Gail wrote:
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.What exactly is Gail's point here? I wonder is she intentionally just trying to distract the argument from the issue at hand? It makes no sense to argue that people are being killed in Iraq or where ever so the "lesser" problems of things like school district funding or smoking bans or gun violence here shouldn't be harped upon by those interested in changing or improving our local situation.
We have other air pollutants -- so what?
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:Yes, our interior and exterior environments have a variety of pollutants. Yes, amazingly enough, our world is made up of chemicals. Astonishingly, our bodies themselves are highly complex chemical factories! How relevant is that to the issue of second-hand smoke?
"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.
I'll put my knowledge of air pollutants, both indoor and outdoor, up against Gail's any day of the week. A paternalistic attitude is not very persuasive.
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.What part of "cancer causing chemical" is not understandable here? It doesn't matter whether I suck the benzene and radioactive polonium-210 into my lungs by dragging on the cigarette, or if I breathe the same chemicals in the side-stream smoke coming off the end of someone else's lit cigarette, they are still cancer causing chemicals. They are not going to choose not to cause cancer just because it wasn't my cigarette.
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.What, you haven't heard of CUAPB? Seems like they are crusading against police brutality. Did you miss all the numerous postings the past week on the school superintendent and the learning gap? Get some perspective. Not all people can devote all of their time to all of your pet issues.
This is a non-argument. Second-hand smoke is a public health issue. It costs society a huge amount of money every year. It's a higher preventable cause of death than all but a few other causes of death.
Chris Johnson - Fulton
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