Why can't they just leave us alone?

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zoiDman

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I think votes still run the show, and money is just a means to get more of them.
But anything that can greatly influence public opinion and how the public votes can still effect change.

I think it was Mark Twain who said... "If voting Really Mattered, they Wouldn't let you do it."

Trust me on this. Once e-Cigarettes are Regulated, Heavily Taxed and in the Complete Control of Big Business, politicians across this Great Land of ours will say how Great they are and how they have Always been in favor of them.

;)
 

generic mutant

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They won't leave us alone because most people do exactly what "genetic mutant" has been doing in this thread...

I don't have an ideologically driven position on second hand smoke, except insofar as I believe that science works as a process, even if it makes mistakes along the way. I recognise that science can be biased, or just flat out wrong, for all kinds of reasons.

Presumably you came to the conclusions you have because of evidence you saw, or persuasive argument. All I'm asking is to see the evidence, or to hear the argument, and I don't think that's unreasonable.

I'm not asking you to refute every study I posted, that was just a 'flavour' of the studies out there, a starting point. If you know some of them to be flawed, then tell me the flaws. If you know of better studies, link them. If you are tired of writing this stuff over and over again, why not write a blog or something, and point people to that? You obviously believe in this passionately, and I presume if you're engaging in debate about it still despite all the stress that can entail, you want to convince people of the logic of your position.
 
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kristin

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The ANTZ in all this are mere Pawns on the Chess Boards. Where many see them as having some Power, they really Don’t have any. They are just push around by a Larger Hand. And in the end, they won’t even achieve their goal of removing e-Cigarettes from the Market.

If that was true, then why were the ANTZ writing the laws and the legislators looking to the ANTZ for answers when we confronted them? Who is this "larger hand" pushing the ANTZ around, other than Big Pharma financing their agenda for its own agenda?

The ANTZ may want tobacco and nicotine banned, but there are many in their official ranks (tobacco control antis, but not true ANTZ) that are happy with the status quo, because it pays and keeps on paying.

That said, I don’t like seeing people called out by name because their views are outside the mainstream views of many here on the ECF.

The only reason I specifically mentioned "genetic mutant" was because he was the only one posting those studies to which I was specifically referring - especially that last list that I hadn't addressed directly, because the studies he posted fit the exactly what I was talking about. So I was, in a way, addressing his last post. I was not "calling him out" because of his "views," but simply mentioned him because HOW he was trying to argue and defend his point is what so many other people do. I see it on ECF all of the time and his beliefs and the basis for those beliefs are actually far more common here, which is what I see as a huge part of the problem. I suppose I could have just responded to his list and broken down (once again) why those studies in no way supported his argument, but that seemed futile at the time. I was just trying to multi-task with one post. ;)
 

zoiDman

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"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

It was Emma Goldman, an anarchist of some kind or another (probably depends who you ask...)

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." Emma Goldman

That it was Twain... But close enough for the point I was making.
 

zoiDman

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... Who is this "larger hand" pushing the ANTZ around, other than Big Pharma financing their agenda for its own agenda?

...

You didn't expect Big Tobacco to just stand by and let Big Pharma scoop up all the Profits did you? And why would Big Tobacco like seeing Nicotine Extract Profits all going to China?

If I had to Name another player in a Pawn pushing game, Big Tobacco would be the Usually Suspect.
 

DC2

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You didn't expect Big Tobacco to just stand by and let Big Pharma scoop up all the Profits did you? And why would Big Tobacco like seeing Nicotine Extract Profits all going to China?

If I had to Name another player in a Pawn pushing game, Big Tobacco would be the Usually Suspect.
It's been abundantly clear over the last few years that Big Pharma has been funding the ANTZ movements.
But it is also clear now that Big Tobacco has stepped in with their own agenda.

I like that CASAA is said to be working with Big Tobacco to try and give them a different point of view.
I would love to hear how that is going, but I am generally unable to attend the Sunday meetings due to family obligations.
 

EddardinWinter

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No, it is not. What is 'negligent' about using a legal product for its intended use? What is moral about a state trampling the rights of individual property owners? This is not a science question.

He won't touch this issue (he can't!). The poor Statist, he is reduced to digging up agenda-driven studies which justify abuse of private property rights "for the defense of children" or "for the public health". If he can just show you how darned dangerous that cigarette smoke is, it will be okay to restrict private property rights of citizens to the uses HE sees as "safe".

That is complete hogwash! You either believe in private property rights, or you don't. Remember that guys! You have to defend the other person's right to use his or her property legally every time, even when it is an activity you don't support!
 

kristin

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I don't have an ideologically driven position on second hand smoke, except insofar as I believe that science works as a process, even if it makes mistakes along the way. I recognise that science can be biased, or just flat out wrong, for all kinds of reasons.

Presumably you came to the conclusions you have because of evidence you saw, or persuasive argument. All I'm asking is to see the evidence, or to hear the argument, and I don't think that's unreasonable.

I'm not asking you to refute every study I posted, that was just a 'flavour' of the studies out there, a starting point. If you know some of them to be flawed, then tell me the flaws. If you know of better studies, link them. If you are tired of writing this stuff over and over again, why not write a blog or something, and point people to that? You obviously believe in this passionately, and I presume if you're engaging in debate about it still despite all the stress that can entail, you want to convince people of the logic of your position.

OK then.

Bar Workers' Exposure to Second-Hand Smoke: The Effect of Scottish Smoke-Free Legislation on Occupational Exposure - bar workers' exposure

Secondhand smoke exposure and risk following the Irish smoking ban: an assessment of salivary cotinine concentrations in hotel workers and air nicotine levels in bars -- Mulcahy et al. 14 (6): 384 -- Tobacco Control - "60% [of hotel workers] showing a halving of exposure levels [of cotinine] at follow up [after the ban]"
Shows that banning smoking lowered nicotine bio-marker found in blood. Doesn't provide evidence that SHS actually ever caused any disease or death.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...40673610613888 - estimated 1% of worldwide mortality due to SHS.

Assumes SHS causes disease and then estimates the number of people who could get those diseases or die. Doesn't provide evidence SHS actually ever caused any disease or death.

Second-hand Smoke Exposure and Blood Lead Levels in U.S. Chi... : Epidemiology - elevated blood lead levels in children

Concludes exposure to SHS COULD be associated with increased blood lead levels in U.S. children. Doesn't provide evidence that SHS actually ever caused any disease or death or that lead increases at those levels would actually lead to disease or death.

How many deaths are caused by second hand cigarette smoke? -- Woodward and Laugesen 10 (4): 383 -- Tobacco Control - "As a cause of death in New Zealand, we estimate that second hand smoke lies between melanoma of the skin (200 deaths per year) and road crashes (about 500 deaths per year)"

Another estimate of how many deaths are caused by SHS while assuming that any deaths are actually caused by SHS exposure. Doesn't provide evidence that SHS actually ever caused any disease or death.

Cardiovascular Effects of Secondhand Smoke - "The effects of even brief (minutes to hours) passive smoking are often nearly as large (averaging 80% to 90%) as chronic active smoking."

Absolute garbage published by Stan Glantz, a known ANTZ who also believes in banning smoking from movies and editing historical photos and paintings to remove evidence of smoking. Not only doesn't this study provide evidence that SHS actually ever caused any disease or death, but make the ridiculous conclusion that while it's known that it takes years of actual smoking to have it "cause" heart disease, a few whiffs of SHS will cause heart disease and heart attacks in bystanders!

Second hand smoke, age of exposure and lung cancer risk - "All individuals exposed to SHS have a higher risk of risk of lung cancer. Furthermore, this study suggests that subjects first exposed before age 25 have a higher lung cancer risk compared to those for whom first exposure occurred after age 25 years." That would be the bar workers we're talking about.

This study relied on people remembering how much SHS they were exposed to as children (median age was 62 years old) and 79% of the subjects (cancer patients) were either ex-smokers or current smokers. The adjusted odds ratio for lung cancer was 1.30(1.08-1.57) when exposure occurred between birth and age 25, which means that those exposed during that period were 1.3 times (30%) more likely to get cancer. Oddly, while non-smokers exposed during that period were 29% more likely to get cancer, current and ex-smokers exposed to SHS during that period were only 28% more likely to get cancer. Note this does NOT mean that people exposed to SHS have a 30% chance of getting cancer, only that they were 30% MORE LIKELY to get it than those not exposed. It doesn't even double the risk. Again, this study doesn't provide evidence that SHS actually ever caused any disease or death, just discusses hypothetical risks elevations under specific circumstances.

Second-hand Smoke, Cotinine Levels, and Risk of Circulatory... : Epidemiology - "Second-hand smoke exposure at home was associated with an increased risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases (hazard ratio
= 1.38 [95% confidence interval = 1.01–1.90]), all circulatory diseases (1.28 [0.98–1.69]), and coronary heart disease (1.31 [0.83–2.08])"



Shows that exposure to SHS elevated nicotine -marker (cotinine), which shows that they were, indeed, possibly exposed to SHS. A hazard ratio
= 1.38 [95% confidence interval = 1.01–1.90]) from cardiovascular diseases, all circulatory diseases (1.28 [0.98–1.69]), and coronary heart disease (1.31 [0.83–2.08] including 95% confidence interval levels being nearly at or below 1.0 makes these results pretty much statistically insignificant. Doesn't provide evidence that SHS actually ever caused any disease or death.
 
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kristin

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Technically ... Still sure wouldn't want a kid of mine to start smoking tobacco.

EDIT: sorry, above quote was in response to "which is worse, this or tobacco?"

Ah, but there you made a distinction between just "tobacco" and SMOKING tobacco and there is a huge difference. The science shows smoke-free tobacco has far less health risks than smoking and we suspect vaping to be nearly as safe as smoke-free tobacco. So we can say truthfully that vaping is probably better than SMOKING, but its probably about the same as smoke-free tobacco.
 

generic mutant

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He won't touch this issue (he can't!). The poor Statist, he is reduced to digging up agenda-driven studies which justify abuse of private property rights "for the defense of children" or "for the public health". If he can just show you how darned dangerous that cigarette smoke is, it will be okay to restrict private property rights of citizens to the uses HE sees as "safe".

That is complete hogwash! You either believe in private property rights, or you don't. Remember that guys! You have to defend the other person's right to use his or her property legally every time, even when it is an activity you don't support!

We can probably agree that I have the right to buy hazardous chemicals of some kinds. And then I can handle them in as safe or unsafe (to me at any rate) way as I feel like.

Do you agree that industries that handle these chemicals require legally enforced minimum safety standards, to protect their workers from risks that are not *inherent* to handling them?
 

generic mutant

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Absolute garbage published by Stan Glantz, a known ANTZ who also believes in banning smoking from movies and editing historical photos and paintings to remove evidence of smoking. Not only doesn't this study provide evidence that SHS actually ever caused any disease or death, but make the ridiculous conclusion that while it's known that it takes years of actual smoking to have it "cause" heart disease, a few whiffs of SHS will cause heart disease and heart attacks in bystanders!
...

Secondhand smoke increases the risk of fatal and nonfatal coronary heart disease by about 30% 1, 2. This effect, while appearing consistently in many epidemiologic studies, is larger than one would expect based on the dose of smoke that passive smokers receive compared with smokers (2): the effect is about one third that observed in smokers whereas the relative dose of smoke is much smaller. Previous investigators have shown that this apparent disparity may be because several aspects of the cardiovascular system, including platelets 3, 4 and endothelial function 5, 6, 7, are very sensitive, even to the comparatively low doses of smoke (compared with smoking) that nonsmokers inhale when around secondhand smoke. Indeed, some of the effects of secondhand smoke on the cardiovascular system in nonsmokers are comparable to the effects of smoking in smokers, perhaps because the effects of the toxins in the smoke saturate at relatively low exposures.

Elsevier

He claims the effect is fairly consistently demonstrated;

Epidemiological data on the relationship between passive smoking and heart disease have been accumulating since the mid-1980s. Six meta-analyses have been published,3–7,22 all yielding relative risks of heart disease from passive smoking that range between 1.2 and 1.3.

Note though, some of those six are his own metaanalyses.

Cardiovascular Effects of Secondhand Smoke

Having a quick scan through, there's quite a lot of supporting evidence that hasn't come from him.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=passive+smoking+heart+epidemiology+meta
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=passive+smoking+heart+epidemiology+meta

This isn't a subject I've studied directly, so you'll forgive me for having to approach points one by one, and sometimes slowly.
 
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kristin

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This isn't a subject I've studied directly, so you'll forgive me for having to approach points one by one, and sometimes slowly.


(Edited: I spoke with Carl and my numbers were off, so disregard.)

Here is some more reading: Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98

And this was from one of your own links: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16399662
"When all relevant studies are included in the meta-analysis and results are appropriately combined, current or ever exposure to ETS, as approximated by spousal smoking, is associated with roughly a 5% increased risk of death from coronary heart disease (CHD) in never smokers. Furthermore, there is no dose-response relationship and no elevated risk associated with the highest level of ETS exposure in males or females. An objective assessment of the available epidemiologic evidence indicates that the association of ETS with CHD death in U.S. never smokers is very weak. Previous assessments appear to have overestimated the strength of the association."
 
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