Smoking bans reduce exposure to secondhand smoke and reduce heart attacks

:eyes:

Or is choice something we don't like?

And what other things should we ban in public - cars? Energy drinks? Electric usage (coal/etc are not clean)?

Your body, your choice. If you want to go to a place that allows smoking or work there, should others (like the Pope/etc) be able to tell you that you should not have such freedom to do so?

I don't favor control of people and their choices. Some though, especially fundies, will justify control of others through any means.

If we found out abortions caused health issues later in life, should we ban those as well to protect women?

And that public policy manifested into very harmful effects and contributed to an expensive health care system (as early data suggests).

Since then, a new policy correlates with less of a burden on the entire society in terms of the stress on health care resources and health care dollars.

So, you can stand on the Ron Paulian soap box all you want and preach about choice, but we have some pretty good evidence that such a choice was costing everyone greatly in both health and money. That approach has been tried, and has collectively been found to be lacking.

Not sure I want to go there. Maybe you do.

Me, I prefer freedom. But then I am a liberal.

If you call that "liberal", so be it. But often times, its the liberals who have created laws against unsafe & unfair conditions that have caused a history of pain among the people (organized labor for example)

Leaving man to their own devices under the guise of unfettered "freedom" has wrought a litany of abuse, despite what Ayn Rand said

for the benefit of their society/faith.

Unsafe? How about those car emissions? Electricity used to post online and how that impacts the health of others?

It is easy to pick some small target that you may not be a part of.

If the worst I do is smoke around fellow smokers in a bar where we all agree to smoke in then I am ok with that.

I have met many bar owners and people that work there that smoke and don't want to be told what they can or cannot do in that regards. But some want to deny them choice over 'health' concerns all the while they are polluting and hurting others day in and out.

The people in your health insurance risk pool may not be ok with that.

wanted. they did it at the expense of others. now they find out it makes people sick and people want it controlled. fine. I haven't had an asthma attack in 20 years when my work place banned smoking. I can remember when people smoked everywhere, including grocery stores. I can remember having a cold since i was born and it ended when smoking began to be banned. my dad, my grandfathers, two uncles, two aunts and several cousins died of cancer from smoking.

You don't want to be told not to smoke. I don't want to have to be told that people can smoke wherever the hell they want. For five hundred years all the rest of us have been told by smokers to shove it. Now its times that are changing and if its hard for you, do what I've always been told to do: Suck it up.

Crybaby smokers act is if they haven't had their way for decades. It's a stupid fucking habit that should never been allowed inside in the first place.

Hey, I have a GREAT idea. I'm going to run around your office or place of business with a smoldering stick. Don't mind me while I cause you cancer, heart disease, stink up the place, burn holes in every surface, leave a dingy yellow film on everything and leave my garbage on the floor for someone else to pick up.

That would also create much less of a burden on health care resources and dollars.

Would you be okay with that, too, or are you a huge fucking hypocrite?

Fine with me. I don't fear clean fats though like Omega 3s

:)

I guess in your world, you get to decide what's best for everyone.

Perhaps you would find living in China more to your liking. I hear that they're quite fond of telling their ciitzens what they may and may not do.

Just like I smoked for 20 years because I chose to, and like I quit smoking because I chose to. And as a non-smoker, when I go to a bar, I don't expect everyone else to stop what they're doing because I don't like it. I go to another bar where they're not doing things I don't like.

It's called making decisions like an adult. I suggest you give it a try.

And it will, eventually. Just sayin'.

:)

But no one likes Nader anyway these day

Normally pressure to create safer work environments for employees is a union/democratic position, not a far right wing one. The right wing/fundie position is normally that all cancer causing things in the air in a work environment are great, if they lead to profits.

And saying they do is like saying that we don't need safety regulations in factories because workers can just choose to work elsewhere.

I work in a factory, and if the air was breathing in the factory was as bad for me as the air in a bar full of smokers (think maybe 10-15 years ago) then I'd almost certainly be required to wear a respirator, and the company would have to install a fresh-air system to keep fumes under control. We have that now... every welding station has an air duct that sucks fumes up and away from the operator. Welding steel makes fumes, and since a lot of our steel stock is oiled, you also have burning petroleum products as well as ozone and other fumes.

There's nothing preventing people from gathering together privately and smoking and drinking if the servers are unpaid volunteers, but paid employees are entitled to a safe work enviroment.

That's a site that reports science news items. They're reporting on a study, not giving their opinion.

39 fucking percent. Why is it even legal to manufacture cigarettes?

...it just brings it home so much more.

- Dr. Samy Suissa, director of clinical epidemiology at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.

http://fpn.advisen.com/articles/article117172528508291984.html

There are only so many conclusions one can draw. But it is well known that smoking causes cardiac and lung problems, so the reduction with a public smoking ban is strongly linked.

:popcorn:

"...policies that restrict smoking in public, people have less exposure to secondhand smoke."

That's almost tautological. Yes, less second-hand smoke.

"There is also a reduction in the number of people who have heart attacks..."

I don't doubt it. But that reduction will be primarily among people who smoke. Smoking bans make smokers smoke less. Really, they do. And smoking less reduces heart attacks.

But what some will take away from this headline is a reduction of heart attacks among people who do not smoke, though there is no claim of that finding in the press release.

...outpace the percentage who smoke, that would be quite interesting.

:crazy:

Hell, it almost makes these drops in lung/cardiac problems counter intuitive!


The reality is that people are stupid and dumb. They go where ever.


And BTW, a lot of the reduction in these problems isn't in people who don't smoke probably. Its more likely its in smokers who aren't allowed to engage in the activity 24/7. Yes, its your choice and all to kill yourself, but other people are footing the bill (like your health insurance pool, which you would disproportionally benefit from).

But not you, right? You're smart enough to decide what everyone else should and shouldn't be doing. You're just apparently not smart enough to leave a place where people are smoking.

When people stop driving motorcycles and eating foods loaded with fat and sugar and abusing prescription medicine and carrying handguns and avoiding getting checkups and laying on the couch all evening and using cellular phones and drinking to excess and hitchhiking and not getting enough sleep and creating stressful work environments and exercising without properly warming up and any of the thousands of other activities that lead to people using health care, then you can whine to me about smokers using more than their fair share. Until then, STFU when grownups are talking.

Maybe its time to get your fix and head *outside* for a smoke break.


:rofl:

I just believe that adults should be able to make some decisions for themselves.

But you just continue rolling around on the floor. It's better than you trying to understand the concept of civil liberties.

people didn't smoke short of your home, inside a school or a church. I lived through that era. I had to work around smokers. Eat lunch in the lunch room with smokers. Ride the bus and planes with smokers. Go to the mall & stores where there were smokers. Eat in restaurants & bars with smokers. Sporting evens indoors & out had smokers. I'm damn glad it has been banned in most places and in places where it is still allowed like casinos & small bars here - I avoid them.

And I have no problem with smoking being banned in places you MUST go, like government buildings, schools, hospitals, office buildings, etc. My issue is with banning smoking in bars, where no one is forced to go, and to which NO ONE GOES FOR THEIR HEALTH. It's the height of hypocrisy to sit on a bar stool and poison your liver while you bitch about someone else's smoke poisoning your lungs.

Nothing has EVER stopped bars and restaurants from declaring their own establishments "no smoking". Judging by all the prissy outrage smoking generates here and elsewhere, you'd think there'd be MORE than enough consumer demand for no-smoking drinking and eating establishments, and that they would drive all the smoking joints out of business. Since that didn't happen, I guess there wasn't nearly as big an uproar against smoking as the smoke nazis would like people to believe.

I like the smoking ban that's implemented here in my home state of CT.