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Originally Posted by NomanderI don't blame anyone anything.
It is simply my opinion that I do not have the right to 'poison' the air in a restaurant because I like doing that even when I am the owner of the restaurant.
Luckily my government has ruled that the air must be breathable for everyone, so I'm not concerned about the fact if America bans smoking or not.
But the Netherlands is proof that smoking bans can be justified since that is a fact here. It is also a fact that in Holland raping and having sex with children is banned, thus also not justified. Now if the government would raise the legal age of purchasing alcoholic beverages to 18 I'd be a happy camper.
Never visit L.A. The air there isn't fit to breathe, and it's not because of smokers. Perhaps the government should do something about that one, too. The air pollution problems found in MANY cities, but particularly those cities that are nestled in valleys, like Phoenix and L.A.
Tricky D, in #608, you ask who should provide the test subjects. The U.S. government has done testing on prisoners and military draftees for decades. Perhaps they could tap that pool yet again.
How can I go outside for a smoke when my community wants to ban smoking in public, open air places?...primarily because of littering...not because of smoking.
But I've posted this link once already with no takers.
In seriousness, for all anti-smokers: If a person has to smoke cigarettes for medicinal reasons (Parkinson's, blood clotting too easily, etc) - should their need for medicine overrule a ban?
You can always find research counter to the prevailing view. Unfortunately for smokers with no manners, the preponderance of evidence weighs in against them.
Please feel free to have a smoke. Outside. And stop acting like it's such a huge inconvenience.
Not everyone against bans is a smoker. I for one don't even have the slightest thought of lighting up. I've got better things to spend my money on.
Exactly. I don't smoke either, never have and never will. It's a nasty habit. But I'm very against limiting personal freedoms, and that includes someone lighting up, with certain limited exceptions.
If they want to IMPROVE my health, they'd let me light up WHENEVER I got stressed. Even if I was in the middle of discussing a matter with a customer. Me lighting up is a lot better than having to restrain myself from telling them to take a flying jump.
I am SO glad that I don't have to deal much with people in my primary job...and my coworkers have the same desires I do. They talking about changing our hours where we WOULD have more customer interaction, and many of them threatened to quit if they did that.
Here is a start. The following is an administrative report, yet it does list the research authors and the abstracts of their findings. It is a pain to find the research with these institutes because they don't like you to see it as it is flimsy and filled with inconclusive results and poorly established test beds.
If you scroll down through the PDF, you will see in appendix A where I am talking about and all the research references. Take for instance the following study they use (the first one on the list).
edit: the underlined and bold are areas I think you really need to pay attention to. Knock yourself out there.
A.4.1. AKIB (Tier 2) A.4.1.1. Author's Abstract
"A case-control study conducted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, revealed a 50% increased risk of lung cancer among nonsmoking women whose husbands smoked. The risks tended to increase with amount smoked by the husband, being highest among women who worked outside the home and whose husbands were heavy smokers, and to decrease with cessation of exposure. Thefindings provide incentive for further evaluationof the relationship between passive smoking and cancer among nonsmokers."
A.4.1.2. Study Description
This community-based case-control study was conducted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1982. The data collected on passive smoking are part of a larger investigation of lung cancer among atomic bomb survivors, the principal objective of which is to evaluate the interactive roles of cigarette smoking and ionizing radiation. This article reports on married female never-smokers, an unmatched subset of the data from the whole study.
The whole study includes a total of 525 primary lung cancer cases diagnosed between 1971 and 1980. Cases were identified from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Tumor and Tissue Registries and other records. Controls were selected from among the cohort members without lung cancer, two per case in Hiroshima and three per case in Nagasaki. The controls were individually matched to the cases with respect to year of birth (" 2 years), city of residence (Hiroshima or Nagasaki), sex, biennial medical examinations, and vital status. The majority of cases were deceased; those cases were matched to decedent controls by year of death (" 3 years), in addition to the other criteria. Controls were selected from causes of death other than cancer and chronic respiratory disease. Face-to-face interviews were conducted for 81% (82%) of the eligible cases (controls), but 80% to 85% of the interviews for both cases and controls were actually conducted with the subject's next of kin.
The mean age of cases at diagnosis is 72.1 years (range 36-94) for males and 70.2 (range 35-95) for females, which is high for lung cancer in Japan. Fifty-seven percent of the cases were pathologically confirmed; the remaining 43% were diagnosed by radiological or clinical findings.
ETS exposure in adulthood was assessed by spousal smoking status, including the average number of cigarettes smoked per day, age the spouse started smoking, and, for those who stopped smoking, the age at cessation. For childhood exposure, a single question was asked regarding whether the subject's mother or father or both smoked when the subject was living at home as a child; responses were obtained for only two-thirds of the subjects. No specific information on exposure to smoking by other household members' smoking or to smoking in the workplace was obtained. ETS exposure data were checked by comparing smoking status with records from RERF surveys in 1964-68 (self-reported by subjects when they were alive). Cases and controls who had never married were excluded. Of the female cases exposed to spousal smoking, 16% had squamous or small cell carcinoma, whereas no unexposed cases had those cell types. No information was provided on location of the carcinomas.
The number of female cases exposed to ETS is 73 out of 94 (number exposed/total) compared with 188 out of 270 female controls (crude odds ratio [OR] is 1.52 [95% confidence interval [C.I.] = 0.88, 2.63], by our calculations). Application of logistic regression to the whole study that includes active smokers, gives an adjusted odds ratio of 1.5 (90% C.I. = 1.0, 2.5), similar to the crude analysis. It is not stated explicitly that matching variables were included in the logistic regression model.Four additional analyses were conducted on the ETS data alone (i.e., without active smokers). The authors stratified exposure by number of cigarettes smoked per day by husband (0, 1-19, 20-29, 30+) and obtained a marginally significant trend (p = 0.06). No dose-response gradient was found in the association between the number of years the husband smoked cigarettes and the risk of lung cancer in female never-smokers; the odds ratio decreases from lowest to highest exposure level (2.1, 1.5, and 1.3). Stratified analysis according to recency of exposure to husband's smoking (unexposed, exposed but not within the past 10 years, and exposed within the past 10 years) shows a significant upward trend (p = 0.05). Further stratification of exposed subjects by occupation found that lung cancer risk tends to increase across occupational categories in the following order: housewife, white collar worker, blue collar worker. The highest odds ratio occurred for women who had blue collar jobs and were married to men who smoked one or more packs of cigarettes per day, but the number involved was small. It is reported that additional analyses of the data indicated that factors for matching in the whole study have little influence, but the details are omitted.
Limited histological information is provided. Among cases exposed to spousal smoking, 16% had squamous or small cell cancer, and 84% had adenocarcinoma or large cell cancer. All of the unexposed cases had adenocarcinoma.
The authors conclude that there may be a moderate excess in lung cancer risk associated with passive smoking. The odds ratio for lung cancer among nonsmoking women tends to increase with amount smoked by their husbands, a trend seen among housewives, as well as among women who work outside the home. There was little association with parental smoking or from passive smoking that had ceased more than 10 years previously.
A.4.1.3. Comments
The larger study from which the ETS data are taken was primarily intended to investigate the interaction of smoking and ionizing radiation in atomic bomb survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The information on passive smoking has been collected posthumously in a large percentage of the cases, requiring heavy use of proxy responses. The response rate was not high, however, because some next of kin refused to answer questions about deceased relatives and no attempt was made to locate next of kin of some subjects who had died or moved away from Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The dependence on proxy respondents raises questions about the validity of the exposure data for some measures, particularly in childhood, and about detailed information such as the number of cigarettes smoked per day, duration of smoking habit, and years since cessation of smoking. Information on childhood exposure was obtained for only two-thirds of the subjects. The omission of data on subjects where the next of kin had refused response or the subject had moved may be a source of bias. The diagnosis of lung cancer was not pathologically confirmed in more than 40% of the cases. Also, it is not clear that the subjects are representative of the target population. They had been exposed to ionizing radiation to varying degrees, whatever implication that may have; they are among the survivors, which may suggest selective characteristics; and their age distribution is high, ranging from about 35 to 90 years of age with an average of 70 years or more.
Only ever-marrieds are included in the ETS subjects, which is helpful in the analysis. There is some ambiguity in the statistical analyses, however, in reference to Tables 2 through 6 (the main results).The tables contain odds ratios that are reported to be the result of logistic regression with matching. The details regarding matching in the analysis are not given, but it is reported that analysis of the crude data and matched logistic regression give similar values. Regarding the analyses for trend, the outcome seems to be sensitive to the measure of exposure used. The odds ratios are strictly increasing for stratification by number of cigarettes smoked per day, but a different pattern emerges when ETS exposure is measured by the number of years the husband smoked cigarettes.
In general, the conclusions are presented more strongly than the data warrant. The assertions are somewhat tenuous that risks tend to increase with amount smoked by the husband, are highest among those who work outside the home and whose husbands are heavy smokers, and decrease with cessation of smoking. Conversely, whereas little association between ETS exposure in childhood and lung cancer is reported, relevant information was available for only two-thirds of the subjects, and its accuracy is questionable because most of that information was provided by proxies. Overall, the observed data suggest that ETS exposure may be related to risk of lung cancer, but there is some potential for misclassification and other sources of bias. Thus, this study provides some useful information on lung cancer risk in passive smokers, but its interpretation needs to be conservative, taking into account the atypical characteristics of the subjects and other concerns described above.
Now keep in mind, this is just 1 of the studies, but all the studies carry the same trend. Its not conclusive, its guess work and the test bed for evaluation is often silly. This is what your "authority" on SHS use as their "facts" for SHS being banned. This is why they don't want you or I to see the research. They won't even post the research on their sites most of the time. It is like pulling teeth 1/2 the time just to find the original research. As I get time, I will post on more and pick up some more of these "factual" gems that lead to such definitive conclusions. Maybe you would like to read some yourself? Didn't think so.
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Now if the government would raise the legal age of purchasing alcoholic beverages to 18 I'd be a happy camper.
