The new passive smoking regulations have a hole, (ie. there's a way to achieve all the stated goals without treating smokers like dirt), and instead of closing it the health authorities argue that vague anti-smoking intentions supercede the actual text of the law. Dangerous line of thought. Erik Nord is onto them.

Varfoer vill De doeder seg med tabak?

Tim/London,
Smoking is an addiction..it is not that they want to kill themselves...they are addicted. 2nd -hand smoke is indeed more deleterious than first hand smoke in many cirmcumstances. In california all restaurants by law are non smoking.

My proposal is that locals that establish smoking and non smoking area should be required to have a special exhaust system that creates negative pressure in the smoking section of the room in order to prevent the smoke from diffusing all over the establishment. This special ventilation system can be subsidized by the government which in turn can derive the extra funds needed by raising even higher the tobacco ( and perhaps the alcohol) taxes. Since smoking and drinking are DIRTY, UNHEALTHY AND TOTALLY UNNECESSARY Habits not conducive for the proper functioning of a human being this higher taxes are certainly justified.

Sook-Im

Kim Sook-Im: Smoking is an addiction..it is not that they want to kill themselves...they are addicted. 2nd -hand smoke is indeed more deleterious than first hand smoke in many cirmcumstances.

I'm not convinced that second hand smoke is dangerous enough in the first place to warrant a ban on public smoking - but it's news to me that it is supposedly as dangerous as smoking itself. Do you have a source on that? What specifically do you mean by "many circumstances"? All the numbers I've seen place the risk for lung cancer and heart disease from smoking vastly beyond the risk from second hand smoke - which is so small that it is arguably meaningless.

I believe that second-hand smoke has been shown to be more dangerous, but I guess a smoker would inhale more smoke than the non-smoker who stands near him. I think there's no doubt that a person who spends a fair amount of time in the presence of smokers would be adversely affected. Children whose parents smoke are people you'd want to protect, but it's impractical to do much about what goes on in a person's home. Smoking is not allowed on domestic air flights in the U.S. Here in California, there is no smoking allowed in the workplace or anywhere people gather. (I don't know if that's state or local law.) Not so long ago, at an open-air concert, I asked a Russian tourist to stop smoking. I don't know that I had a legal right to do that, but it didn't seem odd to make a request of that kind. The prohibition against public smoking is to that degree now so ingrained in California. In the interests of liberal theory, one might be tempted to defend a smoker's right to smoke where he wishes. Since I don't smoke and don't like second-hand smoke, I am not inclined to care much about a smoker's rights. I guess that's hypocritical of me. Of course, I can argue that I have my rights, too, and shouldn't be forced to breathe another man's smoke. I'm sure that all these arguments have been made before. When I traveled in Europe three years ago, I found smoking in public places to be a big problem (for me, at least). The trains were especially bad. Scofflaws smoked in non-smoking compartments and wouldn't quit or leave when asked to. Norway was the only country in which my family and I found some relief.

For those who doubt the dangers of passive or second hand smoke, The Cancer Council New South Wales has released a report;

http://www.cancercouncil.com.au/editorial.asp?pageid=1020

The science behind understanding these dangers;

http://www.nswcc.org.au/editorial.asp?pageid=1385

A National Drug Strategy report conducted in Australia concluded that second hand smoke contributes to the deaths of over 220 Australians every year. Research from the Queensland Cancer Fund contests this, implying that it is much higher.

More documents outlining the damage of second hand smoking;

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2002, 2001 National Drug Strategy
Household Survey: First Results, AIHW, Canberra.

Task Force on Passive Smoking 1997, Report of the Western Australian Task Force on
Passive Smoking in Public Places, Perth.

UK Department of Health 1998, Report of the Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health, UK Department of Health, London.

England, L., Kendrick, J., Gargiullo, P. et al 2001, ‘Measures of maternal tobacco exposure and infant birth weight at term’, American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 153, no. 10, pp. 954-960.

Wakefield, M. et al 2000, ‘Effect of restrictions on smoking at home, at school, and in public places on teenage smoking: cross sectional study’, British Medical Journal,
vol. 321, pp. 333-337.

David Elson: For those who doubt the dangers of passive or second hand smoke, The Cancer Council New South Wales has released a report;

You're ignoring the issue. I do not disagree that many scientists and health authorities believe that second hand smoke is harmful. I linked to several of these reports myself when I researched this last year. But I question their basing these beliefs on epidemiological research (statistics) that doesn't even live up to the usual standards in that field. Science is about conducting experiments, testing hypothesises. The dilemma here is that you can't experiment with the long term medical effects of second hand smoke. Not currently physically possible. Not in the strict scientific sense (the only one that counts) of controlled double-blind experiments. So you have to resort to something other than science, namely epidemiology.

Considering that science is not an option, this is our best choice. But if we are to use epidemiology we must be aware that it is not science, and we must do our best to compensate for the known weaknesses of this methodology. For instance, statistics is unable to separate correlation from causation. It's also unable to take into account factors we are unaware of, which in a study of this kind could be anything. One traditional way of compensating for these weaknesses, which is somewhat arbitrary but at least is commonly accepted among epidemiologists, is to ignore any increase of risk that is less than 200%, (a relative risk of 3.0). Not because a 30% increase of risk for lung cancer doesn't matter, but because at such low values one can't feel certain that the result isn't caused by unrelated factors.

The problem is that the increase of risk for lung cancer and heart disease caused by second hand smoking is usually found to be in the order of 30%, never significantly more than that. I don't believe I've seen any numbers about 100%.

I'm not an epidemiologist, and I know little about lung cancer and heart disease. All I know is that epidemiology is not science, and that common practice among epidemiologists is to ignore low increases of risk. To convince me that second hand smoke is dangerous, you may either point to experiments which show this, or epidemiological research which points to a risk increase for lung cancer or heart disease of at least 100%, preferable 200%.

Bjoern,
Come by me again :" So you have to resort to something other than science, namely epidemiology"
...are you implying epidemiology is not good science?...then i guess from your rather provincial if not rather quaint notion of the understanding of the word "scientae"= "to know, seek knowledge" anything short of laboratory science is considered non-kosher "science"???...i think we have a crisis in nomenclature here ! by extension of your definition of science /good science than psychology and for that matter astronomy is in trouble and so is astrophysics .......astrophysics is not subject to double-blind study...however there are other methodologies that befit the subject matter at hand.

Epidemiological research is not synonymous with statistics. Statistics is just a branch of mathematics which is utilized to make sense out of sampling from a universe ...a means to organize data to give us meaningful interpretation based on parameters we set. We should look at things from the perspective of empirical science ( at least given our current state of knowledge or lack thereof LOL ).

To be 'scientific' one would need to posit a (null) hypothesis and then proceed to design an 'experiment' to prove or disprove that hypothesis. The methodologies used in empirical sciences are rather varied. In clinical studies of recovery or efficacy of a particular treatment or regimen could for example require a clinical experimental design which is in accordance with standard professional methods of preparing clinical anamneses. Other situations /especially controlled clinical studies may require a different protocol such as a double-blind study etc...but by no means are double-blind study the only valid method of testing in clinical methodologies.

Astronomy, astrophysics, particle-physics would present some problem unique to those fields and may call for different methodologies, but always allowing for the testing of an hypothesis ...the collected data allowing for the generation of a thesis--- but always subject to change and revision if new data contradicts or disproves our original hypothesis. Thus is the province of empirical science as opposed to Revealed Religions wherein Faith is presupposed superior to observation and experimentation...where Truth is absolute and known only to the practitioners of that particular religion. For this reason religion should stay out of science . The introduction of Scientific Creationism into US school curriculum as an equal partner to Evolution is a sneaky attempt by die-hard religionists to pass off religion as 'science'.

Sister Nyanyaponika Kim...
Buddhist phenomenologist
金教授... 佛教科學家

my apologies, but perhaps i should be more succinct in trying to explain what constitutes a 'scientific method':

"The principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration considered characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation, generally involving the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the hypothesis."

I should perhaps also distinguish phenomenology as understood in philosophy as opposed to phenomenology as understood in particle physics.

In particle physics, a phenomenologist is a theoretical physicist whose primary goal is to understand the current experiments and experiments to be done in near future.In philosophy and sociology a phenomenologist applies the method termed "phenomenology" by Edmund Husserl to analyze nature, reality or social interactions.

Ayesha Kim
Sufi Mystic
عايشة كيم ... صوفيّ الدّينيّ

Bjoern,
You wrote:

"I'm not convinced that second hand smoke is dangerous enough in the first place to warrant a ban on public smoking "

Apparently to you something has to be very dangerous in order to warrant banning. We ban many things for reasons other than extreme danger. We ban skate boarding in malls, spitting for public health reasons, chewing gum, cell phone, loud music. Adult book stores are banished to zoned areas a 100 miles away from mosques and churches ( although a good percentage of their clients are imams, muftis and priests and deacons LOL ).

There is also something call 'the personal space' arguement. Every higher mammal carries around it a 'personal space' which is inviolable. If Joe Blow lights up, his cigarette smoke may invade my personal space and cause me an asthma episode ...this would constitute assault and battery on my person and i can seek redress and punitive charges against Joe Blow. Thus if we ban loud music on the basis of invasion of my 'personal acoustic space' why should we not ban smoking which can cause an even greater harm such as death from an asthmatic episode?

Then there is the question of asthetics and rights of a minority versus the majority. Should we permit 10 smokers to light up in a fine restaurant and subject the other 50 clients to an evening of wheezing and gastronomic and olfactory malaise and anguish? My sense of olfaction and taste is highly hone...i pay 100 bucks for an evening of delightful culinary experience and i don't want to have my food taste like a goulash of nicotine and ash !

If I should be forced to buckle-up for my own safety ...them there smokers better be willing to put out their cigarettes for a few hours when in the presence of us non-smokers. Alternatively the cigarette companies better be able to come up with smokeless cigarettes or a device to prevent their clients filthy smoke from invading my 'personal space'.

Kim Sook-Im
Tabak-phobe

Kim Sook-Im: .i think we have a crisis in nomenclature here ! by extension of your definition of science /good science than psychology and for that matter astronomy is in trouble and so is astrophysics .......astrophysics is not subject to double-blind study...however there are other methodologies that befit the subject matter at hand.

Double-blind studies are a good way of ensuring high quality experiments, but of course they're not recquired - the experiments are, however. Psychology began as a philosophy or perhaps a religion, at the hands of people like Freud and Jung. More recently it has become a science, which relies on tests like any other science. Astronomical and physical theories can be tested, or at least the kind I know of. If you are more knowledgeable than I am about astronomy, and you know of a field of it that doesn't rely on testable hypothesises, well, then that field can be many things, but science is not one of them.

The essence of epidemiology is statistics, in an attempt to find correlations between various factors. There are ways of doing this that are more reliable than others, and there are results that are considered more trustworthy than others. The kind of epidemiology we talk about in relation to second hand smoke is usually unreliable, with results that are well below the limits of trustworthiness. If I've misunderstood what epidemiologists generally consider to be trustworthy results, then I'm happy to be corrected, of course.

Apparently to you something has to be very dangerous in order to warrant banning. We ban many things for reasons other than extreme danger.

Logical fallacy. We already apply the precautionary principle in many cases, therefore the precautionary principle is a good thing. Not true. There are all kinds of potential threats. We can't fight all of them, (some are even contradictory). So how do you we choose which ones to focus on? Faith? Science certainly won't help us (the precautionary principle applies by definition to what we can't prove) - and to the degree that a belief is not scientific, it is faith-based.

If Joe Blow lights up, his cigarette smoke may invade my personal space and cause me an asthma episode

That's another argument entirely. The ban on second hand smoke has been sold on the supposed dangers of smoking to all people, which appears to be a dishonest argument. The discomfort is causes to asthmatics is an honest argument, (which depends on further data on how many applies it to, to what degree, what other options we have, etc.) - unfortunately noone's making it, or at least they only do when people criticize the science behind their primary argument. Which argument is more important to you? Are they both sufficient by themselves to justify bans? Do you consider them equally reliable arguments?

My sense of olfaction and taste is highly hone...i pay 100 bucks for an evening of delightful culinary experience and i don't want to have my food taste like a goulash of nicotine and ash !

I don't see that's between anyone but you and your restaurant. There are all kinds of ways to ruin a dinner. How many of them do you want to ban, and how many do you think should be dealt with by social codes, customers and restaurant owners on their own?

Anyway, I disagree with your argument about "esthetics", but as with the one about asthma, it's honest. If all anti-smokers argued on that level, I might respect them. What bothers me is the possibility of scientific dishonesty, that anti-smokers are using bogus science to justify a cause they may well believe in themselves for other reasons (an end to smoking alltogether, esthetics, etc). Being dishonest is far worse than being wrong.

Bjoern,
I'm somewhat confused....are you trying to say that banning of certain activities should be premised on irrefutable evidences derived from epidemiologic studies ( as in smoking ). But as i mentioned in my earlier post -- banning as public policies are premised on other reasons other than epidemiology. Epidemiologic studies are further compounded by longitudinal (over time) and latitudinal( statistical samplings). I think there are many many more cogent reasons for restrictions on smoking in public places other than epidemiology !

Kim Sook-Im, D.O.,Ph.D.,Dr.Sc.

Kim Sook-Im: I think there are many many more cogent reasons for restrictions on smoking in public places other than epidemiology !

Good - at least those arguments are honest. My main quarrel is with the dishonest and unscientific arguments. Those are dangerous on a whole different level than mere oversensitivity to a nuisance. You may think those arguments serve your purpose today, but they open the door for similar methods to be used in other areas of society.

In the grand scheme of public health issues, 2nd hand smoke is pretty low on the list. Waaay more people suffer from diet-induced diseases. I think people just have too much time on their hands and so they like to push other people around in the name of public health.

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