smoking bans going too far?

[Mikey-OH]

Mikey,

There is way to tell in any way, shape or form if second hand smoke kills anyone. The FDA had to make an educated guess, since there was no way to point to deaths and say 'second hand smoke caused these deaths'. So you are wrong that it is a fact that second hand smoke kills. What I will admit is that it is a pollutant, but far less of a harmful pollutant than industrial pollutants that we all agree to just live with.

So if we can agree to live with industrial pollutants that are proven to harm and kill people, why can't we live with a pollutant that cannot be proven to have killed anyone (with second hand smoke that is). Yes, smoking can kill the smoker, but there the FDA itself admits it cannot tie deaths directly to second hand smoke as there is no way to measure exposure, direct harm, etc.

The idea that second hand smoke is proven to kill and harm is more propoganda than fact. A result of the rampant hysteria of our times that there are things that are killing us and the government needs to make us safer. I think I'm going to pull a Colbert here and coin a word. Safiness. The government needs to ban smoking to improve our safiness.

I could be wrong, I'll admit that, but this site provides some good things to think about.

http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=35422


Some notable things from this:

- New research indicates that private research conducted by cigarette company Philip Morris in the 1980s showed that secondhand smoke was highly toxic, yet the company suppressed the finding during the next two decades.

- Secondhand smoke has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a known cause of cancer in humans (Group A carcinogen).

- Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.

- Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at work are at increased risk for adverse health effects. Levels of ETS in restaurants and bars were found to be 2 to 5 times higher than in residences with smokers and 2 to 6 times higher than in office workplaces.


So maybe these facts are propaganda or are made up. I'd tend to trust most of them done by the EPA and the private investigation done by Philip Morris. However, it seems that unfortunately a lot of things in this world can't be looked at as concrete fact.

But, like ashauler said we are talking about the freedoms here, so I kind of got the conversation off course.

Even more off topic Colbert Report is an amazing show. I'd definately vote for him if he ran.