Outdoor smoking bans are not backed by science.

To this day, only two studies have been published on outdoor second hand smoke. The West Hollywood, CA, WeHo News interviewed authors of both of thee studies.

http://wehonews.com/z/wehonews/archive/page.php?articleID=4460

"Outdoor Second Hand Smoke Exposure: Science and Common Sense"

Stanford researcher Dr. Neil Klepseis, author of a 2007 study on detecting second hand tobacco smoke exposure, acknowledged in an interview that the seriousness of long term health risks associated with brief exposure to outdoor second hand smoke remained an open question.

The study finds that "a person sitting or standing next to a smoker outdoors can breathe in wisps of smoke that are more concentrated than normal background air pollution levels." However, Dr. Klepsis pointed out to WeHo News, that "as soon as the cigarette was extinguished, the second hand smoke readings went to zero." unlike indoor second hand smoke, which can persist for hours.

"When the cigarette goes out, the smoke is gone."

He said in the interview that most of his work confirmed common sense. "The closer you are to the smoker, the more exposure you get," so if you're sitting across from them and they're blowing smoke in your face, you're getting pretty high peak levels that last a few seconds."

"If you're sitting next to them but upwind, you'll get virtually no exposure at all."

http:/www.wehonews.com/z/wehon...

"Outdoor Smoking Bans Spread Without Science"

Half a dozen L.A. (CA) County municipalities have banned smoking near their outdoor dining facilities ... All did so citing public health concerns, but none did so based on scientific evidence that second hand smoke (SHS) near an outdoor area poses a health risk.

"The (second) scientific study on detecting outdoor second hand smoke levels in exposed persons, published by University of Georgia Athens researchers in November, 2009, found increased levels of SHS in their subjects, but not levels considered to be risky."

Bloomberg's outdoor smoking ban is based on nothing at all -- except Bloomberg's own version of "Reefer Maddness".

the evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between exposure to secondhand smoke and its condensates and tumors in laboratory animals.

Specifically bred rats that got tumors regardless of smoke exposure......is more to the truth.

--The evidence indicates multiple mechanisms by which secondhand smoke exposure causes injury to the respiratory tract.

Thats in direct contradiction to this finding in the same report:The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and acute respiratory symptoms including cough, wheeze, chest tightness, and difficulty breathing among persons with asthma.

--The evidence indicates mechanisms by which secondhand smoke exposure could increase the risk for sudden infant death syndrome.

Could! www.boston.com/.../02/.../scie... - SimilarStudy: Babies' low serotonin levels cause SIDS - USATODAY.com

Feb 3, 2010 ... Sudden infant death syndrome researchers say low serotonin may be what prevents infants from waking up when they inhale too much carbon ...

www.usatoday.com/news/.../2010...

``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.''

NOWHERE does this say HEALTH! Just like the nazi government and those who would benefit, like pharma nicotine, to skew it to fit an agenda!

Everyone seems to think this is so revolutionary. Wrong. New York is far from the first in the country to implement an outdoor smoking ban.

The fact is that, historically, smokefree policies were and still are widely enforced by the public itself, in all kinds of venues. It's virtually a truism that smoking bans are self-enforcing.

In thousands of communities and states across the country, in all sorts of places indoors and out, police have rarely ever needed to be involved. Try smoking at Yankee Stadium. The vast majority of the public do not want to be exposed to secondhand smoke against their will. They just need a codified regulation on their side.

Ah Geneb, you're right! The nazi's were the first to ban smoking, Hitler didn't like it.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3d78d24a-c068-11df-8a81-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss

Surprising and disturbing, but the first anti-smoking campaign was launched by the Nazis. It started on a small scale, with posters and warnings in health magazines. Smoking was eventually banned in Nazi party offices, public trams and bomb... shelters (many of which set up separate smoking rooms).

The link between lung cancer and smoking was first proven in Germany in 1939. The term Passivrauchen (passive smoking) was coined by the German Anti-Tobacco League, and Germany led the world in researching the impact of smoking on health. The anti-smoking movement then peaked in the early 1940s with a stringent tobacco tax and restrictions on tobacco advertising – and a military ration of just six cigarettes a day on the front line.

The impetus came from the top. Hitler detested cigarettes. Having been a heavy smoker in his twenties – he was said to have been on as many as 40 a day – he later condemned the habit as “the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor”. (Hitler didn’t drink either and was an on-and-off vegetarian.) Mussolini and Franco were also non-smokers, incidentally, whereas Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt were all fond of a puff.

The anti-smoking movement also played a part in the Third Reich’s eugenicist and racist propaganda. The Nazis decried tobacco as a “genetic poison”; racial hygienists feared that it would “corrupt” the “German germ plasm”.

The Reich Health Office produced posters depicting smoking as the dirty habit of Jews, Gypsies, blacks and intellectuals. And women smokers were considered unsuitable to be the wives and mothers of Germany.

Despite the stigma, tobacco consumption in Germany shot up from 1933 to 1937, before dropping off as a result of cigarette rationing and bans in the armed forces.

After the end of the war and the Nazi collapse, tobacco became widely available once more. The US even shipped 69,000 tonnes of it to Germany in 1949 as part of the Marshall Plan – to the delight of American cigarette manufacturers.

Defining Moment: The Nazis launch the first public anti-smoking campaignBy Alec Ash

Published: September 17 2010‌

Hippies smell too? Even worse than cigs, IMO. Can we ban them too?

I think its time for people to take personal responsibility for their own happiness and not try to enact laws that have no basis in scientific fact. If you dont like it go somewhere else. I dont like bratty kids, so I stay away from play grounds.

Im off to smoke in the park. If you see me, mind your own fucking business.

With a smoking ban in effect for city parks it will be my fucking business and the majority of people in this city who don't smoke. If you quit now, you can avoid becoming an even bigger social outcast than you are now. Every month now, a new smoking ban goes into effect somewhere in the world, in the US, in Germany, in Japan, the list goes on.

My dad only has a few weeks to live thanks to the lung cancer he has. If you don't care about some stranger next to you, think of your family instead and how they would suffer as they watch you fall apart.

I feel for your dad, but did he drive? Did he work? There has never been a death certificate stating smoking as cause of death. ALL of the world's oldest people are, or were smokers. That's a fact, so blaming tobacco does not compute. The CATO Institute (The Second-Hand Smoke Charade http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php...) and Sloan Kettering (http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/htm... contradict their findings, alot! Smoking rates have decreased considerably, yet asthma rates have skyrocketed 500%! The global warming "crisis" looked like a sure thing too until it was blown out of the water by those who knew this was a scam. Obesity is another CREATED "crisis" beneffitting pharma. Anyone looking at all can see this second hand smoke nonsense has also been completely debunked. The surgeon general based it’s ideology of toxic smoke on an EPA report that was ruled on as fraudulent by a federal judge. The surgeon generals report is then also fraudulent. The surgeon general did not have to testify under oath to the validity of his claim. If you tell a lie enough, people will eventually fall for it. If you are so afraid of whiffs of cigarette smoke, you better start banning firefighters to protect them from their jobs!

Just wait for the repeals to start.......and they will!

Marlboro please....

ahhh...fu bloomy

if you can't smoke in public, then you won't have to be worried about getting mugged when prices go up to $20 a pack.

I quit smoking today.

I have a question for the smokers out there, slightly tangential to the main debate raging here:

Are you aware that regular smokers have a greatly reduced sensitivity to detecting nearby smoke due to the build up of smoke damage and tar in the lungs and nostrils from smoking? So any smoker's easy dismissal of how seriously smoking affects others is always suspect to me.

Former smokers have attested to this and to a renewed, sharpened sense after quitting. Again, this doesn't address the legal issue here, but I always wonder if the indignation coming from smokers is based on their perception that non-smokers are really just making things up when complaining since the smoker himself/herself, sadly, can't actually smell it. The reality is that secondhand smoke (regardless of the cancer risk) is much more invasive than the smoker can possibly even know.

The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and acute respiratory symptoms including cough, wheeze, chest tightness, and difficulty breathing among persons with asthma.

The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and acute respiratory symptoms including cough, wheeze, chest tightness, and difficulty breathing among healthy persons.

The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and chronic respiratory symptoms.

The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between short-term secondhand smoke exposure and an acute decline in lung function in persons with asthma.

The evidence is inadequate to infer the presence or absence of a causal relationship between short-term secondhand smoke exposure and an acute decline in lung function in healthy persons.

The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and a worsening of asthma control.

The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

And finally.....

The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and odor annoyance.

Source: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondh...

Everyone seems to think this is so revolutionary. Wrong. New York is far from the first in the country to implement an outdoor smoking ban.

The fact is that, historically, smokefree policies were and still are widely enforced by the public itself, in all kinds of venues. It's virtually a truism that smoking bans are self-enforcing.

In thousands of communities and states across the country, in all sorts of places indoors and out, police have rarely ever needed to be involved. Try smoking at Yankee Stadium. The vast majority of the public do not want to be exposed to secondhand smoke against their will. They just need a codified regulation on their side.

Glad you finally accept the Surgeon General's Report as the accurate study it is. But you left out some of its conclusions. Here, I'll help:

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between exposure to secondhand smoke and its condensates and tumors in laboratory animals.

--The evidence indicates multiple mechanisms by which secondhand smoke exposure causes injury to the respiratory tract.

--The evidence indicates mechanisms by which secondhand smoke exposure could increase the risk for sudden infant death syndrome.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between exposure to secondhand smoke and sudden infant death syndrome.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer that exposure to secondhand smoke causes atherosclerosis in animal models.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between parental smoking and middle ear disease in children

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between parental smoking and cough, phlegm, wheeze, and breathlessness among children of school age.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between parental smoking and ever having asthma among children of school age.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between maternal smoking during pregnancy and persistent adverse effects on lung function across childhood.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between exposure to secondhand smoke after birth and a lower level of lung function during childhood.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and lung cancer among lifetime nonsmokers.

--The pooled evidence indicates a 20 to 30 percent increase in the risk of lung cancer from secondhand smoke exposure associated with living with a smoker.

--The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between exposure to secondhand smoke and increased risks of coronary heart disease morbidity and mortality among both men and women.

--Pooled relative risks from meta-analyses indicate a 25 to 30 percent increase in the risk of coronary heart disease from exposure to secondhand smoke.

--Evidence from peer-reviewed studies shows that smoke-free policies and regulations do not have an adverse economic impact on the hospitality industry.

--Exposures of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke cannot be controlled by air cleaning or mechanical air exchange.

It seems to me that the SGR, by listing what it found and what it didn't, struck a good _balance_.

This is what scientists do.

Spammers from Kentucky, however, just cherry-pick, and try to pretend that's all there is.

he evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between exposure to secondhand smoke and its condensates and tumors in laboratory animals.

Specifically bred rats that got tumors regardless of smoke exposure......is more to the truth.

--The evidence indicates multiple mechanisms by which secondhand smoke exposure causes injury to the respiratory tract.

Thats in direct contradiction to this finding in the same report:The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and acute respiratory symptoms including cough, wheeze, chest tightness, and difficulty breathing among persons with asthma.

--The evidence indicates mechanisms by which secondhand smoke exposure could increase the risk for sudden infant death syndrome.

Could! www.boston.com/.../02/.../scie... - SimilarStudy: Babies' low serotonin levels cause SIDS - USATODAY.com

Feb 3, 2010 ... Sudden infant death syndrome researchers say low serotonin may be what prevents infants from waking up when they inhale too much carbon ...

www.usatoday.com/news/.../2010...

Brilliant geneb. Thanks for going to effort for calling out his selective fact-finding.

Sorry, geneb is paid to do this stuff by tobacco control!

Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke are inhaling many of the same cancer-causing substances and poisons as smokers.1

* Secondhand smoke contains more than 50 cancer-causing chemicals.

* Even brief secondhand smoke exposure can damage cells in ways that set the cancer process in motion.

* Some damage is not reversible.

* As with active smoking, the longer the duration and the higher the level of exposure to secondhand smoke in nonsmokers, the greater the risk of developing lung cancer.

Smoking causes lung cancer, and exposure to secondhand smoke is an important cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers.1,4

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/health_effects/index.htm

go smoke in your own private areas. I don't care if you want to kill yourselves but don't take me with you.