Robert Yorba ("let's have both..") made so many good points on the smoking ban issue
I'm tempted to copy his message - DAILY - to every politician in the state and maybe
the country. The anti-smoking issue has galvanized people who are certain they are
right, but I wish they'd look at the whole issue of air pollution. If you begin
searching state and national sites for information on pollutants, you'll be surprised
by what's in your own house (even if - or maybe especially if - it's a nice new one)
or your office building, or your favorite non-smoking restaurant.
He said,"I think to compare smoking with asbestos is a bit out there..." Amen. There
are so many chemicals in what we breathe that the emphasis on 4,000 in tobacco would
be absurd if it weren't taken so seriously. And the assumption appears to be that all
chemicals are poisonous. I copied this from the American Chemical Society website for
the fun of it:
"Mmmm...chocolate. Theobromine is the principal methylxanthine alkaloid in the cacao
bean..." Everything we use, breathe and ingest contains chemicals. Look at the ACS
kids' page and check out how they show that all of art is dependent on chemicals.
Some critics will jump on Yorba's statement "people who have smoked cigarettes all
their lives and have lived to a ripe old age...," claiming it's just the exception to
what is obviously the rule. But science looks at exceptions all the time, as a way to
isolate variables. Then they can hypothesize the combinations that cause the effect
they're studying. That helps identify what it is about tobacco (and wood) smoke that
causes cancer in certain people under certain conditions. Which leads us to the fact
that we KNOW tobacco causes cancer and heart disease in certain smokers. But this
latest anti-smoking issue is focused entirely on the damage to NON-smokers, on which
the research is much scantier and the variables much broader. Of the people who grew
up with smokers and got cancer (not all did), how was their house heated and of what
materials was it constructed? What did they eat? What pollutants contaminated the
atmosphere of their town? What pollutants contaminated their school? Because not all
got cancer, we must consider those and many more variables....or we're left with the
primitive fundamentalist view that God chose to smite them.
Then Yorba steps into the lions' den and addresses the worker protection issue, which
has become a mighty and sanctimonious cry raised - not by bar workers, but by bar
patrons. Yorba says, "well, then what about gas station attendants.....or police
officers
or....construction workers or circus performers or bike messengers......I
was a bike messenger, a very dangerous job.....the crux is I took the job. I
wanted to do it. I took all the precautions I could take. But the air I
breathed outside, well, I wish someone was raising the stink about that back
then."
I wish so, too, Mr. Yorba. And I share your wish that the crusade against smoke at
First Avenue, The Fine Line, etc., could extend to your example about police brutality
- or perhaps school superintendents and the learning gap, or perhaps the ecological
disaster caused by invasive species threatening our glorious 10,000 lakes. Peace.
Gail O'Hare
Highland
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