With a number of states seeming to heed the childhood cautionary words of their mothers, "If all your friends jumped off a bridge would you jump too?" they've so far resisted enacting smoking bans.
So it wasn't surprising to hear the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announce last month that it would be undertaking a study on the economic effects of smoking bans on bar and restaurants -- a partial concern that keeps some from taking this leap. It's being funded with a "partnership grant" from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
This announcement was made by its director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, who is better known for his time as NYC's health commissioner. By the time he left to take the job at the CDC his reputation for his personal mission against smoking was cemented in stone.
Pfizer is the manufacturer of a variety of quit smoking aids known as NRTs (nicotine replacement therapies). Smoking bans -- a measure intended, in part, to coerce smokers into quitting -- are such good business for them that they fund drives by anti-smoker groups across the country. If smokers quit they might reach for these NRTs for assistance. Smoking bans shut out the competition over which nicotine product to use.
Behold the partnership of ideology and profits. Might as well have Carrie Nation, paired with makers of hatchets, study the impact of going dry. What would make us believe then that this study will conclude anything other than bans don't harm business to goad the holdouts into jumping? Well, no need to wonder when activists moonlighting as teflon docs have become so arrogant that they tell you the outcome before the study's even started.
Their press release states that the "perception" of harm is a "barrier" to enacting smoking bans. Pfizer's executive vice president says, "We hope that the results of this analysis will advance efforts [to enact bans]." Frieden ends it with, "Making worksites, restaurants, and bars smoke-free [...] doesn't hurt business."
Got that? This isn't a study of economic data to see where it leads. It's a mission to collect the "right" data to knock down something that stands in their agenda's way and prop up a preconceived conclusion. This collection apparently begins with cherry-picking only a certain nine states to study.
They fail to mention that theirs is hardly the first such study -- many that meet their goal (and many that don't). Are previous studies that allege bans are economically beneficial not enough? Rather, it smells very strongly of an effort to put the CDC imprimatur on one to change "perception" via "the highest authority."
After "who would question us?" that leaves any study to the contrary open to one last parting shot: "It's the work of tobacco industry allies."
It's one thing to pull that act -- accusing hospitality groups (and independent economists) of sponsoring studies to fight bans on behalf of the industry -- before a ban is enacted. It's another to stick to that lie after the fact and the owners are looking at empty seats and cash registers that prove their studies well-founded. Are we to believe they'd continue to fight a law -- for another's benefit -- if their business thrived and risk losing it?! There is page upon page of personal testimonials, spanning over a decade and across the country as one state after another enacted bans, saying "The ban killed my business." Are they all in cahoots with and doing the tobacco industry's bidding?
A weaker tactic employed to discredit anyone who claims or shows economic harm is to blame the economy and/or weather and/or gas prices and/or operator incompetence in every case -- and isolate it to boot. It's never the ban to blame for any loss. But when there's an economic hit immediately following each ban every single time it makes those contentions clearly straw-grasping. .At least one prominent leader in the anti-smoker movement, Dr. Simon Chapman, had this to say following a 2007 study that found smoking bans around gambling machines in Victoria, Australia "cut gaming revenue significantly": "[That] is plausibly only explained by the new law. It can't be explained by just seasonal things or whatever. It has been sustained [across the sector]."
In desperate need of attention is the "level playing field." Ban proponents use it constantly to explain the need for bans in every venue and across city lines. Their argument goes that if smoking is banned everywhere it won't provide an advantage to places that have no ban! If that's not a glaringly revealing contradiction to whatever their study will say I don't know what is. If a smoking ban was as popular and business-friendly as the Prohibitionists say it is then what would necessitate a "level playing field"? They're saying, given the choice, smoking allowed venues will attract more customers.
Despite all this they'll be going forward and asking us to accept the integrity of their data alone. But they rely on sales tax data. It's ripe for mischief. It's easily deceptive by glossing over increases in the tax (NYS raised theirs by one-quarter percent immediately following its ban) and/or prices for food and drink that were raised due to lost sales, and/or the hidden effect of places that flout the ban thus continuing to do well. There's the bad habit of lumping restaurants -- including fast food -- in with bars when bars are always hit harder.
Most of all, sales tax speaks to how well the state is doing. It has no acquaintance with how good or bad business is for each individual private owner who has life savings invested in it. Two bars can close and one restaurant makes up for it. When the state owns the bar then maybe sales tax will be a defining factor. Until then, it's profit that tells the real story -- upheld by the many states that exempt casinos for fear it will cut into its profit because casinos, unlike little bars, are undeniable revenue raisers, contributing multi-millions to the budget. If it's bad for state business and ultimately the taxpayers it can't be good for mom n' pop.
Whoever's left, listen to mom, not Big Brother Frieden. Don't jump.
How Effective Are Smoking Bans, and How Popular Are They ...
NYC Smoking Ban in Parks, Beaches Goes Into Effect - ABC News
I perfectly understand non-smokers who need protection from passive smoke (my wife is one), but... what is wrong with some places where _smokers_ can smoke? Current bans are not rational, but a holy war.
I realize the anti smokers want to force me to be a free tobacco control officer for the state, but that is not my job. I also know that those who are grant funded to push smoking bans are also gunning for more prohibitions on alcohol use. You see, the pharmas who push bans not only want you to use THEIR tobacco replacement, they also want you to use THEIR anti anxiety and anti depressant drugs instead of having a cold beer with your friends after work. They WANT you isolated and depressed. Just like they are. Miserable, angry, controlling people that no one wants to be around.
In review of the recent destruction of an identical climate gate model, that created the lie, we know formally as "man made Global Warming", with a statistical model that would show the desired and per-ordained result, no matter what data was entered. In it's defense the word" denier" was promoted, to attach non believers to Holocaust deniers, in a similar subconscious theme of negating opinions. This is tied to the strategy in the oft heard cries of "shill to big tobacco", as the favorite denials process complaint, whenever any contrary evidence comes to light. Which is in itself proof, that the data and process are not reliable and can sing to the piper's tune, as it has, with billions of wasted tax payers funds to date funding the politically desired, lobby group advertising campaigns, affording large salaries and self promotions to co-conspirators. Invested primarily in large and bloated corporate salaries, for those employed in the promotion of financially corrupted lobby group initiatives, to dictate our choices and drive a wedge between those; who do as they are told in fear and those who don't embrace that same fear.
They call that same old, same old, nanny state model we know so well by now, a lot of things which are none too positive in nature. They could never tell us, we are getting good value for the investment. That is; If we the people, are not in the market for political lies.
And you want to talk about how my "intolerant" attitude makes it unpleasant for extremely selfish people like you? How do you not comprehend that your smoking doesn't just affect you. It effects everyone around you.
The free market was doing fine balancing out just the right number of smoking and non-smoking venues according to the demand. As it is, smoking bans are hurting even those venues that were voluntarily non-smoking previous to the government mandated bans because they have lost the advantage they had to cater to a clientele that was intolerant to smoke.
Smoking bans never had anything to do with bystanders' health. It's all about the money. What better business partnership between governments who collect taxes, the pharmaceutical industry that profits from the repeat sales of virtually ineffective nicotine replacement treatment and dangerous drugs such as Chantix, and anti-smoking activists who profit from the grants of both? In plain terms this is called Corporate Fascism.
Save some exceptions, smokers were not inconsiderate, they were only following the private house rules that stipulated that smoking was permitted. If you voluntarily walk into a private bar with a giant sports TV screen and someone beside you asked the barman to turn it off while you were watching it because it bothered him, I think you would rightly tell that person to leave the bar and choose another place if he didn't like the house rules. That is exactly what many smokers were rightly answering to those who complained and especially that they were being pushed far enough already in the public sector.
As for corporate fascism, none so blind as those who will not see because it doesn't suit them to. We are being run by big corporation interests in collusion with governments and interest groups. Attempting to deny this simply because you hate smoke, is burying your head in the sand very deep.
cont'd on next post
And I am not claiming that smoking is harmless but I am sure as h... claiming that second hand smoke is NOT a significant health risk worth bankrupting businesses, eliminating employment and dividing families and friends unless you have a special condition in which case it becomes your problem to look after and avoid situations that may aggravate your condition. Annoyance by the way is not a health condition.
As for your CDC link, I will not even bother. I know exactly what the accepted dogma about smoking is and I will not get into it because it would be too long to explain what you should be focusing on to separate truth from fiction. But the issue here has nothing to do about active smoking, and everything to do with the manufactured harms of second hand smoke. I am sure you know and believe most of what you hear about it since they have all the money to fund the propaganda around SHS and spread it across the globe. How about you start using some critical thinking and common sense and start documenting yourself on the other side of the story? http://www.fightingback.homestead.com
Just a final note. Antismoking is not new to America. There were combined anti-tobacco/alcohol crusades early last century. Following Prohibition, there was a constant lobbying for a “tobacco” version of Prohibition. All of this long pre-dates the concocted idea of secondhand smoke “danger” and also involved a plethora of inflammatory lies. It was ideologically driven where anti-tobacco fanatics conducted themselves like a supremacist group, out to impose their will on all. The same can be said of the current crusade.
http://www.americanheritage.com/content/thank-you-not-smoking
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5339
Since OSHA does not require indoor smoking bans, advocacy groups have made their goal, contrary to the regulatory authority, to introduce indoor smoking bans by approaching counties/states, one at a time. Members of advocacy groups flood council hearings on smoking bans. They never refer to OSHA, i.e., lie of omission; OSHA doesn’t appear in any of their propaganda manuals because it doesn’t fit their agenda. Rather, they quote the outrageous, inflammatory claims of other advocacy groups also committed to the same antismoking ideology. They parrot well-tested emotive slogans. If councilors/politicians are not familiar with OSHA – as they usually are not – they are easy prey for the fanatical onslaught. The role of advocates is to assure that bans are “wonderful” for everyone. If a ban is passed, the role of the advocate is to assure politicians that they made the “right” decision. Even if every business in town closed due to the ban, the advocate will parrot from the manual that everyone is happy with the ban, that even smokers are ecstatic with it. It is all agenda-driven trash.
Here’s another fact that has been lost in the sea of propaganda. America has a Federal regulatory authority governing indoor air quality – the Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA). It does not view typical encounters with INDOOR tobacco smoke as problematic: That’s why there is no national ban on indoor smoking. The Office of the Surgeon-General has been ideologically committed to a Smokefree America since the mid-1980s. It is not a regulatory authority. Cancer societies and medical associations, also committed to antismoking, are not regulatory authorities, but are advocacy/activist groups. They can make all manner of outrageous claims and are not held to account because no-one is compelled to pay attention to anything they claim. Only the view of the regulatory authority – OSHA – matters.