Quote:
Originally Posted by galenrox  Except it is acceptable for the government to limit when an activity is legal, thus regulation. It is justifiable because it is for the sake of preserving public safety, which is one of the primary purposes of having a government in the first place.
And there is strict regulation of what you can and cannot do while running any sort of establishment. You legally cannot allow a certain number of people into your establishment to make things safe in case of a fire, limiting personal freedom in private establishments to preserve safety. Although it is legal to cook without gloves or washing your hands, it is not legal to do so in food establishments, limiting personal freedom to do legal activities in certain circumstances to ensure public safety.
Because a business is never truly a private establishment. It's semi-private at best, but semi-public would be a better description, since it exists to the purpose of drawing outside people in. And thus it is the government's perogative to decide whether or not (and how much) poison (which cigarette smoke, in effect, is) is released into the air in these establishments.
lol, you have no idea how hard it is for me to argue against this 
The problem here is the distinct difference between a business as a private establishment and a private residence as a private establishment. Commercial establishments are logically and legally different than residences in that they do not fall cleanly into private or public, for they are privately owned for public use.
And logically speaking, it is for what a property is used, not how it ends, that is important, for it is in its use that effects society at large.
By this same logic, eateries that serve potentially diseased meat wouldn't be doing anything wrong, as long as they were somewhat honest about it. Also, by this logic, cooks in restraunts that allow site into the kitchen wouldn't have to wash their hands. Government exists because people, left unto themselves, make stupid decisions when it comes to their health, simply because many have difficulty accurately weighing short term benefits against long term costs.
Plus this doesn't even take into account workplace safety issues. Is there any other gas containing as much poison as cigarette smoke that we allow to be dispenced into the air in enclosed spaces at workplaces?
And to avoid a bunch of tedious research that would eventually just boil down to us bickering over different statistics, let's just both accept we have statistics which for the most part cancel each other out, and instead go with what logic would dictate, there are many poisons in cigarette smoke, and a brief trip into the lungs does not deprive them of those poisons. So LOGICALLY there would be low doses of a huge variety of poisons, that probably won't do a whole lot (but certainly would have a more negative than positive effect) if you're just a typical bar patron, but if your job is in a perpetually smoke filled enclosed space, it will obviously be significantly bad for the worker's health. |
All of that might (or might not) be relevant, if in fact there were
any credible studies whatsoever indicating that secondhand smoke is dangerous.
Now that this debate has forced me to examine the issue more closely, I've made some
very interesting discoveries.
The World Health Organization conducted a comprehensive study on the effects of secondhand smoke in 1998.
It yielded unexpected results; WHO responded by doing a second, skewed study, a meta-analysis*
(See footnote), which enabled them to slant the facts and extract the results they wanted.
Here is a pdf file of the 1998 WHO study on the effects of secondhand smoke, a case control study using a large sample size.
link
The purpose of the study was to provide a more precise estimate of risk, to discover any differences between different sources of environmental tobacco smoke, and the effect of environmental tobacco smoke exposure on different types of lung cancer.
The study was conducted from twelve centers in seven European countries over a period of seven years; the participants consisted of 650 patients with lung cancer and 1542 control subjects.
Three of the study centers interviewed family members of the participants to confirm the subjects were not smokers.
The study found no statistically significant risk existed for non-smokers who either lived or worked with smokers.
The only statistically significant number in the WHO survey was a
decrease in the risk of lung cancer among the children of smokers (the study shows that children raised by smokers were 22% less likely to get lung cancer).
Obviously, these findings did not fit with their agenda; displeased, they followed up with a slew of meta-analysis studies (see footnote) "proving" that secondhand smoke was carcinogenic or otherwise harmful.
Later WHO studies with obvious, politically-motivated anti-tobacco bias
WHO later tried to blame the results of the 1998 study on a small sample size. However, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, where the results were published, the researchers clearly state: "An important aspect of our study in relation to previous studies is its size, which allowed us to obtain risk estimates with good statistical precision."
Anyway, before I could even consider secondhand smoke as a civil rights or workers' rights issue (setting aside the fact that workers implicitly consent to and accept the risk when they apply for employment in a workplace that allows smoking; it's not like there aren't other, smoke-free environments they could seek employment in, if cigarette smoke bothers them), I'd have to see a
credible scientific study (as in, a
Cohort or
Case Control study, not a meta-analysis) by a reputable organization that is not driven by a blatant political agenda.
I challenge you to produce such.
Until such time as
valid scientific studies are conducted to prove that exposure to ambient tobacco smoke has a detrimental effect on nonsmokers, I see no reason- no justification- for the government to take drastic measures such as enacting sweeping legislation banning smoking in privately-owned businesses.
It violates the rights of all Americans, and goes against everything this country stands for.
*
Meta-Analyses are analyses of existing studies. The researcher gathers data from other studies, picks the appropriate ones, pools the results and extracts his data.
It is extremely difficult to do this with any degree of accuracy, and extremely easy to twist the results to a predetermined outcome. Simply leaving out one or two studies can skew the data dramatically in one direction or the other.