Comments

It seems I can’t comment on Russ’ or Dave D’s blogs. I’m getting an error message that their blogs aren’t found when I try. So, since that’s the case, I will comment here…

Regarding a statewide smoking ban, this was my comment to Russ yesterday:
Politicians don't give two *&^%s about what impact their legislation has in the real world. If they cared, they wouldn't ban smoking in bars in the first place. Smoke is annoying, and it annoys many people, and those people complain often. So they ban it. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with what science says about the effects of secondhand smoke. See below. Hat tip to Radley Balko...

“Australian medical researcher Raymond Johnstone looked at epidemiological data and determined that the rate of death from cancer among the wives of non-smoking men was 6 per 100,000. The rate of death among the wives of smoking men was 8 per 100,000. That means that the absolute risk of cancer due to the kind of prolonged exposure to secondhand smoke endured by a spouse is 1 per 50,000.
Now if you're an alarmist, you'd phrase that statistic like this: "SECONDHAND SMOKE CAUSES 33% MORE CANCER DEATHS."
If you're a realist, you'd phrase it as Johnstone does:
‘The most one can say about the alleged link between passive smoking and lung cancer is that if there is one, the it is so small that it is difficult to measure it accurately and the risk, if any, is well below the level of those to which we normally pay attention’
In the swell book The Tyranny of Health, Michael Fitzpatrick notes that you're more likely to get cancer from eating Japanese seafood (six times more likely), drinking tap water (two and a half times more likely), or eating mushrooms (fifty percent more likely) than you are from being the nonsmoking spouse of a heavy smoker.”

So if the non-smoking spouse of a heavy smoker’s chances of getting cancer increase so minimally as to be scientifically insignificant and difficult to measure, then what do you think science says about a non-smoking waiter or patron who spends less time bars than we can assume spouses spend together?

The politicians also never take into account that if there was such a large crowd of people who do not want to go to a bar with smoke, then smoke-free bars would be everywhere and would be successful. Why not give the market time to sort this out, instead of legislating us all into oblivion? If all the non-smoking obsessives spent as much money opening non-smoking restaurants and bars, as they have pushing legislation, they could be making a tidy profit. Offering an alternative is not their agenda. Banning all smoking is.

Don’t be surprised when coffee and alcohol are next. Personal responsibility has nothing to do with it. The government is here to make sure we don’t hurt ourselves.

Now, regarding Dave’s post about the conversation with the cleaning lady…

My daily conversation at 5:45 goes like this
Cleaning Man: Hello, Lady (in charming hispanic accent)
W: Hi, how are you?
CM: Good, how are you?
W: Good, thank you.
CM: Have a good night, Lady.
W: Thank you, have a good night.

Sometimes, the conversation begins with “Hola,” instead. I find it cute, but then again, I’m not kicking a nicotine habit. So, I can understand Dave’s frustration.