Jay Rosloff’s point on “Rethinking Smoking Bans” is valid: he’s completely correct about how the phrase “No Safe Level” has been misused. There is ALSO “no safe level” established for sunshine you know. It’s a Class A Carcinogen, and, just like with secondhand smoke, it can be protected against easily by avoiding intense prolonged exposures and/or using such things as sunscreen/awnings (for the sun) or ventilation/air-filtration (for smoke).
In essence, the ban campaigners simply want to reduce smoking behavior by treating smokers like lab rats. Forcing them outside to smoke in hot, cold, or rainy weather is like giving lab rats electric shocks whenever they eat out of the blue bowl instead of the yellow bowl.
For the government to sanction treating human beings like experimental animals simply to “condition” them into the “proper” forms of behavior is outrageous. How would you like it if your diet was “improved” by an insistence that manufacturers add something that tastes slightly rotten to any food containing chocolate? It might be “good” for you in terms of your weight, but is it right to do such a thing?
There has never yet been a study showing that the highly diluted levels of secondary smoke that would be present in any decently ventilated/filtrated establishment today harm anyone. There are “authoritative opinions,” websites, generalized reports, “factsheets” put out by advocacy groups galore… but no real studies showing real harm at such levels.
Think I’m lying? Here’s the test: an open challenge to any of the councilfolks or antismoking advocates out there to specifically pick out a few of their best studies showing such harms, ones that are available for full reading and checking at the medical journal sites, and I’ll respond to them.
Wait and see if it happens, and how they defend their choices here. That will tell you a lot.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”.
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”.
