on 7/29/04 8:56 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> This tells me that if the above it true, either people are impatient enough >> that they would endanger their health (given you believe that 2nd hand smoke >> is dangerous) in order not to have to wait another 20 minutes. �it could mean >> that people don't believe that the danger is that real. > > I am always impressed with how in these arguments grand generalizations take > over. I'd guess that 95% of Americans know that a diet exclusively of Big > Mac's would kill them yet, every once in awhile most of us suck one down. So, > to say that people must not believe that there is a health hazard because they > occasionally sit in the smoking section makes about as much sense as saying > that Big Mac's are a health food....
Chuck has the beginning of truth here. Here's the problem with so much of this discussion. We know that second-hand smoke is as much of a killer as first-hand smoking - perhaps more so because the nonsmokers are usually children or people who never could much stand it. The real issue is that killing by smoke takes place incrementally, in relatively brief encounters usually over a number of years (although recent data show that the killing can come far faster than previously believed). The absence of an instant event illustrating the devastation smoking has on us and those around us - the way a drunk-driving accident or a shooting does - allows this debate to continue ad nauseam. The believers and naysayers will go at it till doomsday. If those of us who know what smoke has done to us, to members of our family, and to massive percentages of studied consumers with lung cancer, emphysema asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can't convince many smokers and libertarians, it's because we can't send someone to their immediate death by sending them into a smoky bar. If some bodies were carried out of bars and restaurants, it would take less than 24 hours to ban the junk. People simply do not believe that exposure to death-dealing substances will kill them because they don't die when they walk in the door or collapse on their way out. Smoking - first- or send-hand - doesn't generally impair their driving (except when a hot ash falls between their legs at 60 mph). It gives a false sense of security. Polluters have gotten away with murder because their poisons build up in the atmosphere and the killing is slow compared to shootings, knifings and other fatal events. Of course, any attempt to point this out is pooh-poohed even by regulators as meaningless, especially if it threatens the polluter's bottom line. Never mind that the increase in the rate of children's asthma has multiplied by 600% in the last 15 years alone. This all puts the lie to the power of a boycott - at least in this case; convenience will too often drive nonsmokers' willingness to tolerate "temporary" exposure to some smoke to be seated sooner. Of course, they would rather not be faced with the decision to turn down a table for lack of a non-smoking availability, but many will. A boycott has to have a more immediate and devastating effect on the bottom line, and that won't happen with a boycott. People have to believe the alternative will kill them - now. Smoking bans, furthermore, are at least as much about protecting workers (even smoking workers) from the devastation of hours and hours every day, every night toiling in that polluted and poisonous air. Workers do NOT, as some would have you believe, choose to work in that air. It's the only air available for the work they do. It's up to us to clean it. Andy Driscoll Crocus Hill/Ward 2 ------ _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
