Secondhand Smoke

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

All I had to see on the Fumento guy was "Washington Times", "Rocky Mountain News", and "Heritage Institute" - that tells me everything I need to know about trusting him as a source for anything.

The SIDs connection is very distressing. I know a young woman who lost her baby that way (and then had her 3-year-old taken away from her while they investigated her for potential child abuse, making an already devestating situation worse). THAT says cigarettes and birth control should go hand in hand - don't have a kid if you're going to smoke (both parents). Another thing that is not viable to legislate, since even if it were enforceable which it's not, it would really infringe on privacy rights. (I suppose we should be thankful that there are some privacy issues this administration won't mess with. They already are into who you sleep with - especially the gender - your phone and banking records, and what library books you read.)

I already knew about the low birth weight issue, scientific studies that explained family history. My mother was a heavy smoker, and while the twins don't count - they were premies - with their combined birth weights of under 6 pounds, but the other 3 of us were full termers and had birth weights under 6 pounds, my brother at under 5 pounds - and Mom had 3 miscarriages.

[Betsy]

jeezy chreezy, you guys get so rabid it's hard to keep up sometimes. Look, I've tried answering your questions. I've provided information about what studies I've seen and how they're better than the classic EPA study, and why. I've provided some backup information, which apparently isn't good enough for you but there it is. I've not read the 700+ page Surgeon General report and I'm not going to (nor am I going to read War & Peace, for the same reason), but I've read about it and it doesn't sound like it offers anything new. I try to participate in a discussion about the issues, but I'm not an encyclopedia and I don't want to be one. I've read all about this subject, formed my opinion, explained it to you and explained why and how I came to my conclusions, and that's really all I have to say about it.

[Tamara]

Our generation was brought up in households with smoking parents, driving in cars with smoking parents, people smoked in offices, at work all day, in the grocery store, EVERYWHERE, and if secondhand smoke were all that dangerous and deadly, common sense would tell you that people would have been dropping like flies back then.

Why should we have seen people dropping like flies from SH smoke when we didn't notice the smokers themselves dropping off dramatically.

Furthermore, you have a choice where to go and where to work, and if you don't want to be around secondhand smoke you can avoid it.

Not always the case...I used to work as a waitress and until the smoking bans starting popping up I had to tolerate smoke in my work environment every single day. There was no choice for me before people began to make a stand on the issue. In fact, my last waitressing job was in a pub in Canada and until my city passed smoking laws, there was no such establishment where I could work without reeking so bad that if I didn't shower after my shift at night the stench in my hair was naseuating to wake up to...and I was a smoker then! And yes, I maybe could have worked at one of the few non-smoking restaurants if I could have gotten a job in one (lots of people wanting smoke-free work) and IF I wanted to take a 50% paycut because the pub tips were far superior and all the pubs allowed smoking before the bans.