galenrox

Alright, unless you want something else, let's just give this 2 weeks, so it'll end January 13th.

It is completely justifiable for any society to ban smoking in any public place, and private places if these private places are businesses, and thus invite in the public indiscriminately.

This is because the air is a public resource, and thus individuals do not have a right to contaminate it for everyone just for their own personal gain.

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1069

In a free market economy, it is not the place of government to restrict or interfere with legal activities occurring on the premises of a privately-owned business.
It all boils down to a property-rights issue. Customers who enter a private establishment that allows smoking have implicitly consented to the rules set by the owner of the establishment.
If nonsmokers don't like being around smokers, they are free to simply stop patronizing businesses that permit smoking. If this happened to the point that the business owner began to lose a significant amount of money, then no doubt he would decide voluntarily to ban smoking from his establishment.
If he didn't lose business, then apparently it means nonsmokers don't mind being around smokers all that much, at least not enough to cease patronizing an establishment that permits smoking.
Either way, business owners and their customers can resolve these issues themselves, and it is their right to do so; the government's interference, in the form of anti-smoking legislation, is unwarranted, unconstitutional, intrusive, unnecessary, and contradictory to the American way of life (not to mention hypocritical, in light of the fact that both federal and state governments profit financially from taxes on all tobacco sales).
Besides that, smoking bans are bad for the nation's economy as a whole, if they drive small business owners (especially in the bar and restaurant industries) out of business because customers choose to patronize businesses where they are allowed to smoke (this is especially a problem near borders, or close to indian reservations, where smoking is still permitted), or else to stay home entirely.

First of all, the air in a privately-owned bar or restaurant isn't a "public resource"; it's a resource only for the patrons of that restaurant or bar.
If the place is enclosed, the smoke is not likely to "contaminate" the outside air; anyone who does not wish to breathe it is free not to enter the establishment.
This seems especially relevant in bars, where you have to be of legal drinking age to enter.
Surely if a person is of legal drinking age, they are competent to decide for themselves whether they wish to share bar space with smokers, and do not need the government butting in, ostensibly to "protect" them.

Beyond that, although we can all agree that smoking can be harmful to one's health, it is legal, and it is a personal choice. It's not the government's business to regulate the behavior of mentally competent adults; they have the right to weigh the risks themselves, and decide for themselves whether or not they wish to smoke cigarettes.
As far as second-hand smoke goes, I think it's far from clear whether second-hand smoke has any actual detrimental effect on the health of those who breathe it.
There is compelling evidence that it does not, especially in small amounts, if breathed only occasionally, for short periods of time.
And some of the so-called "evidence" that second-hand smoke is harmful looks suspiciously like pseudoscience. There's not much unbiased, empirical evidence that occasional exposure to second-hand smoke is harmful in any way.
If you know of any such evidence, I challenge you to produce it.

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"I do love this idea that one can scream and scream and scream, with that utopia just one more scream away."
~ Scucca

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.

1069

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.

galenrox

Well that's all fine and good, but the center for disease control, second hand smoke, defined as "a complex mixture of gases and particles that includes smoke from the burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe tip (sidestream smoke) and exhaled mainstream smoke." And the effects of this smoke are "heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults. Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their heart disease risk by 25–30 percent and their lung cancer risk by 20–30 percent. Secondhand smoke exposure has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system." citing this report. From the same report we get that "Secondhand smoke causes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear problems, and more frequent and severe asthma attacks in children. Secondhand smoke exposure causes respiratory symptoms in children and slows their lung growth." and "There is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure. Even brief exposure can be dangerous."

And from this report from the California environmental protection agency we get that "secondhand smoke exposure causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700–69,600 heart disease deaths annually among adult nonsmokers in the United States." and from this report from the EPA we get "Secondhand smoke exposure is responsible for an estimated 150,000–300,000 new cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in children aged less than 18 months, resulting in 7,500–15,000 hospitalizations."

Now this debate is at a cross roads. We can go down the road of the statistical ******* match, and spend the rest of this debate just looking up various sources and having a statistical ******* match, or we can take what logic would dictate, which is there's a lot of poison in the smoke going into the lungs, and thus logic would dictate that the smoke coming out would be, at the very least, bad for you, unless you'd like to maintain that every single bit of poison exits the smoke while in the lungs.

We can either have another typical global warming debate of "It's not happening!" "Yes it is!" "Nuh uh" "Uh huh!", or we can have a debate where we come to the reasonable conclusion that second hand smoke is moderately bad for you, it certainly ain't nuclear fallout, but cetaris paribus your lungs are better off with you standing outside of a smokey bar rather than inside of it.



And that's the point, there are a precious few reasons we can use to justifiably limit the public use of a legal substance, but a threat to the public health is one of these. Now it is certainly possible to go to far with limiting freedom to protect the public health, but doing government properly involves walking a thin line, and eliminating smoking from public establishments is the right step along those lines, because there is no real cost.

Cause what is the cost of banning smoking from enclosed public spaces? You have to step outside to have a smoke? You can't have a cigarette on an airplane? Cry me a river! The cost is nothing, and the benefit is that people who made the smart life decision in NOT smoking get to receive the benefit of their smart decision, which is to be able to live their lives comfortably without having to inhale any of the poisons in cigarette smoke.