Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kazan on July 07, 2006, 03:18:26 pm
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/27/health/main1754572.shtml
(CBS/AP) Breathing any amount of someone else's tobacco smoke harms nonsmokers, the surgeon general declared Tuesday — a strong condemnation of secondhand smoke that is sure to fuel nationwide efforts to ban smoking in public.
"The debate is over. The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard," said U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona.
More than 126 million nonsmoking Americans are regularly exposed to smokers' fumes — what Carmona termed "involuntary smoking" — and tens of thousands die each year as a result, concludes the 670-page study. It cites "overwhelming scientific evidence" that secondhand smoke causes heart disease, lung cancer and a list of other illnesses.
The report calls for completely smoke-free buildings and public places, saying that separate smoking sections and ventilation systems don't fully protect nonsmokers. Seventeen states and more than 400 towns, cities and counties have passed strong no-smoking laws.
But public smoking bans don't reach inside private homes, where just over one in five children breathes their parents' smoke — and youngsters' still developing bodies are especially vulnerable. Secondhand smoke puts children at risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, as well as bronchitis, pneumonia, worsening asthma attacks, poor lung growth and ear infections, the report found.
Carmona implored parents who can't kick the habit to smoke outdoors, never in a house or car with a child. Opening a window to let the smoke out won't protect them.
"Stay away from smokers," he urged everyone else.
Even a few minutes around drifting smoke is enough to spark an asthma attack, make blood more prone to clot, damage heart arteries and begin the kind of cell damage that over time can lead to cancer, he said.
Repeatedly questioned about how the Bush administration would implement his findings, Carmona would only pledge to publicize the report in hopes of encouraging anti-smoking advocacy. Passing anti-smoking laws is up to Congress and state and local governments, he said.
"My job is to make sure we keep a light on this thing," he said.
Still, public health advocates said the report should accelerate an already growing movement toward more smoke-free workplaces.
"This could be the most influential surgeon general's report in 15 years," said Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The message to governments is: The only way to protect your citizens is comprehensive smoke-free laws."
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i forgot page two
The report won't surprise doctors. It isn't a new study but a compilation of the best research on secondhand smoke done since the last surgeon general's report on the topic in 1986, which declared secondhand smoke a cause of lung cancer that kills 3,000 nonsmokers a year.
Since then, scientists have proved that even more illnesses are triggered or worsened by secondhand smoke. Topping that list: More than 35,000 nonsmokers a year die from heart disease caused by secondhand smoke.
Regular exposure to someone else's smoke increases the risk of a nonsmoker getting heart disease or lung cancer by up to 30 percent, Carmona found.
Some tobacco companies acknowledge the risks. But R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which has fought some of the smoking bans, challenges the new report's call for complete smoke-free zones and insists the danger is overblown.
"Bottom line, we believe adults should be able to patronize establishments that permit smoking if they choose to do so," said RJR spokesman David Howard.
And a key argument of some business owners' legal challenges to smoking bans is that smoking customers will go elsewhere, cutting their profits.
But the surgeon general's report concludes that's not true. It cites a list of studies that found no negative economic impact from city and state smoking bans — including evidence that New York City restaurants and bars increased business by almost 9 percent after going smoke-free.
To help make the point, Carmona's office videotaped mayors of smoke-free cities and executives of smoke-free companies, including the founder of the Applebee's restaurant chain, saying business got better when the haze cleared.
In addition to the scientific report, Carmona issued advice for consumers and employers Tuesday:
Choose smoke-free restaurants and other businesses, and thank them for going smoke-free.
Don't let anyone smoke near your child. Don't take your child to restaurants or other indoor places that allow smoking.
Smokers should never smoke around a sick relative.
Employers should make all indoor workspace smoke-free and not allow smoking near entrances, to protect the health of both customers and workers, and offer programs to help employees kick the habit.
Among other findings:
# Separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air and ventilation systems do not eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke.
# There is good evidence that comprehensive smoking bans, like those in New York City and Boston, do not economically hurt the hospitality industry.
# Workplace smoking restrictions not only reduce secondhand smoke but discourage active smoking by employees.
# Secondhand smoke can act on the arteries so quickly that even a brief pass through someone else's smoke can endanger people at high risk of heart disease. Do not ever smoke around a sick relative, Carmona advised
# Living with a smoker increases a nonsmoker's risk of lung cancer and heart disease by up to 30 percent.
# There is not proof that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, although the evidence is suggestive. California earlier this year cited that link in becoming the first state to declare secondhand smoke a toxic air pollutant.
# On the plus side, blood measurements of a nicotine byproduct show that exposure to secondhand smoke has decreased. Levels dropped by 75 percent in adults and 68 percent in children between the early 1990s and 2002. However, not only has children's exposure declined less rapidly, but levels of that byproduct among children are more than twice as high as in nonsmoking adults.
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Wait, don't we already know this thanks to the effects of the Irish ban?
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I'll still nevere understand why the hell governments don't do much about smoking other than banning "certain area" which a lot of people tend to ignore anyway [at least, in Australia they do]. Honestly, you've got a product literally killing thousands upon thousands of people each year, and it's still on the f***ing shelves! Any other product kills 100 people, it's pulled so fast it'd make your head spin, but is the money really that important that Governments simply turn a bline eye?!
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not only is it killing people, but it's killing people who never willingly used it
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the government doesn't do anything about it because a huge number of people like to smoke, inspite of the fact that it's killing them.
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Translation: Cause it makes money
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Does the new revalation about second-hand smoke mean that smokers are in fact guilty of manslaughter? I mean, replace the ciggarette with a gun and you get the same results, but a very different social reaction. Why is that?
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our driveing cars are probly causeing global warming, wich has a decent chance of wipeing out civilisation, yet no one has a problem when you drive to work in the morning. why is that?
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Because everyone knows that they, themselves won't have to live with it.
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hmmm... I guess that does answer both...
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our driveing cars are probly causeing global warming, wich has a decent chance of wipeing out civilisation, yet no one has a problem when you drive to work in the morning. why is that?
Because cars don't contain radioisotopes ?
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Translation: Cause it makes money
Actually, there's a different reason. You might recall a period called Prohibition in the US; would you care to see it happen again? It was ugly, crime skyrocketed, and it didn't work. The same would apply to any instant ban on cigarettes.
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Yep. Smoking is far too widespread to get away with banning it without having to create a new "War on Drugs" to get rid of it.
Considering that the government can't win the current War on Drugs it seems pretty stupid to start another one.
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Considering that the government can't win the current War on Drugs it seems pretty stupid to start another one.
Since when has stupidity prevented the US Gov from doing anything?
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:p
Governments do make a ****load of cash out of tabacco though. They tax it like anything else and it brings in millions and billions each year.
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Also, I find myself wondering as to the motivations behind the surgeon general office.
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Come on America, the entiretly of the UK has/is next year bringing in a public smoknig ban. Hurry and catch up! :D :pimp:
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I'll still nevere understand why the hell governments don't do much about smoking other than banning "certain area" which a lot of people tend to ignore anyway [at least, in Australia they do]. Honestly, you've got a product literally killing thousands upon thousands of people each year, and it's still on the f***ing shelves! Any other product kills 100 people, it's pulled so fast it'd make your head spin, but is the money really that important that Governments simply turn a bline eye?!
Because it's very easy to heavily tax 'vices'.
our driveing cars are probly causeing global warming, wich has a decent chance of wipeing out civilisation, yet no one has a problem when you drive to work in the morning. why is that?
Because people need mobility in modern society. Pollution and risks of traffic accidents are a secondary purpose of cars; it's not like smoking, whose sole purpose is to deposit lumps of carcinogens and an addictive chemical into your lungs. Society can live without smoking; but it can't survive as-is without cars.
I'd love to be able to catch the train or bus in the morning, to be honest, even though I only live 10 mins or so away from the office. I'd be able to play the Nintendo on the way, for one thing, and stare at any attractive women in adjacent seats.
(what?)
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Smoking is here to stay for a while yet. The big difference for me, as a non-smoker, has been the outright ban of smoking in indoor public places. I can walk into a bar and not kill my lungs. Its been fortunate as at the local level this has been in place for almost as long as I've been going to bars. Smokey bars made me want to leave so quickly...I couldn't breath, my eyes were watering, it was brutal. Thankfully now I can go into them and the ban has been extended province wide.
Lots of bar owners kicked up a big fuss about lost clientell but found out that they gained new clientel instead. The smokers go outside and come back in anyways.
As for the car analogy...I don't think it works entirely. Cars are meant to be people movers. Cigarettes are meant to be a drug that you smoke into your lungs as purely a "recreational" activity. They don't move you around the world or surve any other purpose. Cars don't have to be contributing to global warming either. I'm please to read that efforts are firmly afoot to test all varieties of options ranging from diesels running on bio fuel to ethanol/gasoline hybrids. Its good to finally see some progress. Hydrogen I think will be the end game but we'll see...there's a range of alternatives and its finally recognized we need to use them.
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we could use bicycles, better public transportation there are all sorts of things the government could force us to do that would be better for oursleves and the world than everyone driveing there own car. hell we could ban recreational driveing, there are lots of people who just go out and drive for the hell of it.
while we cannot make do without comercal trucks the world could work without everyone owning a personal car.
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Its true...but judging by the road systems down there in the states that'd be pretty difficult without ripping up all the roads and redoing the whole transportation system. You can't even walk anywhere in half the places I've visited in the states. You have to take the car...even to just get across the street from the hotel to their prefered restaurant chain. Its definately walkable in distance but only if you want to take your life into your own hands.
I CAN and sometimes do walk to get around here...its not a problem. There are walkways, pathways, sidewalks, and pedestrian crossings. We have traffic lights for pedestrian crossings in some cases...bridges in others.
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"You have to take the car...even to just get across the street from the hotel to their prefered restaurant chain. Its definately walkable in distance but only if you want to take your life into your own hands."
that's only because there's a thousand cars on that street, if everyone didn't own there own car that wouldn't be such a problem.
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Well, we could also save on pollution by abolishing heavy industry and going back to manual slave labour...............
The difference between a car and a cigarette is that a car has a clearly defined purpose with harmful sideeffects that we need to reconcile with that purpose. For cigarettes, the primary effect is the harmful sideffects, namely consumption of all sorts of ****. Even alcohol - the closest analogy - isn't immediately harmful at the first drink.
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cigarettes have a clearly defined purpose, to make the smoker feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
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"You have to take the car...even to just get across the street from the hotel to their prefered restaurant chain. Its definately walkable in distance but only if you want to take your life into your own hands."
that's only because there's a thousand cars on that street, if everyone didn't own there own car that wouldn't be such a problem.
Its true...but they could have designed the road to handle the cars and have pedestrian walkways...they didn't. I find this a problem with US roads and generally not with Canadian roads. There are places that follow the US style but there are many that don't.
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cigarettes have a clearly defined purpose, to make the smoker feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
-Difference of course being that those recreational activites won't drastically increase your chances of dying by simply being near them while not partaking in them.
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cigarettes have a clearly defined purpose, to make the smoker feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
Injecting heroin has a clearly defined purpose, to make the addict feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
Snorting cocaine has a clearly defined purpose, to make the addict feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
Taking amphetamine has a clearly defined purpose, to make the addict feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
Jumping off a bridge to a longed for death has a clearly defined purpose, to make the suicidal person feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
Machine gunning those bastards at accounts has a clearly defined purpose, to make the oppressed worker gone nuts feel good, they enjoy it, it's like entertainment, there are plenty of analogies I could provide from home entertainment systems and barbeque pits to golf courses and themeparks, all of wich have negitive drawbacks and no real logical purpose other than to genorate enjoyment.
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Yeah, but those "entertainments" directly harm only the user....
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Yeah, but those "entertainments" directly harm only the user....
Um, actually, not entirely. Drugs use causes things like crime and affects family, suicide hurts family as well (assuming no-one is hurt in the suicidal act), and machine-gunning accountants.....well, they're only accountants. :D
You have a very good point though, in that I'm finding it hard to imagine an act with the same sort of direct associated medical effects on bystanders as smoking has. Whilst (generic) you could possibly make criticisms of, say, TV, to do so is massively stretching the analogy and totally losing perspective of relative risks and immediate side-effects. Because the act of, say, watching TV does not consist of a wholly harmful action in the same way inhaling a load of carcinogenic chemicals does; even drinking (the closest legal equivalent) can be healthy in moderate amounts, and at the very least it's localised on the drinker.
Perhaps a special inhalation hood could be used to cover the entire smokers head?
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drug related crime is mostly due to it's illigality.
I don't want the government to protect me from myself, and I think I can handle other people smokeing on my own.
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All crime is mostly due to it's illegality.
That's why we call it crime.
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drugs are illigal, why, because it causes crime. drugs cause crime, why, because hey are illigal.
God wrote the Bible, why, because the Bible says so.
why does the Bible say so, because God wrote it.
circular logic is fun!:D
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Drugs don't cause crime, I mean, you don't see dangerous gangs of joints roaming the streets of LA at night. Drugs cause crimes through people, and unless you don't think slowly poisoning people around you [literally] is a crime, smoking is no different.
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drugs are illigal, why, because it causes crime. drugs cause crime, why, because hey are illigal.
Because drugs cause harmful side-effects on the user (are medically dangerous), and are highly addictive (preventing or restricting the excercise of free choice).
Heroin used to be sold in Sears catalogues, remember? It was sold as a cough suppressant, along with syringe kits, at the turn of the 20thC (hell, heroin was marketed by Bayer as a 'cure' for morphine addiction).
i'm not ever sure what your point is supposed to be, frankly.
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my point is I don't like it when other people tell me what's good for me, and then go about legislateing ther opionion.
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my point is I don't like it when other people tell me what's good for me, and then go about legislateing ther opionion.
It's not an opinion, though, that it's bad for you. And particularly vis-a-vis the uk, where the costs of treating someone with lung cancer are likely to outweigh the lifetime contribution in ciggy-tax they make, even excluding the risks to bystanders.
Technically, every law made is telling you what's good for you (or more accurately, society as a whole). Of course, I'd wager 5 minutes spent in a Scots pub either side of the bans introduction would sell anyone on the benefits of it.
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Translation: Cause it makes money
Actually, there's a different reason. You might recall a period called Prohibition in the US; would you care to see it happen again? It was ugly, crime skyrocketed, and it didn't work. The same would apply to any instant ban on cigarettes.
there is a difference between alcohol and tobacco
tobacco smoking violates the rights of nonsmokers and therefore should be automatically illegal
chewing tobacco... disgusting but have at it
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my point is I don't like it when other people tell me what's good for me, and then go about legislateing ther opionion.
no, instead you want to tolerate other people knowing what is not good for you and forcing you to partake (involuntary smoking)
my opinion on drug law is: if it only affects you, have at it - it's your body (so snort, inject, eat, drink, stick up your arse - i don't care), if it affects others (smoking tobacco, cannabis, etc) it's banned. period
"private property" argument holds no weight because private property doesn't have private air supply, and "then don't go to the bar" argument doesn't hold weight either because that isn't the only place smokers are*
*go right ahead and challenge those - i'll list off places where I know for a fact (by smelling) that i've been forced to partake in the vile habit via second hand smoke - the threshold of concentration for human preception is orders of magnitude above the minimum threshold of toxicity (which is nearly 0ppm)
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The ban on Alcohol caused crime in the US during prohibition right? Well it's causing crime on our streets today through binge drinking and louts fighting when the bars shut, try a night out in Birkenhead and see what I mean! Alcohol costs the government more in policing than cigarettes.
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The ban on Alcohol caused crime in the US during prohibition right? Well it's causing crime on our streets today through binge drinking and louts fighting when the bars shut, try a night out in Birkenhead and see what I mean! Alcohol costs the government more in policing than cigarettes.
Alcohol isn't inherently dangerous to the drinker (or public) though; only over-consumption is.