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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.
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.
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! :>
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.
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.
Trimac, banning smoking can be a bigger fire hazard: hidden smoking without proper fire-safety devices like ashtrays is far more hazardous. Go back over the news stories on fires in the last ten years and check out the increasing numbers of fire-deaths caused by the intentional disabling of smoke alarms after bans are instituted. Smoking never normally sets those things off, but once a ban is in place smokers become paranoid about them (because they might face eviction or a $500 "fine" if somehow they DID set one off) and disable them.
Should the smokers who do that be excused? Of course not. But if it's actual fire safety rather than social engineering that you're concerned about it then you should work with Free Choice groups to get rid of the mandated bans.
So it's not the smoker's fault for starting a fire by his own irresponsible behavior and smoking where he shouldn't be, it's management's fault for not providing him an ash tray? Absurd. And an ash tray is now "a proper fire-safety device"?
How do ash trays prevent someone from falling asleep while smoking?
So it's not the smoker's fault for starting a fire by his own irresponsible behavior and smoking where he shouldn't be, it's management's fault for not providing him an ash tray? Absurd. And an ash tray is now "a proper fire-safety device"?
How do ash trays prevent someone from falling asleep while smoking?
If someone burns themself by spilling coffee on themselves, and if that coffee came from McDonald's. It is the restaurant's fault, and you know it.
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?
SuzyQ, you wrote, "So it's not the smoker's fault for starting a fire by his own irresponsible behavior and smoking where he shouldn't be"
Suzy, I think I said pretty clearly, as you quoted, "Should the smokers who do that be excused? Of course not." You should read the material that you quote before responding to it.
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.
If "liberals" are responsible for the no smoking bans, and being the responsible influences the safety of non-smokers and smokers alike is wrong, then the "right" and "extremist" elements in our society are murderers ... for promoting/supporting behavior which contributes to the ill-health and in some instances death of innocent persons who they expose to those dangers caused by smoking. Nobody has the right to harm others.
If "liberals" are responsible for the no smoking bans, and being the responsible influences the safety of non-smokers and smokers alike is wrong, then the "right" and "extremist" elements in our society are murderers ... for promoting/supporting behavior which contributes to the ill-health and in some instances death of innocent persons who they expose to those dangers caused by smoking. Nobody has the right to harm others.
If Obama lit a cigarette in your living room - you wouldn't complain.
I agree that it doesn't matter where smoke is "generated." What matters is its concentration and the duration of exposure to it -- just as with exposure to any other potentially harmful or carcinogenic element in our environment.
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.
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.
Nior should the government be able to tell a woman what she can do with her body, such as rent it out fro sex or have an abortion.
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