The Garden City Telegram
NEW E-Edition!
Subscription
Required
Add Your Comment | Read (2) Comments
Hurdles remain for smoking ban
Published 1/15/2010 in Local News
TOPEKA (AP) — Kansas' governor has given a boost to an ongoing campaign for a statewide smoking ban, but supporters still have to overcome the opposition — and perhaps ingenuity — of business owners like Sharon Suwalski.
After Topeka banned smoking last year in bars and restaurants but not tobacco shops, Suwalski and her husband laid down blue tape to separate his tobacco counter from her bar inside their Hot Pockets billiard hall. She said Thursday that the tape also should allow customers inside the tobacco shop's designated area to smoke under proposals before the Legislature.
Gov. Mark Parkinson lifted public health advocates' hopes by declaring in his annual State of the State address that he wants a strong statewide ban on smoking in public places. Two such proposals passed the Senate last year; both await a House vote.
They face criticism from some business owners and state residents who see a ban as too much meddling in their lives. Suwalski watched Parkinson's speech on television and remembered thinking, "He's crazy."
"There are places where people expect to be able to smoke," she said. "If they can't smoke in here, I'm not going to have any customers."
Kansas legislators have seriously considered statewide rules on smoking for the past five years as local governments have enacted ordinances. Three counties and 36 cities have imposed limits on smoking in public places, and their restrictions apply to 55 percent of the state's population.
Supporters of a statewide ban view it as a public health measure that will protect Kansas residents — particularly workers — from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke. They were pleased with Parkinson's endorsement, though he wasn't specific about the details of a ban.
"He wants a bill that's written from a public health perspective," said Mary Jayne Hellebust, lobbyist for the Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition.
Twenty-four states ban smoking in restaurants and bars, according to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation. Parkinson noted in his address that North Carolina joined the list this year.
"If North Carolina, the largest tobacco-producing state in the country, can enact a public smoking ban, surely we can do it in Kansas," Parkinson said. "I don't want to see a watered-down public smoking ban, one that's written by the tobacco industry and full of loopholes that isn't a real ban."
Both bills before the Legislature would exempt tobacco shops from a ban, as the Topeka ordinance does. In Hot Pockets, the thin, blue line of tape runs over gray carpet and down the center of tables as it outlines a cozy, 10-foot-by-10-foot square for the tobacco shop. The bar is outside the line, but only a short toss of a peanut away.
Suwalski acknowledged she wouldn't oppose a state law if it exempted both bars and tobacco shops. But Tom Jacob, owner of the Cigar Chateau in Wichita, said the state should leave such decisions to local governments, which can work out compromises with local businesses.
Some Kansas residents don't want even local governments to impose restrictions.
"I am just really fed up with government kind of encroaching on everybody's personal rights and their freedoms," said Gail Trembley, a smoker and Topeka resident who's leading a campaign to repeal that city's ordinance.
But advocates of statewide restrictions argue that most Kansans want public places to be smoke-free and that workers in bars and restaurants have a right to clean air. They believe Parkinson's support will help.
"He is obviously looking for a good bill," Hellebust said.
Found 2 comment(s)!
An Alterative to smoking bans
An alternative to smoking bans
If the public was honestly and truthfully informed about the effects of second-hand smoke, there would be fewer no-smoking laws in this country.
There has never been a single study showing that exposure to the low levels of smoke found in bars and restaurants with decent modern ventilation and filtration systems kills or harms anyone.
As to the annoyance of smoking, a compromise between smokers and non-smokers can be reached, through setting a quality standard and the use of modern ventilation technology.
Air ventilation can easily create a comfortable environment that removes not just passive smoke, but also and especially the potentially serious contaminants that are independent from smoking.
Thomas Laprade
Thunder Bay, Ont.
http://thetruthisalie.com
Posted by: Thomas Laprade on 1/16/2010
second hand smoke is a joke
SECOND HAND SMOKE IS A JOKE
Ask the anti-tobacco folks to tell you what truly is in second hand smoke...when it burns from the coal its oxygenated and everything is burned and turned into water vapor...thats right water...you ever burned leaves in the fall...know how the heavy smoke bellows off.......
Thats the organic material releasing the moisture in the leaves, the greener the leaves/organic material the more smoke thats made..thats why second hand smoke is classified as a class 3 irritant by osha and epa as of 2006........IN 1993 EPA decided to change the listing of shs to a carcinogen for political reasons ......because it contained a trace amount of 6 chemicals measured in picograms so small even sophisticated scientific equipment can hardly detect it.
If the same standards to make shs/ets a carcinogen were applied to a glass of tap water, certain foods and most other things in the natural environment they would also be carcinogens. The failure of the EPA to use the dose makes the poison chart in this political decision makes their entire claim a moot point.
However osha still maintains shs/ets as an irritant only and maintains the dose makes the poison position.......as osha is in charge of indoor air quality its decisions are based on science not political agendas as epa's is. We can see this is true after a federal judge threw out the epa's study on shs as junk science..What OSHA should be doing is applying the general duty clause and set indoor standards where limits of safe levels are set. But dog gone it,thats why OSHA didnt set a standard because there was just nothing in shs/ets that could be deemed harmful to humans. So it was left as it was a simple class 3 irritant.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 British Medical Journal & WHO conclude secondhand smoke "health hazard" claims are greatly exaggerated The BMJ published report at:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057
concludes that "The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer are considerably weaker than generally believed." What makes this study so significant is that it took place over a 39 year period, and studied the results of non-smokers who lived with smokers.....
meaning these non-smokers were exposed to secondhand smoke up to 24 hours per day; 365 days per year for 39 years. And there was still no relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality. In light of the damage to business, jobs, and the economy from smoking bans the BMJ report should be revisited by lawmakers as a reference tool and justification to repeal the now unnecessary and very damaging smoking ban laws. Also significant is the World Health Organization (WHO) study:
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer-official By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent " The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The Telegraph, also states: 'There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood.' " And if lawmakers need additional real world data to further highlight the need to eliminate these onerous and arbitrary laws, air quality testing by Johns Hopkins University proves that secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations.
The Chemistry of Secondary Smoke About 94% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a slight excess of carbon dioxide. Another 3 % is carbon monoxide. The last 3 % contains the rest of the 4,000 or so chemicals supposedly to be found in smoke… but found, obviously, in very small quantities if at all.This is because most of the assumed chemicals have never actually been found in secondhand smoke. (1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80). Most of these chemicals can only be found in quantities measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms. Many cannot even be detected in these amounts: their presence is simply theorized rather than measured. To bring those quantities into a real world perspective, take a saltshaker and shake out a few grains of salt. A single grain of that salt will weigh in the ballpark of 100 million picograms! (Allen Blackman. Chemistry Magazine 10/08/01). - (Excerpted from "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains" with permission of the author.)
The Myth of the Smoking Ban ‘Miracle’ Restrictions on smoking around the world are claimed to have had a dramatic effect on heart attack rates. It's not true. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/
As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that: "Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded." -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997
-harleyrider1978
Heres what the smoke free groups did to try and prove a connection to heart disease and second hand smoke....
The "30 minute" experiments that the statement is based on have nothing at all to do with the exposures one might get on a park bench sitting next to a smoker or even with what one would normally get in any decently ventilated bar or restaurant.
The exposures in the supportive experiments involve smoke concentrations at levels of 400% to 2,000% as high as what used to be measured in the middle of the smoking sections of pressurized airplanes!! (Which used to be held up as one of the worst smoking environments.)
The experiments take nonsmokers who avoid smoke in all their daily home, social, and working life, force them to sign papers
acknowledging the "danger" they are about to be put in, and then sealing them in smoke-choked chambers that nonsmokers would run screaming from if they weren't being paid $100 to endure 30 minutes for science. . . . When the poor souls come stumbling out blood test measurement show small changes that could theoretically relate to heart disease.
The changes are like ones other experimenters find when they feed subjects a bowl of corn flakes and milk.... but in the kooky world of antismoking research those results get twisted into representing an unusual and deadly threat.
And remember: they only get those results in EXTREME conditions, nothing like normal restaurant/park or even decent bar/casino exposures. . . . The Antismokers today are lying just like Big Tobacco did back in the 1950s.
Antismoking extremism needs to be put to rest. Smoking is unhealthy like a lot of other things, but the smoke from burning smokers at the stake smells a lot worse than Newports. . . .
Cornflakes, White Bread Could Boost Heart Risk
'High-glycemic' carbs like these hamper blood vessel function, study shows.
THURSDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) -- Eating a diet rich in carbohydrates that boost blood sugar levels -- foods such as cornflakes or white bread -- may hamper the functioning of your blood vessels and raise your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests.
http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.aspx?docid=627806
Posted by: harleyrider1978 on 1/16/2010