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Tuesday 02/19/2002 6:00:20pm Name: roxxon E-Mail: roxxon@shaw.ca Homepage Title: Homepage URL: Referred By: Search Engine Do You Smoke?: yep Do You Drink?: yep Age: old Comments: Not bad for a 14 year old. There are many things you do not understand,though. What we are talking about here are two evils. In fact some people drive better drunk than sober people. But a standard has been set(blood alcohol)for a one size fits all level playing field. I do not drive myself,but I would never drink and drive. I could not live with myself if I killed or injured another human,because I was impaired at the wheel. Second-hand booze is a proven killer : violent crimes,drunk driving,assault,murder and the destruction of the family unit. Second-hand smoke is not a proven killer. Millions of dollars have been spent trying to do just that. Second-hand smoking has NEVER been proven to have caused ONE dealth,world-wide. The problem with smoking restrictions imposed by government in the name of public health is that second-hand smoke has never been proven to be even a minor health issue.Smoking bans are based upon lies and political correctness. The fact that the vast majority of business owners(private) and their employees do NOT support 100% indoor smoking bans,imposed by government. If smoke-free is the way to go,the market shall dictate. Governments should keep their "noses" out of private business. If you bought and owned a business where the majority of your patrons were smokers and the government told you that they were bringing in a smoking ban and you would just have to grin and bear it...You would be more than unhappy as you would lose many of your regular customers due to the smoking ban. Sure the government would assure you that smoke-free businesses actually do better financially than smoking ones. Fact: The only businesses(smoke-free) that do as well,or better are : High class dining Take out and drive-thru Large chain restaurants Delivery(Pizza,Chinese food). Bars,clubs,bowling alleys,pool halls,bingo halls and gambling venues are almost always affected in a a negative finacial manner. Many of them close and lay-off employees. I have worked in the hospitality industry and have many friends who still do. NONE of them support government enforced smoking bans. Even the non-smoking workers. In B.C. our ban was 100% indoor in "public places." Really private businesses. It lasted 80 days. Close to 1000 workers lost their jobs and 8 businesses closed forever,due to the smoking ban. I helped conduct a survey : B.C.'s ban was enacted on the basis of worker's health. Out of 1400+ business owners(Bars and clubs)and their employees only 3 people supported the ban as it was enacted. 1280 thought better ventilation and or smoking rooms would be a better solution.The others surveyed wanted things to return to the way they were fore the ban. Our ban was ruled illegal by a Supreme Court Judge. We do have smoking bylaws in many communities that are just ignored by almost everyone. You can smoke in 95% of the bars clubs and casinos in B.C. You can smoke in about 30% of the restaurants here. Many went smoke-free of their own choice. Smoking bans to protect workers from unproven health risks are a stupid idea. This kind of "protection" is not supported by the hospitality industry. Any bylaw,rule or regulation that a huge segment of the population will break at will is a bad idea. No one is forcing you to patronize or work in smoking businesses. You have a choice. Smokers and non-smokers should both have a place they can feel comfortable in. Personally,I do not care if I can smoke inside a restaurant.But in bars,pool halls,gambling venues I want the choice. I will not pay liquor prices that inflated up to 3 times in a non-smoking venue.I will not go outside to smoke. Millions of people agree with me. Hospitality means to be :hospitable to your guests. If I am treated like a leper or second-class citizen...I will never return to a business that makes me feel that way. Once again,second-hand smoke is not even a minor,proven health risk... If it is the governments should ban the sales of all tobacco products nation-wide. If that is smoking bans are really about health:public,children's or workers. Smoking bans are about control and stripping business owners of their rights and freedoms to earn the best living they possibly can. They are also about forcing unwanted policy upon a large group of high taxpaying individuals. If you are willing to accept government control in the name of health,when health is not the issue... The governments have many other control agendas ready to ram down your throat. Smoking bans have nothing to do with smoking or health. The government should ban the products outright : Tobacco and Alcohol... Or shut the heck up. Booze and tobacco are the best "cash cows" the governments have. Don't expect that kind of prohibition any time soon. Without the tax monies from the "evil" drinkers and smokers... Everyone else would have to pay through the "nose" to make up for the huge revenue losses the governments would suffer through the loss of sin tax revenues. I hate to break this to you but this is the bitter truth: 1.The government do not want you to live to a ripe old age. Even"healthy" old people are a financial burden as far as health-care,pensions are concerned and they do not get high tax rates as they would from younger working people. The governments would prefer you died a year before retirement age. After a life of heavy smoking and drinking. A quick death with no hospital stay. 2.Smokers are very,cost effective.smokers are not a financial burden to anyone. In fact smokers and drinkers actually contribute more than "clean living" people do to government coffers. If it wasn't for smokers and drinkers EVERYONE would be paying higher taxes. They will come for the fat people next. Overweight people,not smokers are the biggest drain in regards to health-care. 3.In Canada 3/4 of the price of a pack of cigarettes is government tax revenue. The Federal Governments take in 8.6 billion dollars per year. They estimate smoking related health care costs at 3.2 billion dollars. If the prices were not so "out of this world" the governments would take in close to 11-12 billion dollars. They reluctantly admit they lose up to 30% of the tobacco taxes due to smuggling. In The U.S. You have your state and federal taxes plus the 264 billion dollar settlement. The governments of the U.S. and Canada will eventually own the tobacco companies outright. More lawsuits loom on the horizon. The governments are "Big Tobacco." They are the senoir partners of the industry. Fighting to rape and plunder every cent they can out of the "evil" industry and the addicted smokers. How noble. How politically correct. The governments are the true :"Merchants of death." 4. For 30+ years the governments have known smoking is a health risk.They could have and should have closed down the industry. One problem : Governments are as addicted to tobacco taxes and settlement monies...As smokers are to cigarettes. 5. The governments want you to smoke and drink.They just want you to be legal age to do so.They want to tell you where you can smoke and drink. They want to control your behavior... Then they want you to die without a hospital stay. 6. The governments also have invested heavily in companies that make smoking cessation products. This way they can get you when you smoke and when you quit smoking. since most people who do quit smoking fail many times before success...the governments will pick your pockets at both ends of the spectrum. What wonderful,caring people. They only care about one thing... It is not anyone's health. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Money,greed,control and power : Are what smoking bans are all about. Reality in this life is not always pretty.It is said the truth can and will set honest people free. In that case the governments do not have a prayer.Neither do their forced smoking bans. One final comment : Anyone who honestly believes that all hospitality businesses should be forced into going smoke-free only because they dislike the smell of tobacco smoke "is not playing with a full deck." Canada and the U.S. are supposed to be democracies smoking bans destroy freedom of choice. I agree that everyone should have a choice non-smokers and smokers alike. That choice should not be compromised by government intrusion. An elected official is not a God. Human,civil and business rights should and must be respected. Almost no elected public official uses a smoking ban as a a campaign platform. The majority of the public DO NOT support 100% indoor smoking bans in PRIVATE BUSINESSES. To run for office based on a smoking ban platform would be very,unwise. Many people including many non-smokers believe that government(all levels of) are too power mad and controlling. In a private business such as bars,clubs and any hospitality venue,smoking or non-smoking should be at the choice of the business owner. Cheers, Roxxon

Tuesday 02/19/2002 1:58:49pm Name: E-Mail: NMLoca05@aol.com Homepage Title: Homepage URL: Referred By: Search Engine Do You Smoke?: No Do You Drink?: No Age: 14 Comments: This website is about choices right well if you choose to smoke then thats your choice not mine. I will not sit in a room with people who choose to blow their second hand smoke all over the place. With every choice there is a consequence and some people have to realize that if you choose to smoke then you might have to go some place designated for that. Alcohol has nothing to do with this issue so why sit there and compare both subjects when both are leading causes of death to both young and old people. Alcohol just seems to kill people a little faster. The only comparison I am making is the one you pointed out. You don't have to sit in a smoke filled room. That decision has been made for us both, smoker or nonsmoker, by a cigarette ban. Even if there wasn't a ban, you would have a choice to stay, or leave. But I can't stop someone from driving home from a bar, drunk, and far more dangerous than second had smoke. You really need to read the contents of this guest book if you want an education in that area. Pay particular attention to Roxxon's information.

Friday 02/15/2002 5:24:29pm Name: roxxon E-Mail: roxxon@shaw.ca Homepage Title: Homepage URL: Referred By: Search Engine Do You Smoke?: Do You Drink?: Age: Comments: Ever heard of property rights ? If you don't like smoke,don't work in or patronize smoking businesses. The fact that smoking may annoy "YOU" is no reason to ban it in businesses that wish to allow smoking. There is NO solid proof that second-hand smoke is even a minor health risk. Environmental Tobacco Smoke A Summary of the Scientific Literature The scientific evidence, taken as a whole, does not demonstrate that other people's smoke - known as "environmental tobacco smoke" or "ETS" - is a cause of disease in non-smokers. ETS can be, of course, an annoyance - to smokers as well as non-smokers - especially if there is inadequate ventilation. This has increasingly prompted calls for smoking bans or severe restrictions. Solutions that address the rights of one group at the expense of another cause hostility and resentment. Policies based on accommodating smokers and non-smokers alike will have more support and lead to greater harmony in workplaces, hotels, restaurants and other places where people gather. Discrimination In a number of countries, discrimination against smokers has increased substantially during the past several years. Much of this discrimination results from claims by anti-smoking activists, and some public health officials and scientists, that ETS causes disease in non-smokers. Articles appearing in the popular press over the past fifteen years would convey the impression that there is little doubt about the purported health implications of exposure to ETS. Studies that can be construed, generally without critical analysis, to indict ETS tend to be covered extensively in the press, whereas studies that suggest a lack of an association between ETS and non-smoker health problems are generally ignored. Substantive differences Smelling smoke is not the same thing as smoking a cigarette. ETS is not the same in chemical or physical properties as the mainstream tobacco smoke to which active smokers are exposed. Active smokers and ETS exposed non-smokers also differ, not only in their level of exposure, but in their route and manner of exposure. Consequently, conclusions concerning possible health effects of ETS should be based on studies of actual ETS exposure, not on studies of smoking. Scientists have recently measured exposures to ETS in eight European and four Pacific cities for more than 2,500 non-smoking volunteers using personal monitoring over 24 hour periods. To give a perspective on the actual levels of exposure of non-smokers to ETS, they calculated the annualised median ETS exposure expressed as cigarette equivalents (CE) for non-smoking subjects working with smokers. The CEs ranged from 0.2 in Sydney, 1.4 in Prague to 4.3 in Barcelona. Lung disease The most publicised health claim about ETS is that it causes lung cancer in non-smokers. In total, more than 40 epidemiological (statistical) studies of ETS and lung cancer have now been published. Most of these studies compare lung cancer rates in non-smoking spouses married to smokers, to lung cancer rates in non-smoking spouses of non-smokers. Any difference in lung cancer risk in the group of non-smokers married to smokers generally has been considered by the authors of these studies to be a result of their exposure to ETS, although other authors have challenged this assumption. Of the published studies, about 80% reported no overall statistically significant association between marriage to a smoker and development of lung cancer. More important than the lack of statistical significance is the fact that the vast majority of these studies, and all of the large, well-conducted studies, reported either a very weak apparent association or even a negative association between ETS exposure and lung cancer. These results, therefore, could have easily resulted from "systematic biases" present in virtually all epidemiological studies. Although fewer studies have been published that focus on exposure to ETS in the workplace, rather than in the home, about 80% of these studies as well have reported no overall statistically significant association between this exposure and lung cancer. And, as noted above, virtually all report very weak associations. A 1992 report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) examined the epidemiological data and produced a risk assessment for the United States. For reasons that are difficult to explain, the EPA: firstly, did not take account of the results of two relevant epidemiological studies, one of which was then the largest ever conducted on the subject and which had received funding from the National Cancer Institute in the USA, and: secondly, altered their standards for statistical significance, lowering the 95% significance level to 90%, doubling the likelihood of finding an increase in the risk as a result of chance. The methods used by the EPA in reviewing studies of ETS have been called into question by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), a non-partisan official body. It queried the EPA's departure from the conventional standard for statistical significance saying: "It is unusual to return to a study after the fact, lower the required significance level, and declare its results to be supportive rather than unsupportive of the effect one's theory suggests should be present . . ." The CRS concluded that the EPA's finding on lung cancer was "uncertain" and this point has been reiterated in its latest report (1995), which re-examined all of the data. Because of the inevitable lack of precision in epidemiological studies, these results cannot be interpreted as being meaningful. Of particular importance is the fact that factors known to be associated with lung cancer and exposure to ETS received woefully inadequate attention, and no monitoring of ETS exposure was attempted. Attempts to estimate numbers of deaths claimed to be attributed to ETS on the basis of the existing evidence have been criticised. For example, the EPA included an estimate of annual U.S. lung cancer deaths claimed to be attributed to ETS in its 1992 risk assessment, despite being cautioned by its own Science Advisory Board that the calculation was based on flawed studies. In sum, the scientific evidence does not support the claim that ETS causes lung cancer in non-smokers. Recently, a US district court vacated that portion of the EPA risk assessment dealing with ETS exposure and lung cancer 1. Although the judge’s decision was based primarily on the EPA’s failure to include all interested parties in the conduct of the risk assessment, these procedural grounds alone would not have been sufficient to vacate had the judge not been able to demonstrate issues with the risk assessment itself. To cite a single example from the decision: "EPA’s study selection criteria is disturbing. First, there is evidence that the EPA ‘cherry picked’ its data . . . Second, EPA’s excluding nearly half of the available studies directly conflicts with EPA’s purported purpose for analysing the epidemiological studies and conflicts with EPA’s Risk Assessment Guidelines." More recently, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has published the findings of it’s large European multi-centre case-control study of ETS exposure and lung cancer 2, 3. This has been one of the largest and best conducted of all the epidemiological studies on the subject to date. It reported an extremely weak, not statistically significant, association between spousal or workplace ETS exposure and lung cancer. No association was reported between exposure to ETS during childhood or in social situations and lung cancer in non-smokers. Furthermore, there is clear evidence from the data reported by IARC that much, if not all, of the association reported could be explained by systematic biases in the data collected. The possible impact of ETS on respiratory disease, other than lung cancer, in adults has been considered even by the US Surgeon General and by the US National Academy of Sciences to remain an open question. The few studies that have been published on this issue do not demonstrate that ETS is a cause of respiratory disease in adult non-smokers. Children No claim regarding ETS is as capable of provoking strong feelings as the charge that parents who smoke may harm the health of their children. While, the issue of parental smoking is laden with emotion - the scientific evidence is difficult to interpret. Although an association with respiratory illness has been reported in pre-school children, no consistent association has been found in older children. Arguably the pre-school association could be due to many other factors that may be statistically associated with both ETS exposure and respiratory illness. These factors could include household overcrowding, attendance at day-care centres (leading to cross-infection), damp and mouldy housing, the quality of parental care, poor diet and even bottle feeding. As noted above, the association weakens with age and is not consistently found among older children, which adds to the uncertainty of its meaning. Because of the exceptional difficulties in taking confounding factors into account, such studies cannot support an inference of causality. As the EPA acknowledged, studies have been unable to distinguish possible effects of maternal smoking in pregnancy and post-natal ETS exposure on the incidence of cot death. Numerous factors which may increase the risk of cot death have been identified. These include not being immunised, being bottle-fed, sleeping in a warm room or on a soft mattress, recent illness, and sleeping in the prone position. Thus the epidemiological data can be extremely misleading. Considered in their entirety, the data do not support an inference of causality. Attempts to attribute a number of cot deaths to ETS exposure are, therefore, no more than speculation. Nevertheless, it would be prudent to suggest that adults should limit smoking around very young children, if for no other reason than that they are unable to communicate possible discomfort. Asthma Although some non-smokers find smoky atmospheres uncomfortable, it is wrong to confuse annoyance with health effects. In recent studies of adult asthmatics, short term ETS exposure did not result in airway obstruction or changes in bronchial responsiveness. Even long-term exposure to very high levels of ETS failed to elicit an attack in about 80% of adult asthmatics. For some people, moreover, the very sight and smell of tobacco smoke are a cue for coughing. It is worth noting that respiratory problems among children, notably asthma, are becoming more prevalent in developing countries even as smoking rates among adults decline. When researchers have looked at the effects of ETS in experimental rooms on asthmatic adults and children, the results reported have been inconsistent. Lastly, it is extremely important to note that there is no convincing evidence that ETS exposure can cause asthma, in previously non-asthmatic persons. Heart disease Almost all national authorities in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia and Canada in their reviews have not concluded that ETS exposure causes heart disease. However, several scientific articles have recently appeared that suggest that there may be an association between ETS exposure and heart disease. Not only are such claims, once again, based on weak reported associations, but they have excluded published results from three large studies, including one reporting on over 19,000 cardiovascular deaths, that show no increased risk of heart disease whatsoever. Many of the studies fail to consider possible confounding factors, such as diet and lifestyle, believed to differ between smoking and non-smoking households, which in themselves may explain the claimed effects. For example, it has been reported that non-smokers living with smokers have a diet higher in fat and lower in fresh fruits and vegetables, which is a risk factor for heart disease. Over 300 different risk factors have been reported for heart disease. In sum, the studies that have addressed ETS and heart disease are, at most, inconclusive. As a whole, the epidemiology does not demonstrate that exposure to ETS increases the risk of heart disease in non-smokers. News wire coverage of Judge Osteen’s Decision regarding the ETS Risk Assessment concerning the ruling of the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in the EPA lawsuit, July 1998. Boffetta P et al Multicenter Case-Control Study of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer in Europe JNCI 90 1440-1450 1998. News wire coverage of the Multicenter Case-Control Study in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom.

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