Very funny Craig! And to answer your question, no, I don't.

Sue

I read your article (which your link was not correct)

http://cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/cotstatementtobacco0409

There are many points you left out. That write up was concerning the comparison of "Potentially Reduced Exposure Products" vs cigarettes. The paragraph you put in was to say that they can't find a good way to test the difference in smokers who have switched to PREPs vs sticking with normal cigarettes. They also reference tobacco induced diseases often (acknowledging their existence and cause.)

So I wouldn't go out and start smoking ten packs a day based on this. They still say it's bad.

Brian it says exactly what I said it states; they have never proven anything against tobacco at all! Its all statistic every last bit of it..........

Here's my all-time favorite "scientific" study of the the anti-smoking campaign: "Lies, Damned Lies, & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths," Robert A. Levy and Rosalind B. Marimont, Journal of Regulation, Vol. 21 (4), 1998.

You can access the article for free on the Cato Institute's wesbite, Cato.org. This article neither defends nor promotes smoking. Rather it condemns the abuse of statistics to misinform and scare the public. Levy, by the way taught Statistics for Lawyers at Georgetown University Law School. There is also a popular law school class called How to Lie With Statistics.

cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/tox201208.pdf

BTW the links good I just tried it!

Your link was fine...just not linking to the article you quoted.

@John Davidson: You don't seem to grasp that statistics are about as powerful a scientific measure as can be had. One needs to be careful of confusing correlation with causation in certain cases, but that is not the case with the correlation between smoking and negative health affects. It is really unambiguous that smoking is bad for you and nicotine has an addition profile comparable to cocaine and heroin. The point is really settled.

I would be amused by your defense of tobacco use, but I fear that you might be telling young people that there is no proof that smoking is bad. Do you tell people that there is no truth to evolution also? How about that the sun orbits the earth?

And for the record, I don't care if people smoke, just don't smoke around me. Smokers don't realize how annoying it is for non-smokers following a smoker by even 50 feet on city street.

Correlation is not causation and never has been,in fact the linkage between smoking and LC is so weak the facts are 94% of life long smokers never get LC. Dose makes the poison and everything in nature is a carcinogen even OXYGEN at the right levels. Alcohol is a carcinogen when it evaporates into the air yet we arent outlawing drinking or bars as of yet!

Statistics is the art of DECEPTION you can create any ILLUSSION you want with it''see below''

Because of epidemiology ie statsistical sampling we have a public health sector and medical science thats become so corrupt in its dash for GRANT MONEY nobody any longer cares about science....Every morning we get bombarded by the latest miracle study on ...................fill in the blank. Americans and the world over are now immune to the medical scare of the day PROPAGANDA. I had thought forever they had factually discovered that smoking via a microscope had caused cancer,yet we find that was never ever the case oh but they tried and never ever could prove anything against active smoking!

Then comes along second hand smoke,then thirdhand smoke,then second hand obesity the list of B.S. and propaganda goes on and on! Should I continue or do you get whats going on thru manipulation of science and press by headline! The lowering of levels over the last 15 years of what constitutes a disease entity just so these prohibitionists can claim EPIDEMICS and forge thru with even more draconian laws against

We The People,we are not guenea pigs nor are we test subjects for MADD SCIENTISTS in a lab or even on questionaire studies. We are the people,we are the nation and we are the government. You nor anyone else has the right to create a fear and then condemn 20-25% of the population into criminality. ie smoking bans. The time is here when we need to take back OUR country and reinstitute freedom and choise along with rugged individualism that made this country great.. If you feel the need to continue the harrassament and criminal laws against the rest of us you need take but a look upon yourself as these same deeds and thoughts will surely outlaw even yourself.

Wow. A smoking apologist. I thought all you guys died off. Where do you live, Raleigh?

Nope,never have apologised for folks smoking. Live and let live without criminalization for something you might disaprove of!

High (Total) Cholesterol:

Old Definition: Cholesterol > 240 mg/dl total cholesterol
People under old definition: 49.5 million
New Definition: Cholesterol > 200 mg/dl total cholesterol
People added under new definition: 42.6 million
Percent increase: 86%

The definition was changed in 1998 by U.S. Air Force/Texas Coronary Atherosclerosis Prevention Study.

Overweight:

Body Mass Index (BMI) is defined as the ratio of weight (in kg) to height (in meters) squared and is an inexact measure of body fat, though it supposedly establishes cutoff points of normal weight, overweight, and obesity.

Old definition: BMI > 28 (men), BMI > 27 (women)
People under old definition: 70.6 million
New definition: BMI > 25
People added under new definition: 30.5 million
Percent Increase: 43%

The definition was changed in 1998 by U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

"The new definitions ultimately label 75 percent of the adult U.S. population as diseased," conclude the two researchers.
...

And why are you up in arms on all this anyway? You don't have to take any prescribed medicine for any of these if you choose not to. As we progress and understand more of the complexity of our bodies, we change what is the standard to try and keep people informed and healthy. Yes, studies are not often complete or contain statistical errors. That doesn't mean we should ignore them all. We should regard them with caution on both sides. Previously flawed studies can lead to proper care down the road because of more research. On top of that, as sample sizes grow larger we can learn better what the effects are of being, for example, overweight. And as we see certain trends grow, we can change numbers to try and help people prevent certain problems.

Brian the time line of the changes is what makes the diference then hop forward and we start to see whats going on,HYPE to push forward public health scares and laws based upon statistical junk science!

I gather you havent paid attention,you dont just go and change standards over nite,whats happened is a change of standards based upon political agendas not health. Its comming from the WHO world health organization among others via big pharma and other ultra left wing groups that happen to be in control right now. The smoking bans are just one of the junk science projects along with the absurd anti-obesity movement.

The Democrats along with some republicans stole billions from the foodstamp program to push the obesity epidemic myth and got Michelle Obama to be the poster face for it.

They are using a carbon copy of the tobacco control movement to push it junk science and all!

brian the smoking bans were bad enuf when they started becomming law but then that didnt stop others from doing this to obese people try as they might its where public health activists are headed. Public health today is nothing more than a PROHIBITION movement.

Mississippi Legislature
2008 Regular Session
House Bill 282
House Calendar | Senate Calendar | Main Menu
Additional Information | All Versions

Current Bill Text: |

Description: Food establishments; prohibit from serving food to any person who is obese.

Background Information:
Disposition: Active
Deadline: General Bill/Constitutional Amendment
Revenue: No
Vote type required: Majority
Effective date: July 1, 2008

History of Actions:
1 01/25 (H) Referred To Public Health and Human Services;Judiciary B

----- Additional Information -----

House Committee: Public Health and Human Services*, Judiciary B

Principal Author: Mayhall
Additional Authors: Read, Shows

Title: AN ACT TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FROM SERVING FOOD TO ANY PERSON WHO IS OBESE, BASED ON CRITERIA PRESCRIBED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO PREPARE WRITTEN MATERIALS THAT DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING WHETHER A PERSON IS OBESE AND TO PROVIDE THOSE MATERIALS TO THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO MONITOR THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FOR COMPLIANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THIS ACT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.
...

You are sounding extremely paranoid. You are still welcome to smoke, be mildly obese, or have odd blood sugar and never take steps to change what you do. You can ignore any study you would like. Studies don't have to show something as the only causality for it to be an issue. If lung cancer and heart disease in smokers is higher, that shows a correlation. Yes, there are other factors and people like George Burns smoked until he died at a ripe old age. It can happen.

Eating disorders aside (which is a psychological issue) when have more health issues been associated with being a healthy weight, eating right, and avoiding cigarette smoke?

As we move forward and constantly consume ever changing materials, health problems evolve and change as well. You don't have to see a doctor and even if you are forced, you don't have to lose weight, take BP medicine or insulin. You don't have to quit drinking or smoking.

Im no more paranoid than you are. I know whats been going on and have watched it unfold across the board for years. Its a government sponsored movement now since Clinton when these so called public health advocates got in positons in the Government namely EPA and now HHS,CDC etc. The government thru Obama has been buying smoking bans nationwide using government stimulus dollars as grants to any group that pushes prohibition on smoking and or obesity. Does the ACS,ALA,AHA ring bells.........How about RWJF err The ROBERT WOODS JOHNSON FOUNDATION aka JOHNSON and Johnson pharma.....Tobacco free kids another housed in group created by RWJF. Guess who makes all the NRT drugs nicotine replacement therapy drugs!

They call their part in the smoking bans RENT SEEKING LEGISLATION!

The rest like the ACS administer the smoking cessation hotlines nationwide while making millions doing it! That 1 800 you call it goes to a switchboard the ACS runs!

I can go on and on about it all just realise the EPA 1992-93 study on second hand smoke was tossed as junk science by the Federal court for changing CI confidence intervals lower to get a higher relative risk factor and that lousy 19% was used to punch in the SAMMAC system the government runs to pump out ficticous deaths to second hand smoke! The EPA study is what was used to call SHS/ETS A CARCINOGEN!

The smoke is 90% water and ordinary atmospheric air and its labelled as a class 3 irritant by both EPA and OSHA after you dig past all the B.S. propaganda about shs and ets.

You realize that what your asking me to do is suspend all belief in current studies and then blindly follow the opposition. I take what everyone says with a grain of disbelief. You don't get to tell me that everything I have read is wrong because your studies say so. You can present your findings and I can compare them.

But again, no one has attributed a cause of diseases to living a "healthy" lifestyle. And you may read me as paranoid, that's fine. But I don't run out and get tested for everything because there is a new standard set. I also won't start smoking because you have some opposing studies about second hand smoke. You want to call it inconclusive? Fine. But the conclusions that have been made still exist.

As for HB 282....the fat bill. That is wrong to try and force someone to stop selling to certain people based on an attribute, especially one that doesn't in any way, shape or form, harm anyone but the individual in question.

As it is, we've hijacked this long enough and I'm going to enjoy the weekend. I'll mull over your articles on second hand smoke and make my own decision. As it is though, I'm still not planning on sitting in a small room full of smokers. Even if there are studies to show it may not kill me, there are other studies to show that it might.

I'm going to get exercise, even though by old standards I may not be overweight. If new standards tell me there is mild cause for concern, I'll hear and head the warnings, why? Because I won't get heart failure from being in shape.

Enjoy your weekend.

And you were saying

Second hand obesity
Grandad August 16th, 2010

I came across a newspaper article this morning.

The article looks to me like the opening salvo in the latest war. Now that smokers have been confined to the ghettos, it’s time to move on to the next phase – the ‘obese’.

The article is interesting from quite a few angles.

In it, the author [a Dr Dennis Gottfried MD] is quite open about the fact that the smoking war is based on lies and propaganda.

There is no question that second-hand smoke can be unpleasant; few non-smokers want to sit in a cloud of tobacco dust or have tobacco smell on their clothing or hair. But is it dangerous to your health? A study of 35,561 spouses of smokers followed for 38 years published in the British Medical Journal in 2003 showed that second-hand smoke is an irritant, but does not cause life-threatening disease.

So there you have it from someone apart from myself. He admits that second-hand smoke is harmless and goes on to gloat about “the social isolation of smokers”.

The really interesting bit comes in the second half of the article.

“A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2007 clearly shows that each of us is at an added personal health risk of gaining weight if our friends or associates become obese. This fascinating study followed the weight changes over time among residents of Framingham, Mass. It revealed "networks of obesity"; that is, we are all interconnected in regard to weight.

http://www.headrambles.com/2010/08/16/second-hand-obesity/

Darn...you drew me right back in. So in this study, was it shown that all these spouses were around the smoker nonstop? That they all smoked in the house with the spouse or did they go outside? Did they only smoke in the car with the windows down and not a hot box? And last I checked, standing outside a building isn't a ghetto. Smoking in your car, the cigar shop, walking down the street, in your house, is not a ghetto.

That study will just further your original stance that studies are flawed. I will acknowledge that it is hard to find if someone got their cancer from second hand smoke, but that also means it is hard to prove they didn't.

They are talking about the Enstrom and kabat study it showed no link to cancer in the highest quandrant of people the spouses of smokers. The time period covered was when smoking was allowed everywhere. So it really doesnt matter where anyone was exposed or not except if they worked in a mine where RADON was located.

Radon Gas No. 1 cause of lung cancer in non-smokers

http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/hom...

That links probably bad but the only one I have at the moment.

Point is the larger the study group the better it is.......But the point here is the only thing PROVEN to actually cause cell mutagenation is radiation! Nothing else has.

The U.S. national annual background dose for humans is approximately 360 mrem. A mrem, or millirem, is a standard measure of radiation dose. Examples of radiation doses from common medical procedures are:

Chest x-ray (14 x 17 inch area) - 15 mrem

Dental x-ray (3 inch diameter area) - 300 mrem

Spinal x-ray (14 x 17 inch area) - 300 mrem

Thyroid uptake study – 28,000 mrem to the thyroid

Thyroid oblation - 18,000,000 mrem to the thyroid

Average Annual Total
361 mrem/year

Tobacco (If You Smoke, Add ~ 280 mrem)

Not quite 1 dental xray for a whole years smoking ehh!

or

Thyroid oblation - 18,000,000 mrem to the thyroid /shrinking the thyroid

Tobacco (If You Smoke, Add ~ 280 mrem)

18,000,000 / 280 = roughly 64,000 years of equivalent years of smoking!

http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/rp/factsheets/factsheets-htm/fs10bkvsman.htm

http://www.doh.wa.gov/portals/1/Documents/Pubs/320-063_bkvsman_fs.pdf

@Terry Flanagan: I am surprised to hear terms like "merely statistical analysis". That's what science is. That's what proof is. Proof is mathematics and proof doesn't have to be 100% correlation. You are right that the biggest mistake is the confuse correlation with causation, but that is not the case with tobacco and health effects. Yes, a non-smoker can get lung cancer and heart disease, but a smoker gets them at a statistically significant higher rate.

Mike Bruno have you ever looked at the DOLL and HILL doctors study on smoking and LC!

Thats where we find the first real use of statistical analysis. Doll taking his education in Nazi Germany from Hitlers finest propagandists in their new anti-smoking movement pushed by the Fuhrer himself.

Doll in 1950 used that same science to push todays anti-smoking movement and followed it up for 50 years until 2004. The same questionaire science was used there as in the second hand smoke Junk Studies...........

Here's my all-time favorite "scientific" study of the the anti-smoking campaign: "Lies, Damned Lies, & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths," Robert A. Levy and Rosalind B. Marimont, Journal of Regulation, Vol. 21 (4), 1998.

You can access the article for free on the Cato Institute's wesbite, Cato.org. This article neither defends nor promotes smoking. Rather it condemns the abuse of statistics to misinform and scare the public. Levy, by the way taught Statistics for Lawyers at Georgetown University Law School. There is also a popular law school class called How to Lie With Statistics.

Nazi War on Cancer – Proctor

“Indeed, as early as 1936—the year that the young Richard Doll was attending the lectures in Frankfurt of the SS radiologist Professor Hans Holfelder—they had gathered sufficient statistical evidence to prove the cancerous hazards of what they labelled “passive smoking” (passivraucher).”
http: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117732/

Doll’s own account.

Oral History – Sir Richard Doll.

“Along with a number of my colleagues, I had the experience of actually visiting Nazi Germany and seeing what was happening there. There was a St Thomas’ man called Stephen Taylor and he had the very sensible idea of arranging trips to foreign countries to study medicine and see how medicine was taught in those countries.”

“And then in 1936, we had a similar week in Frankfurt and we had some extraordinary experiences there of the effects of Nazism.”

“One outstanding event was a lecture we were given on radiotherapy. And we were told that the radiotherapist was a keen Nazi and he would expect us all to stand up and say “Heil Hitler” in response when he came in, which of course we didn’t.
But he came in and said “Heil Hitler”and then, believe it or not, in the course of the lecture he showed slides in which the X-ray beams were illustrated as Nazi storm troopers and the cancer cells had all got Jewish Emblems on them.
So, we didn’t require many experiences of that sort to realize that there was something evil that had to be eliminated from the world.”

“As far as I was personally concerned the only other event that I remember was drinking with some of the German medical students in a cafe and my criticising the way the Jews were being treated and immediately being told that I must be a Jew myself, which I denied that I was, which in fact I’m not.

And it sounds ridiculous now but I was made to stand up on a table whilst they measured my ankles because apparently thick ankles were one of the physical signs of being a Jew.
As it happens I haven’t got thick ankles so they had to drop the idea that I was Jewish. But that event stands out in my mind as to the way the students were behaving.”
http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/4/327.full.pdf

He was in fact a Communist, which wasn’t favoured either.

Well, despite fearing another 50 off-topic comments from you, I will say that I agree with you that it is easy to use statistics to befuddle those not familiar with statistics. I have quite a few university-level statistics classes under my belt and often spot misleading use of numbers. On the matter of tobacco and health effects, you are objectively wrong. The tobacco companies even admit it. I don't know what your agenda is, but I might guess that you are a smoker trying to rationalize not undertaking the very hard task of quitting. Go ahead and smoke, just not near me please.

Mike Bruno the Tobacco Companies admitted nothing,they were forced under order of a Federal court to make statements the government prepared for them to make!

http://topnews360.tmcnet.com/topics/a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department was in a new dispute Friday with the tobacco industry over the government's landmark lawsuit against the companies.

The government has prepared corrective statements it wants the companies to be forced to make about the health hazards from smoking. But the tobacco companies don't want those proposed statements put in the public record before they get a chance to review them.

FORCED TO MAKE.......SOUNDS like somebodys not playing fair doesnt it.So if the tobacco companies make statements then the nazi anti-smokers get to say see even the tobacco companies admit this!!!!! force isnt that what hitler did at bayonet point!
...

a.The association of ETS exposure with cancer other than lung cancer
b.The relationship between ETS exposure and cardiovascular disease
c.The relationship between ETS exposure and nonmalignant resporatory diseases such asthma,bronchitis and emphysema, and
the effects of ETS on lung function and respiratory systems
c. Possible mechanisms of ETS damage to the cardiovascular system,such as platelet aggravation,increased COHb leading to oxygen depravation,or damage to endothelium
d.Effects of workplace smoking restrictions on the ETS exposure of nonsmokersand ETS-related health effects in nonsmokers

After ten years of no conclusive research and lack of studies that didn't eliminate the bias OSHA decided that the studies did not have substance and here is there present policy.

Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS)

Because the organic material in tobacco doesn't burn completely, cigarette smoke contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds. Although OSHA has no regulation that addresses tobacco smoke as a whole, 29 CFR 1910.1000 Air contaminants, limits employee exposure to several of the main chemical components found in tobacco smoke. In normal situations, exposures would not exceed these permissible exposure limits (PELs), and, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, OSHA will not apply the General Duty Clause to ETS.

Thanks for your story Colin. I'm sure many readers share similar experiences and reading your comments has
made them feel they are not alone in their struggles..
Sue

Dan,

Please so not assume what know what I do and do not know.

I know a wet fish when I see one.

Sue

Yeah....that seems wildly appropriate for this conversation.

As opposed to people like you, "dan," who create burner accounts to show everyone what a big, tough, hetero-normative man they are! Why do people like you choose to voluntarily expose your ignorance, particularly during discussions that have zero to do with sexual orientation or partisan politics?

"Are you a corporate executive facing these or other charges? You don't need double talk! You need Bob Loblaw! After all, why should you go to jail for a crime somebody else noticed." Very nice name.

That doesn't really make him closet....

Id never make that claim and could care less if he is gay or not........

Wasn't referring to gay. I meant if he admitted he was a smoker, then he isn't a closet smoker.

Personally, I think the Patch should charge admission to this guy Davidson's posts. What a gem.

Knight Crawler your welcome to join in..............I think Ive presented and defended my position here quite well. If you have anything to say please do Id be most open to what you may have to say.

No thanks, John. Your pro-smoking argument has lost. If you want to have some impact with it, suggest you brush up on your Russian and eastern European languages and take your ranting to places where there's still time to save the habit.

You have listed your statistics John but also decided that all the statistics arguing the other stance are lies. Saying only the opposition is "junk science" while taking your own for perfect statistics is a very flawed argument. You did make some points and back them up, but ignoring everything else isn't the right way to approach a query.

Thanks, Colin. For an interesting and often entertaining take on the history of the DSM, you might read Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test.