.edu/perio/tobacco/didactic.html> Now for Hohmann's contention that this is a matter of choice: If we're speaking of CHOICE, let us speak of EQUAL CHOICES. As long as smoking is allowed in any PUBLIC accommodation - bars, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. - only the smokers can choose to eat and drink wherever they wish. Nonsmokers who either don't wish to put their health at risk, or who absolutely cannot (like me), must seek out and find places where smoking is prohibited - and they are few in these towns. In fact, I know of about ten places where alcohol is served that does NOT allow smoking. The rest that do cannot prevent that smoke from always intruding on the nonsmoking sections (if they even have one). That eliminates 99.9% of all bars for nonsmokers to join their smoker friends. That is discriminatory. We're not talking about prejudices or accommodating them. We're not talking about exclusions. We're not talking about preventing people from voting or profiling them for undeserved harassment or punishment. We're talking about the public health. Your cigar smoke makes me sick. Really sick. And I don't deserve it. No one who gets sick from it deserves it. I shouldn't much care if you get sick from smoking (though I do), but I damned well believe that your smoking has no business making others sick - now or later when the disease(s) starts taking their toll. This is not a principle of imposition on a personal choice. This is the business of protecting the health safety of people who cannot, do not, should not themselves have to inhale the dangerous fumes smokers create. If the behavior of any citizen anywhere anytime creates peril for the health and/or safety of anyone else, then that behavior deserves to be stopped - or confined to places where it can do no harm to anyone else. Those who smoke and want to continue untrammeled by the law because they view their foul habit as their prerogative refuse to understand that they're putting a gun to the heads of others who cannot, should not, will not tolerate that behavior in public places, making it impossible for the rest of humanity to engage those places for their enjoyment or necessity. I was likely addicted to nicotine from age 0 on. My mother and father filled our house with smoke even as I was gestating in the late 30s (I'm the eldest of five). No one was the wiser for the havoc smoking during pregnancy could wreak until many years later. Same with alcohol and cocaine and all other drugs consumed during gestation. (Coke babies and fetal alcohol syndrome are too common occurrences in a society that pushes drugs like alcohol and nicotine on unwary consumers who never think they'll be the one's who become addicted and unable to stop - without help.) In other words, I'm sure I was born addicted to nicotine, and my addiction wasn't fed by my own smoking, but by the ever-present smoke that hung in our house from then on. We were not, of course, allowed to smoke - legally or at home - until we reached age 16 back then. I started sneaking cigarettes by age 14. Indeed, it was a game as to how many I could steal from the cartons of Camels and Chesterfield my parents had tucked in the top drawer of a secretary in the dining room without being detected. Never mind that, since age 6, I was unable to run for the asthma that choked me when I exerted myself or the sleep I lost trying to get a breath in the middle of the night as my very life was jeopardized by the air I was breathing and no one said anything about that possibility. On my 15th birthday, my parents relented to reality and gave me my first carton of cigarettes. From then on, no holds barred and I was allowed to smoke in the house - where, by this time, I had four siblings down to the age of five - all who became smokers, a couple of whom have been unable to quit completely. Thirty years later, two years after getting sober, I finally walked away from what I knew was preventing me from walking up a San Francisco hill or a long set of stairs anymore. I stopped cold turkey out of sheer panic. Too late. I now had at age 45 what a physician warned me at age 30 to no avail I had the beginnings of then - emphysema. My life now has likely been shortened by perhaps 20 years and even when I was aware that could happen, I was too addicted to see myself dying any younger than my 85-year-old paternal grandfather. I preferred that over remember the death by lung cancer of my smoking maternal grandfather at age 52. The lost years. Now, my grandchildren are here, and I try not to limit my activity with them, but I must. I cannot do all the things I used to love to do - walk fast for a couple of miles, climb stairs without a worry, play a little ball to keep limber, etc. etc. I have the energy, but not the lung capacity. Thousands of others suffer the same fate - and they only hung around smokers, never smoked themselves. The facts are clear and compelling. I'm sorry you'll be house-bound for the rest of your life should this law - or any ban, local or state - pass - but that's your choice, not the choice of those whose duty it is to protect human health and safety. I'd rather see you in a smoke-free environment, but your choice is your choice and ever more it shall be - but your principles do nothing for the rest of society under those circumstances. Peace and Clean Air to You ALL. Andy Driscoll Saint Paul -- REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 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