So Second Hand Smoke is NOT Dangerous?

[Leon]

We've certainly heard a lot about Mayor Bloomberg's (NYC Mayor) smoking ban and Bloomberg's claim that his little ban will "save innocent lives" by helping bar patrons avoid the horrible dangers of secondhand smoke, and we've also heard about anti-tobacco activist Stanton Glantz, who claimed(PDF Download link) that smoking bans cut heart attack deaths in half. I cannot, however, find any sign that this research has yet made it into a peer-reviewed publication.

Unfortunately for Bloomberg and Glantz, real reseachers have performed a genuine large-scale longitudinal study that compared nonsmokers married to smokers and nonsmoker married to nonsmokers, and found that, when properly adjusting for other factors, exposure to secondhand smoke doesn't appear to cause any increases in mortality.

The researchers do say a very small increase in risk "cannot be ruled out," but they could not find any statistically significant results that indicate that secondhand smoke increases an individual's health risks, at least proxying for secondhand smoke exposure using spousal smoking habits. Notably, this study has indeed appeared in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.

Does this mean Bloomberg will lift the ban and the anti-tobacco lobby will stop trying to push these bans onto the public. Or were these "public health" justifications just excuses for people to impose their values on others?

 

Edit: Adding Guardian article which summarizes more of the above.

[joeyjoey]

What they believe is what they believe, regardless of the results shown in a professional journal article. Since they feel that second hand smoke leads to more fatalities they will only consider that which supports their views. Even if this article and more prove them wrong, they will come up with some other excuse like it makes your hair smell.

[Leon]

LOL! So true.

So you agree that Bloomberg is feeding us lies? What was his intent though? Why would he turn back revenue for bars?

Bloombergs a dirty *&^%$# and I hope he gets run over by an out-of-control shopping cart that some homeless guy pushes down the street.

[joeyjoey]

Originally posted by Leon
LOL! So true.

So you agree that Bloomberg is feeding us lies? What was his intent though? Why would he turn back revenue for bars?

I don't really think its lies; I just think he is trying to gain favor with the large percentage of the public who do not smoke by using common sense facts although the were recently "disproven" by this article.

In my own biased opinion I feel that he is against things like bars and nightclubs to begin with. If he doesn't like these types of venues, I can see why he would use his power to mess with them and impose these laws even if there were no prior complaints.

[joeyjoey]

Originally posted by PhuckU
Bloombergs a dirty *&^%$# and I hope he gets run over by an out-of-control shopping cart that some homeless guy pushes down the street.

I couldn't have said it better myself

[Leon]

Rudy hated those types of establishments as well, but he never went THAT far. Although, he did cause havoc in the porn industry.

RUDY 4 PRESIDENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!