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The same sort of thing was said about pubbing over in the UK five years or so ago. The result of the total ban there? Pub closures soared from about 5 a week to a level of 52 per week.
Suzy, I know an excellent way for antismoking groups to get casino bans: If they and the lawmakers who vote for them are willing to sign legal documents covering the losses that they claim won't occur then the casinos would have no reason to oppose the bans anymore. To be fair, the guarantee should come proportionately out of the funds of the groups and the personal pocketbooks of the individuals involved, but hey, if they're telling the truth about their beliefs then they have nothing to fear and their bans will be passed quite quickly!
Think they'll do it?
Personally, I think they'll run faster than a little girl from a pack of tarantulas.
"Pub groups throw around blame for the decreasing sales and pub closures – first it was the smoking ban, now it's rising alcohol prices and increased competition from shops and supermarkets. It's hard to compete when people's idea of a good Saturday night has now shifted to involve a couple of friends, a bottle of wine and The X Factor. It also removes most of the negative side-effects associated with pubs – drink-driving, antisocial behaviour and aggression are far less likely to manifest themselves when you've spent the evening in your own front room."
Why should the public pay for anyone's business losses?
There is another thread with a poll at the top of this forum right now asking whether or not the government should have the right to ban anal sex.
As it stands, 92% of posters say that government should not be able to ban it.
Anal sex is harmful to others. Millions of Americans contract sexually transmitted diseases from it every year. And there's evidence that anal intercourse carries a higher transmission risk than almost any other sexual activity.
Why wouldn't people want to ban this harmful practice?
Are anti-smokers also anti-anal sex?
If not, why not?
Don't Liberals want government to tell people what they can and cannot do? Especially if it is harmful?
This is not true. Low levels of SHS produce significant levels of risk. It is not a linear equation. If you cannot understand that, perhaps you left Wharton too early.
Remember that "hockey stick" shaped curve?
Also, you do not understand physiology.
If an exposure to a carcinogen occurs over time, and the risk does increase linearly with time and duration, that does not mean that the cancer in an individual only occurred after a certain level of exposure. The "hit" that produced the cancer may have come very early in the exposure.
SuzyQ, I do indeed remember the hockey stick curve, and how silly it was. It took a fair amount of pretty good data for the "handle" and then threw in a bunch of wonky data for the "blade" to make a pretty graph while pretending it actually represented something scientifically significant.
But I'm mainly interested in knowing how you reconcile your statement that it is possible to drink a Class A Carcinogen and "not harm your health" with maintaining that even the lowest exposures to another Class A Carcinogen are so harmful that government intervention into private lives, homes, and businesses is needed.
SuzyQ, you wrote, "You keep harping on this. I feel no need to pay for the study. I am comfortable with the information available for free. I do note that you have not posted any links to a complete study that refutes the one in question. Do you have one?"
Suzy, since neither you nor I have read the study that you seem so dependent upon, I certainly can not offer a study to refute the thing we haven't read. Are you claiming that of all the supposedly thousands of studies out there that that is the ONLY study that supports your point? And that you haven't read it? After all, I left the field wide open for you: simply find a few of the thousands that's freely available for City Data readers to read and evaluate that shows significant real harm to people from the levels and durations of smoke exposure as specified. If your position is correct then it should be easy as pie for you to do. I can certainly find studies that others have used to support such a claim, but if *I* pick them then you'll simply accuse me of cherry-picking. Your delay does not look good you realize.
How can I accuse you of cherry picking when I specifically ask you to choose the studies that you want me to read? If I do that, I lose the privilege of accusing you of cherry picking.
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You then go on to say, "part of the problem is that there are smokers who will smoke anywhere they want to, including in non-smoking areas." which is an excellent argument, for fire-safety reasons, for hotels to provide safe smoking arrangements and proper recepticals. Without them, as you say, there are indeed, unfortunately, smokers who will smoke unsafely.
Why should hotels put ash trays in non-smoking rooms? Do they not put them in smoking rooms any more?
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And you wrote, "If you can post about ventilation systems in bars and the Brooklyn Battery tunnel, I think I can post about the history of the science behind smoking bans." You're quite welcome to post about such historical things Suzy, but I'm not clear about the relationship between the health of smokers themselves in 1938 and the air in nonsmoking hotel rooms is. Could you clarify that a bit? After you've produced a study as noted at the start of this post and requested several pages ago of course. I wouldn't want to deflect you and risk the Wrath Of Katiana! :>
The bit I posted was for historical purposes. Why does it worry you so much?
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Your "smoke in a room" piece from Stanton Glantz's advocacy group simply shows why banning smoking in hotels is a bad idea. It creates unsafe and uncomfortable scenarios and increases expenses for hotels who must find ways of dealing with the situations the bans create.
How?
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In terms of businesses lying, both your answers are correct, although I'd change the second half a bit: of course they should NOT lie, but as a smart business move that is what they would do if their own ban had helped their business. It's like a restaurant that decides to serve only grade AAA meat when the requirements only require them to serve grade A meat. If their business booms and people flock to them, why would they then push for a law forcing all their competitors to adopt the same policy and deprive them of their business advantage. The answer of course is that they wouldn't.
I suspect that if you claim to be serving prime beef and you are really serving a lower grade, that you will find yourself in hot water. I do not buy your argument that it is good business to lie. Eventually, someone blows the whistle. What happens to your business then?
SuzyQ, you wrote, ""Pub groups throw around blame for the decreasing sales and pub closures – first it was the smoking ban, now it's rising alcohol prices and increased competition from shops and supermarkets."
Yep, sad to say, but the British pubs that survived the devastation of the ban (I note you had no comment on the pub closure rate increasing by over 1,000%) are now desperately looking for other means of survival. If they can convince the government to hike prices for direct consumer sales while lowering them for the pub trade maybe they can keep the rest of the pubs from being destroyed.
You also wrote, "It's hard to compete when people's idea of a good Saturday night has now shifted to involve a couple of friends, a bottle of wine and The X Factor."
Very true. The shift occurred immediately after the smokiing bans were introduced and rose in the years afterward. The causality of the bans as the main factor can be seen when one does a cross-country and cross-time comparison looking at Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and England. Their bans kicked in at different times and their pubs then failed at different times. You can see the actual figures if you like at Christopher Snowdon's site:
He's the British historian I mentioned earlier, but you might not like his figures: he's also the author of "Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Antismoking."
Suzy, you went on to say that drinking at home "also removes most of the negative side-effects associated with pubs – drink-driving, antisocial behaviour and aggression are far less likely to manifest themselves when you've spent the evening in your own front room."
The observation on drunk driving may be true, although I believe Adams and Cotti did a study about two years ago that found a slight INCREASE in drunk driving deaths after bans. However, as far as antisocial behavior and aggression being "less likely to manifest themselves" after hubby drinks more cheap booze at home than he would have imbibed at the pub you might want to talk to some battered wives about that.
And finally you wrote, "Why should the public pay for anyone's business losses? Why should I pay someone to be a bad businessman?"
Losses? Odd... I thought the ban wasn't going to cause business losses. Maybe someone else had made that claim. As to your paying for them, I hadn't realized you were either a lawmaker or a paid member of an antismoking group. It's hard to tell from your profile. However, you should have nothing to worry about as long as bans don't cause business losses you'll have nothing to lose, right? And meanwhile, you'd have your smoking ban!
Why would you say no to that? Unless I actually *have* changed your mind on all this.
Why should I pay someone to be a bad businessman?
Whether the above statement is true or not true isn't the issue.
The issue is that government shouldn't be able to tell a hotel owner how to run their business.
If a hotel voluntarily goes no-smoking ...... fine.
Otherwise, the Left should quit shoving their agendas down everyone elses throat.
This isn't a "leftist" issue, as has been shown in this thread.
Hotel owners are told to do a lot of things. You give up some of your "private property" freedoms when you open a business.
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Originally Posted by Yooperkat
If Obama lit a cigarette in your living room - you wouldn't complain.
I might ask him to go outside. I've asked my brother to do that, and he's a more rabid smoker than Obama.
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Re: Michael's desire for "proof" that "any real harm to health that would come to people from staying in a hotel where some rooms allowed smoking", I think plenty of evidence has been posted that shows that coronary events go down immediately with smoking bans. Also, if a person travels often, exposure to the SHS from a motel room could reach high enough doses to cause cancer/other health issues. I posted earlier about non-smoking stewardesses who had smoking related health issues. Which brings up another point, the employees. Now a lot of you will say the employees have a choice of where to work, but the reality of the work world is that a lot of these people probably cannot find another job that meets their skill set, especially in a smalll town. In this recession, that may be true even in a big city. There are a lot more people looking for jobs than there are jobs. I will repeat something else I said earlier, I have worked with a lot of low-income single moms as a public health nurse. A lot of them took jobs cleaning motel rooms because that was what they were qualified for at the time. These jobs are kind of "entry into the job market" level jobs.
SuzyQ, you wrote, "it is possible to drink and not harm your health"
Really? Ethyl alcohol is a Class A Carcinogen you realize? So how much exposure to Class A Carcinogens does "not harm your health"? I'm actually surprised to hear you make such an argument since it so closely parallels mine, but perhaps you're changing?
I stand by my statement.
Moderate alcohol consumption can have beneficial cardiac effects.
Too much alcohol can hurt the heart.
Here there is a dose relationship, with is different from the dose relationship of STS and cardiac disease.
And the people who get the head and neck cancers with alcohol tend to be heavy users who smoke.
And yes, an ashtray is indeed the proper fire safety device to provide if you have reason to believe someone might be smoking.They certainly won't stop someone from falling asleep while smoking, but they'll help prevent the fires and the loss of life that can be caused when that happens
.
So hotels should put ash trays in non-smoking rooms for the use of people who should not be smoking in a non-smoking room. I see.
And if someone falls asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand and drops it onto the bedding or the carpet, please explain how the ash tray helps.
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