Smokers the butt of a Welsh double whammy
Monday, September 20, 2010 I shall be on the lunchtime phone-in on Radio Wales. ASH Wales is calling for a ban on smoking in parks and children's play areas. Oh, and there's an anti-litter campaign being launched too, targeting smokers, naturally.
Simon Clark
What a waste of time! I went briefly head-to-head with, I think, Dr Dai Lloyd, a GP and Plaid Cymru member of the Welsh Assembly who I suspect won't be happy until the state has "helped" every smoker in the country give up.
After Dai departed I had to listen at length to someone from ASH Wales called Carol who sounded like Stacey from Gavin and Stacey.
Stacey Carol banged on and on and on about why smoking should be banned in parks and play areas and I waited and waited and waited (in vain, as it turned out) to be given an opportunity to respond to her witterings.
To be fair, the presenter was clearly sceptical about the suggestion that children are in mortal danger if they breathe the merest hint of tobacco smoke in the open air, and she truly shot herself in the foot with her inability to produce any evidence that smoking outdoors is harmful to other people's health. Instead, she kept referring to the "evidence" on the impact of smoking in an enclosed space.
It really was desperate stuff. Thankfully Maureen from Fishguard rang in and told Carol to "back off". I couldn't have put it better myself.
Reader Comments (15)
Simon, you’re going to have to highlight that smoker denormalization and indoor/outdoor smoking bans were planned (1975) well before even the first (although flawed) SHS study (1981) and nearly 20 years before the fraudulent EPA (1993) report on SHS. See the Godber Blueprint www.rampant-antismoking.com
In order to enact indoor/outdoor smoking bans, TC has simply been making SHS “harm” up as it goes along. The outdoor bans we are seeing now were planned 35 years ago. Bans – indoor or outdoor – have nothing to do with nonsmokers’ health. It only has to do with exterminating smoking, creating the “smokefree” world.
Recognising that there is not even the pretense of a scientific basis for outdoor bans, butt litter has become a critical theme. Hereunto unheard of, butt litter has suddenly become “catastrophic”. It has become overwhelming to antismoking “sensibilities”, a phenomenon severely hampering quality of life, needing to be eradicated. Solution: Get rid of smoking/smokers. It is all so terribly contrived.
It didn't take long for the ASH bigots and liars to jump on Mayor Bloomsberg's ban in the park waggon did it? Creeps.
If only they'd suspend the law on homicide for a day: we could sort a LOT of problems out.....................................
And it didn't take long for the Pell childhood asthma story to cross the other way, either.
Dick Puddlecote links to John Stossel's piece about the parks ban here, where the following comment appears:
Paula Weir
"Just read an article on Fox News today-an exhaustive study done in Scotland proves that "smoking in public bans" definitely cut back the number of hospital admissions of children due to asthma."
"Like" ;)
Has anybody thought about the children?
When smoking was banned in pubs and club, smokers stopped using them, went less or stayed for less time. The same could happen if smoking is banned in parks with smokers not taking their children to the parks, not going so often or spending less time there.
The children could suffer.
Discussing Freedom,Choice and Liberty with Welsh pollticians is about as
much use as a sun bed on Snowdon.
Skip the Druids ,seek out the boyos.
There is a gem of an interview here ("!We're not going away anytime soon") in which Sean Gabb tears into a representative from one of the heart charities:
http://freedom-2-choose.blogspot.com/
Enjoy with a glass in one hand, tobacco delivery method of choice in the other...
BTW Martin - thanks for your response on other thread
Joyce -
Many, many thanks for the Sean Gabb link ! My God, he had that stupid bitch for breakfast - with her (now customary) whining, repetitive, philosophically bankrupt, script-for-all-seasons.
BTW - and this bears some relation to the other thread - I've just come across an interesting phrase by the Collins brothers in their fascinating book, 'The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship': 'ideational contagion'.
Being American-and-educated, they ARE prone to a certain wordiness, but I thought THAT notion a rather well-crafted one.
Clearly, it is now OUR duty to infect the General Populace with the Virus of Liberty (assuming they are not now immune to it).
And for the non-Celtic among us, I suggest the following rather interesting site for those minded to send an insult or two in Welsh to the harp-strummers at City Hall:
http://www.insults.net/html/swear/welsh.html
"Cachu bant ti cachu mes" looks about right (no disrespect to sheep intended)!
Outdoor smoking bans are not based on science.
At this date only two studies have been published on outdoor second hand smoke. The West Hollywood, (California, USA) WeHo News interviewed authors of both of these studies. The interviews can be read at:
http://wehonews.com/z/wehonews/archive/page.php?articleID=4460
http://www.wehonews.com/z/wehonews/archive/page.php?articleID=4332
"Outdoor Second Hand Smoke Exposure: Science and Common Sense"
Stanford researcher Dr. Neil Klepeis, author of a 2007 study on detecting second hand tobacco smoke exposure, acknowledged in an interview that the seriousness of long term health risks associated with brief exposure to outdoor second hand smoke remains an open question.
The study finds that "a person sitting or standing next to a smoker outdoors can breathe in wisps of smoke that are many times more concentrated than normal background air pollution levels," However, as Dr. Klepsis pointed out to WeHo News, "as soon as the cigarette was extinguished, the (second hand smoke) readings went to zero", unlike indoor SHS which can persist for hours.
"When the cigarette goes out, the smoke is gone."
Dr. Klepsis said in the interview that most of his work confirmed common sense. "The closer you are to the smoker, the more exposure you get," he said, "so if you're sitting across (a table) from them and they're blowing smoke in your face, you're getting pretty high peak levels that last a few seconds."
"If you're sitting next to them but upwind, you'll get virtually no exposure at all."
"Outdoor Smoking Bans Spread Without Science"
"Half a dozen L.A. (California, USA) County municipalities have banned smoking near their outdoor dining facilities...All did so citing public health concerns, but none did so based on scientific evidence that second hand smoke (SHS) near an outdoor area poses a health risk."
"The (second) scientific study on detecting outdoor second hand smoke levels in exposed persons, published by University of Georgia Athens (USA) researchers in November, 2009, found increased levels of SHS in their subjects, but not levels considered to be risky."
Ney York ,well Bloomberg anyway, bans smoking in all outdoor areas.
Wales follows suit hahahahahahahahaha !
Suprised the Bansturbators in the Scottish parliament didn't get in first ,you know just to outdo Wales.
Problem is now were do the office workers shop workers etc go for a smoke in New York.
Simple the smoke easy ,they'll spring up everywhere.
Perhaps they should read why most hospitals ,well the ones more sainly run than New York are reintroducing smoking areas.
I think Bloomberg's toast he won't last ,trouble is would his succesor repeal it ?
I think it will cause trouble ,lot's of trouble.
New York is not LA.
"Science and Common Sense." Now, THERE'S an interesting idea! Someone should give it a go.
Bloomberg will have to ban vaping as well because other wise it could waste a lot of police time. I can't see CCTV being able to distinguish between the two easily while scanning parks it would need to be eyeballed up close.
That's the problem it's very difficult to enforce.
They probably think getting the prod nose members of the public to do the dirty work for them again will work.
I'm not so sure it will .
People are more wary of each over in cities.
I just pray that no anti-smoking busybody gets shot or stabbed in Central Park by an angry smoker. Imagine the 'research material' on Nicotine-Based Aggression that somebody, somewhere, would vomit up.