In 1993, Dennis Leary released “No Cure for Cancer”, a stand-up comedy album, where he sarcastically poses the question in regards to smoking laws, “What's the law now? You can only smoke in your apartment, under a blanket, with all the lights out, is that the rule now? Huh?”
Although smoking is still a legal act in the United States, since Dennis Leary posed his query, it has been demonized even further, taxed, and banned in various forms throughout every state in various degrees.
Now, I am not a smoker, I don't enjoy cigarette smoke, I don't want the bad breath, yellow fingers, to smell like an ash tray, or to get a sore throat like breathing it in gives me. I certainly don't want to become addicted to nicotine, and I've got enough expensive hobbies as it is without shelling out the price of a pack of cigarettes. I don't find it cool, attractive, or tough to walk around with one sticking out of your mouth or held in your hand and I admit to turning my nose up when I get a whiff of it. I believe regularly smoking cigarettes to be bad for your health, to damage your lungs, and to, depending on your body, increase your risk of certain types of cancer.
This is my opinion, and it is for these reasons that I don't smoke. However, I will be the first person to stand up for all you smokers and your rights to participate in a perfectly legal act. I will be the first, because I believe in freedom of choice and accountability for ones own actions.
I am perfectly aware that the idea of standing up for “smoker's rights” is viewed by many to be irresponsible, unintelligent, and ignorant to the “facts”. I must respectfully disagree. For decades now, smoking has been attacked, demonized, vilified, and turned into something criminals and people with no willpower or self-control get involved in. We have been bombarded with research, facts, and images of how smoking, especially second hand, kills. The tobacco companies themselves have certainly not helped their public image much throughout the years between corrupt business and ethical practices and blatantly targeting youth in the hope of acquiring life long customers. But if there is going to be open debate here in regards to the right to smoke, we need to cut through the crap, and be honest about what both sides have been doing. And why is it even important to have a debate on “smoker's rights”? Remember, I don't smoke, but I don't want someone or some group stopping me from doing something that I do enjoy because they feel they know what is best for me.
I doubt that a majority of people who smoke regularly today don't realize it's bad for their health. In fact, we've all known it isn't healthy for quite some time. Come on, you are putting a stick of fire in your mouth and sucking it into your lungs! Nobody thinks they are full of Vitamin-C.
But the issue at hand isn't whether smoking is bad for you or not, the issue is whether or not another person or group has the right to tell me what I can and cannot do in regards to my body. Do people have the right to control my behavior? Do they have the right to take away my ability to make a wrong choice? There are consequences to every decision, but in our zeal to rid the world of some of those consequences, are we also removing our ability to choose?Where is the line between laws that are in place for my protection, and laws which are designed to control my behavior? What about behavior with consequences that affect only myself?
And this is where the crap of the anti-smoking side comes in to play. Let's make sure something is perfectly clear here, smoking does not kill. Smoking does not cause cancer. Smoking can kill, it can cause cancer. Think about it! If cigarettes killed then every person who has ever smoked one or inhaled second hand smoke in any degree should be either dead or dying. And if cigarettes caused cancer, then every person who has ever smoked or inhaled someone's second hand smoke in any degree should have it. The fact of the matter is that we all know someone who smoked for fifty something years, lived a full life, never got cancer, and died of natural causes.
Now, you're thinking, “Oh, you're just playing with words!” What I am doing is explaining things as they are, you just don't like it because you've lived your entire life hearing how cigarettes do kill and do cause cancer, rather than can kill and can cause cancer, a distinction in words the anti-smoking side has been all too happy to ignore.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of the information we've all heard on the effects of cigarette smoke, particularly second hand smoke, comes from a late 1992 report by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which labeled “environmental tobacco smoke” (ETS) a class A carcinogen that caused approximately 3000 lung cancer deaths among nonsmokers per year(1). The tobacco industry and its allies filed suit against the report in North Carolina in 1998, and won. The judge ruled that the EPA had made serious procedural errors and had “cherry-picked” its data to reach a preordained conclusion (they announced their findings before the tests were performed). The EPA also used a “confidence interval” of 90 percent in calculating the risk of increased lung cancer rather than the more common and far more stringent 95 percent(2). Why is that significant? The lower the standard, the more statistically significant one can make their findings seem. Does 5 percent really make a difference? When you are applying a statistic to 300 million people (US population) 5 percent makes a huge difference. Since the 1992 EPA report was released, four major ETS studies have been completed, two found no evidence that ETS increased cancer risk, on found week evidence, and only one found strong evidence. When it comes down to it, the claim that ETS seriously threatens the health of the general public, and more specifically causes cancer, is unproven at best.
What we have here is not a movement to protect the public, but rather an attempt to control behavior according to a specific view point. Person A doesn't like cigarettes or cigarette smoke, therefore Person B can't do it. Or, let's go a step further. Person A is allergic to cigarette smoke, therefore Person B can't do it. I can't wait until an epileptic visiting Las Vegas sues the city because all the flashing lights caused a seizure.
The Associate Press last month reported that New York City's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg's, next move in his crusade against tobacco is to ban smoking in all of New York City's 1700 parks, playgrounds, and recreational facilities, including the city's 14 miles of beach. New York City's Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said that New Yorker's shouldn't have to breathe cigarette smoke, even outside, and children shouldn't even have to see people smoking(3).
Are you kidding me?! On my list of horrible things my children shouldn't have to see, people smoking cigarettes isn't even close to being found. I tend to save those lists for things like murder and rape. I'm curious the number of adults seeing therapists for their traumatic scars from viewing people smoking when they were little. If it wasn't right for the tobacco industry to go after our kids with ads like “Joe Camel”, then how is it right for the anti-tobacco industry to do the same thing to further their agenda? They are trying to protect us...right? You want to protect me from something? Protect me from doctors! Medical error accounts for approximately 250,000 deaths a year in the US(4).
1 Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders.
2 United States Federal Court Decision, Flue-cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corporation, el al v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, et al, July 17, 1998
3 Sara Kugler, NYC wants to make parks smoke-free, Associated Press, Sept. 14, 2009
4 Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Barbara Starfield, John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health
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