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Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg stepped back from a plan to make smoking in public parks and beaches illegal, cautioning that the proposal would stop short of completely outlawing smoking on Parks Department property. Bloomberg boasted at a press conference, "Nobody is more of a believer in saving lives and stopping smoking. In fact, we already ban smoking, for example, in playgrounds." However! "There's also the practical aspect of how we can enforce it. Our Police Department has enough to do. They can't be going around giving tickets." Not with all those photographers and superheroes on the loose, anyway. The mayor explained that the ban would not cover entire parks, only select areas where large crowds might gather. He also acknowledged that if you, the embattled smoker, are "sitting in the middle of Sheep Meadow and you’re the only one there, are you doing any damage to anybody other than killing yourself? Probably not." At the same time, Bloomberg reaffirmed his tough anti-smoking stance: "Make no mistake about it. This city is not walking away from our commitment to make it as difficult and as expensive to smoke as we possibly can." So smoke 'em while you can still (barely) afford 'em.
Full Smoking Ban in Parks Stubbed Out by Bloomberg
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If you are making us pay 11.50 a fucking pack, you better believe we're smoking them in public.
per bloomberg's "expensive smoking" advice, i'm totally switching to crack.
I've already switched! Try the menthol!
Instead of more stringent smoking bans, they should fine for littering cigarette butts. The run-off from the rain, especially this year, is the real public pollutant! By creating more awareness for this it will hopefully become a social faux-pas to throw your butts on the ground.
I agree. All those butts make the city look so gross! I don't throw my gum wrappers on the ground... and at least in Manhattan there's a trash can on every corner. USE IT, please.
While we're at it, gum chewers need to use the trash cans as well. Then we won't have black polka-dotted sidewalks.
i always put my cigarette butts in the garbage. there is no reason not to.
I agree too. Fine people that litter. Cigarette smokers are among the most prolific litterers.
$1000 fines for littering will clean up the city quickly.
that 'think with your penis' image is almost as disturbing as the ban in question.
You can also roll your own cigarettes which is MUCH cheaper and maybe safer depending on what tobacco you're using.
Can someone please photomash that cigarette-dick with Bloomie's pic in his banner ad? Thanks.
7-stole my thunder!
And this is why I am voting against Bloomberg.
Good luck with that.
And next, no cursing in public parks. It's too damaging to the pysche of little children.
that is an amazing and thought provoking ad.
King Bloomberg was in good spirits yesterday and decided to let the commoners smoke outdoors once again. Remember; Progress not Politics...
Lets tell mayor blooming Idiot his ass is gone.......and lets repeal his stupid nazi indoor smoking ban too.......all based on lies and psuedo-science.....
mayor blooming-idiots views are to outlaw fat people too
just as they tried in mississippi last year
Mississippi Legislature
2008 Regular Session
House Bill 282
House Calendar | Senate Calendar | Main Menu
Additional Information | All Versions
Current Bill Text: |
Description: Food establishments; prohibit from serving food to any person who is obese.
Background Information:
Disposition: Active
Deadline: General Bill/Constitutional Amendment
Revenue: No
Vote type required: Majority
Effective date: July 1, 2008
History of Actions:
1 01/25 (H) Referred To Public Health and Human Services;Judiciary B
----- Additional Information -----
House Committee: Public Health and Human Services*, Judiciary B
Principal Author: Mayhall
Additional Authors: Read, Shows
Title: AN ACT TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FROM SERVING FOOD TO ANY PERSON WHO IS OBESE, BASED ON CRITERIA PRESCRIBED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO PREPARE WRITTEN MATERIALS THAT DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING WHETHER A PERSON IS OBESE AND TO PROVIDE THOSE MATERIALS TO THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO MONITOR THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FOR COMPLIANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THIS ACT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.
----- Bill Text for All Versions ----
| As Introduced (Current)
Information pertaining to this measure was last updated on 01/29/2008 at 11:24
End Of Document
then we got his stupid smoking ban that even osha says wont harm anyone.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
British Medical Journal & WHO conclude secondhand smoke "health hazard" claims are greatly exaggerated
The BMJ published report can be found here:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057
And concludes:
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 may be considerably weaker than generally believed.
What makes this study more significant than any other 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.
This report was of course silenced in the media; however 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 which concluded "..secondhand smoking doesn't cause cancer..." found online here.
Excerpt:
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, the American Cancer Society, a Minnesota Environmental Health Department, and various researchers whose testing and report was also peer reviewed and published in the esteemed British Medical Journal......prove that secondhand smoke is 2.6 - 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations.
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
lets get back freedom and outlaw the nannys,then go inside and have smoke this cold winter.hehehe like we dont already.
Noone read your comment.
Have you ever read the cigarette patents?
I'd recommend checking them out and then you can try telling me how products made with benzene, nuclear waste & other dangerous chemicals don't cause cancer.
400,000 people a year die from cigarettes.
you better read up on that 400,000 a year number.......its a simple way they make that number.......was the person ever a smoker......thats about all the statistic takers ask. Now they ask were they ever exposed to second hand smoke.......you people are so stupid at the american cancer society.....your propaganda cant make it past a brain challenged childs reading ability. Much less epidemiological pier review.
nuclear waste.hmm you are indeed a nutcase.....what your talking about is natural occuring radiation that is in every plant on earth,every living thing......
A 15/day smoker gets about a half picocurie per day. A typical nonsmoker living or working with smokers might get about 1/100th of that, or about 5 femtocuries/day.
A millicurie is a thousand microcuries, a million nanocuries, a billion picocuries, or a trillion femtocuries.
It would take that nonsmoker a trillion days to absorb the dose that killed the Russian.
Of course that's secondhand smoke. The article referred to "third-hand smoke" absorption by a child from surfaces left over from past smoking. A reasonable estimate for the amount remaining stuck to the 10,000 squarefeet of walls, ceilings, furniture, floors, and draperies in a reasonably ventilated 2,000+ sq. ft home would almost certainly be less than 1%, but let's assume that 1% actually does remain and spreads out over that 10,000 sq. ft. of surface. With 15 cigarettes having been smoked while the child was at school and the house then thoroughly aired out, we'd then have 1% of a half picocurie (i.e. 5 femtocuries) spread over that surface.
Let us suppose you don't watch your child very carefully and further suppose the child deeply loves licking an entire 10 sq. ft. of floor sparkly clean every day during Jeopardy! That child will then have licked 1/1,000th of those 5 femtocuries into his system: 5 "attocuries."
So, how long would it take such a child to get the "killing dose" of the 5 millicurie Russian that the Times article featured?
In 1,000 days our child would have licked up 5 femtocuries.
In one million days, 5 picocuries.
In one billion days, 5 nanocuries.
In one trillion days, 5 microcuries.
It would take one quadrillion days (2.74 trillion years) for that child to absorb 5 millicuries.
Unfortunately the universe is only 10 billion years old, so the child would have to lick floors for 274 cycles of our expanding universe to match our radioactive Russian.
Of course since he'd normally excrete most of that polonium we'd have to refuse to change his diaper until the end of that period... not a very pleasant thought.
And then there's that whole annoying fact that the half life of polonium is only 138 days, so we'd just have to ignore the laws of physics as well in order to justify the story's thesis.
Even if someone wanted to quibble with my estimates, changing 1% to 10%, or 10 sq ft to 100, or 15 cigarettes to 150 cigarettes per day... or even ALL THREE in attacking my argument... we'd STILL be talking three billion years of exposure along with a suspension of the laws of biology and physics.
I strongly feel that the Times' treatment of this story showed blatantly irresponsible journalism and should be corrected. I have sent them a letter to that effect.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
They will...........it just got posted
Heh... it's funny seeing this quote from Bloomberg, "This city is not walking away from our commitment to make it as difficult and as expensive to smoke as we possibly can." since just the other day I sent off a letter to the editor of the London Free Press about a hospital campus ban where I'd written, "There is no sound medical or scientific reason why (comfortable, ventilated, indoor) accommodations should not be made. The refusal of the hospitals to do so rests purely upon the shoulders of the social engineers intent on reducing smoking through making it difficult, uncomfortable, expensive, and "denormalized." "
Looks like I was inside Bloomy's brain... ick!
btw, while I appreciate Harley's quoting me in his post here, I usually don't post that whole thing on boards. There's a good link where the whole nonsensical "Third Hand Smoke" argument is laid out over at Columbia University Press at:
http://www.cupblog.org/?p=493
And yes, it basically would take a wild floor-licking kid roughly three trillion years of licking to get the dose that the New York Times was warning parents about.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"