Over at the Examiner I take a look at Michael Bloomberg’s latest attempt to make life worse for smokers, a ban in parks and beaches:
It’s no wonder that some non-smoking residents support the ban. They have nothing to lose and they’ve been hit with fear-mongering propaganda for years, such as Action on Smoking and Health’s dire warning that “If you can smell it, it could be killing you,”or even worse, uncritical reports about “thirdhand smoke,” the residue left behind on room surfaces when tobacco is lit. So firmly has the toxicity of tobacco smoke been in implanted in the public’s mind that activists no longer feel the need to demonstrate that it causes harm; the mere ability to detect its traces with fancy lab equipment is enough to raise a panic.
Whole thing here.
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Cheers to the veterans at American Legion Post 444 in Baraga, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, who are challenging the state’s smoking ban in court and refusing to comply:
During the next two months, several citizen complaints were filed about the post’s noncompliance, and local health department officials sent notices of violation. Geroux responded with a news release July 16 that described the new law as unconstitutional and un-American.
Further, the exemption for Detroit’s casinos (which was based on their need to compete with American Indian casinos not covered by the state law) is “wildly unfair” to the Baraga post, which lies within a mile, and competes for customers, with two alcohol-serving, smoking-acceptable tribal facilities, Geroux said.
After getting a cease-and-desist order from the health department July 20, the post decided to sue.
I wrote against the Michigan smoking ban for the Detroit Free-Press back in 2008.
[Thanks to Jan for the link.]
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This blog has previously chronicled attempts to scare people into persecuting smokers based on trumped up fears of “thirdhand smoke,” residue left on clothes and furniture after a smoker lights up. New research attempts to measure levels of this residue directly by artificially re-suspending particles left behind by a smoking device:
These quantitative data support the hypothesis of a resuspension from the cigarette smoke surface contamination. However, this airborne contamination through resuspension remains much lower (100 times) than that of secondhand smoke.
In other words, there’s nothing to worry about.
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UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made a lot of favorable headlines recently by launching the Your Freedom website, allowing citizens to suggest laws that should be repealed. In a new video he reveals that there are at least two suggestions that will “of course” not be taken seriously:
1) Reintroducing the death penalty; and
2) Allowing people to smoke in private businesses
Because clearly, these ideas are equally at odds with liberalism!
Dick Puddlecote has more, via Chris Snowdon.
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Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in! Though living in Portland I can’t completely resist the lure of DC, so I’ve joined the blogging team at the Washington Examiner. It’s good to get back to the policy writing I’ve been neglecting lately and publishing there it will reach a larger audience. I’ll link to most of the things I write for the Examiner on this blog too. If you’d like to subscribe to all Opinion Zone blog posts the RSS feed is here.
My first post takes a look at how anti-smoking researchers spin this chart into proof that England’s smoking ban saves lives:
The best they can come up with is to dubiously attribute a 2.4% decline in heart attacks to the smoking ban in the first year of its implementation. This is in stark contrast to the wild claims of 40, 27, and 18 percent in previous studies, which have been decisively revealed as junk science.
In the wake of this statistical drubbing you might think anti-smoking activists would learn not to attribute too much to secondhand smoke. Well, you would be wrong:
A new study published online ahead of print in the Archives of General Psychiatry concludes that secondhand smoke exposure is a cause of mental illness, including depression, psychoactive substance use, schizophrenia, delirium, and mental and behavioral disorder (see: Hamer M, Stamatakis E, Batty GD. Objectively assessed secondhand smoke exposure and mental health in adults.
Here we go again!
[Image courtesy of the always interesting Christopher Snowdon.]
Previously:
What really happened in Starkville?
An Oregon heart miracle?
Lazy reporting and the Pueblo ban study
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A commenter notes that Starbucks stores in California are prohibiting smoking outside their stores:
Starting Monday, Starbucks customers are welcome to sit outside and sip a while — as long as they don’t light up. The international coffee giant is extending its ban on indoor smoking to outdoor patios and dining areas in California.
The change was prompted by an increasing number of communities that have enacted smoking prohibitions in outdoor dining areas.
This is their right obviously, though I would have preferred their hand not be forced by excessive regulations. Previous coverage of Starbucks and smoking policies here and here.
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Portland has more LEED certified buildings than any other city in the US and, as long-time readers know, I’m not a fan of this. Lately there’s been some backlash from other quarters as well. Architect Frank Gehry commented this week that the certification is awarded for “bogus stuff” and is primarily political. Progressive blogger Matthew Yglesias also linked recently to a post about a new book from New Yorker writer David Owen that slams LEED certification as a form of greenwashing:
It’s a little known fact that most architects, particularly the ones who take sustainability seriously, all hate LEED. With its prescriptions and brownie points for bike racks and proximity to alternative fueling stations, LEED is — in Owen’s estimation — both too difficult and too easy. Too difficult because the process is stupifyingly bureaucratic, requiring even LEED accredited designers to hire expensive LEED accredited consultants to manage the paperwork. And too easy because even after much refinement, many designers and developers still game the system with a few cosmetic changes to achieve LEED certification with a minimum of effort, expense, or innovation.
My own objection to LEED certification stems from its politically correct hatred of smoking, even when conducted outside the building:
It turns out that LEED certification considers six categories of evaluation, one of which is indoor environmental quality. If tobacco smoke is considered a pollutant, banning smoking is one way of addressing it. One could make a plausible case that LEED certified buildings shouldn’t allow smoking indoors, where habitual smokers could pump a lot of smoke into the ventilation systems. But in proximity to an exterior door? Or on a balcony? There’s absolutely no scientific justification for banning this. Walking by a smoker on the way into the lobby is not going to kill anyone. It’s annoying, perhaps, but it’s not a matter that needs to be addressed by green building codes.
It is technically possible to allow smoking in or around LEED certified buildings, but in practice certification is often used as a reason to ban it. The demand for LEED certified residences has made it harder for smokers to find accommodation in cities like Portland and DC. This could be an acceptable trade-off if the program led to demonstrably greener construction, but if its benefits are merely cosmetic we shouldn’t place much value on it.
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It doesn’t happen often enough, so here are two pieces of good news related to smoking bans. First, Governor Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill that would have prohibited smoking in all California parks and beaches:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday vetoed a measure that would have banned smoking at state parks and beaches, calling it “an improper intrusion of government into people’s lives.”
Schwarzenegger, whose cigar habit led him to build a smoking tent at the state Capitol, said in his veto message that the proposed regulation, which would have been the most far-reaching tobacco legislation in the nation, went too far. Such rules should be left up to cities, counties and local park officials, the governor said.
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“There is something inherently uncomfortable about the idea of the state encroaching in such a broad manner on the people of California,” the veto message said. “This bill crosses an important threshold between state power … and local decision-making.”
Then just a few minutes from my hometown in Conroe, TX, the city council has reversed a ban on smoking in bars in record time:
Two months after enacting one of the most comprehensive smoking bans in the area, the Conroe City Council has removed bars from the new ordinance because of the economic impact it was having on business owners.
“I lost $15,000 in March,” said David Luttrell of Malone’s Pub. “It was like someone pulled a switch. I lost $15,000 in April. I had to lay off four employees and seven bands. It has also affected my suppliers and vendors too.”
After hearing similar stories from other bar owners, the council reversed its position Thursday to allow smoking in bar, which are defined as “pubs, ice houses, beer joints and saloons.”
[Hat tips to the Stogie Guys and my dad.]
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So a day after I announce that I’m a brand ambassador some guy with diplomatic credentials causes a scene by violating a smoking ban:
A Mideast diplomat who grabbed a surreptitious smoke in a jetliner’s bathroom sparked a bomb scare and widespread alert that sent jet fighters scrambling to intercept the Denver-bound flight, officials said.
But no explosives were found and authorities speaking on condition of anonymity said they don’t think he was trying to hurt anyone and he will not be criminally charged. [...]
Two law enforcement officials said investigators were told the man was asked about the smell of smoke in the bathroom and he made a joke that he had been trying to light his shoes - an apparent reference to the 2001 so-called “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.
Why is everyone looking at me? Brand ambassadors don’t even have diplomatic immunity. At least I don’t think they do, but that would be a hell of a perk.
[Via Reason.]
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There is only one cigar bar in Washington, a state of more than 6 million people. It re-opened recently at El Gaucho in Tacoma years after the state’s extremely strict smoking ban shut it down. The renovations necessary to comply with the law cost $15,000:
“The Washington state law on tobacco is the toughest one in the U.S.,” [owner Paul MacKay] said.
He’s had to jump through a lot of smoke rings to meet code. MacKay created a 25-foot long glassed off airlock walkway separating the restaurant from the VIP lounge. To stay within guidelines, the lounge is operated by owners of a newly created company — not employees and it isn’t open to the public.
“You can’t just come in, you have to be invited,” MacKay said.
That’s not enough for the Health Department. They’ve already served him papers telling him he needs to shut down again.
[Via the Stogie Guys.]
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Nick Hogan, the British pub manager who lost his job and was sentenced to prison for six months after failing to pay £10,000 in fines for violating the smoking ban, has been freed thanks to voluntary contributions gathered online:
Speaking outside the prison, Hogan said: ”I’m devastated to be sent to jail. The smoking ban has cost me my pub, my job and my liberty.
”I’d like to thank everyone who donated money to get me out of jail, and all the well-wishers who sent me cards and letters while I was behind bars. I can’t thank them enough.
”It’s wonderful to know that so many people feel as strongly as I do about the smoking ban and its impact on ordinary working people.”
Blogger Anna Raccoon said: ”Nick Hogan is free because ordinary, hard-working members of the public, smokers and non-smokers alike, dug deep in their pockets to raise the money to return this man to his wife and home.
”The fact that so many people responded is a powerful message from the voting public that politicians would be well advised to heed.”
Congratulations to Hogan, and hopefully the publicity from this case will help raise the profile of opposition to smoking bans.
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The Washington Post reports that DC city councilman Jack Evans has succeeded in obtaining a waiver from the District’s smoking ban for two groups he personally favors:
Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) has asked his council colleagues to keep tradition alive for the all-male Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and another organization, Fight for Children, which hosts an annual smoke-filled professional boxing fundraiser.
Evans, who is a member of the Irish organization, said the measure was narrowly crafted, making an exception for only two nights a year and protecting workers by allowing venue employees to opt out of working the events.
But the bill has proponents of the District’s 2006 workplace smoking ban in a huff.
Angela Bradbery, co-founder of Smokefree DC, urged Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) in a letter Monday to veto the legislation that she said would force workers to choose between their health and a paycheck; open the door for other organizations to request exemptions; and send a message that “it’s okay to break the law if you’re on the council or a buddy of a council member.” [...]
Despite opposition from the smoke-free camp, he succeeded last week in passing a one-year waiver on a 10 to 3 vote. The bill initially failed to get the necessary nine votes, but Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8 ) switched positions on a second try.
It’s a rare day that I agree with groups like Smokefree DC, but they’re right to oppose the exemptions. Jack Evans attempted to pass one for the Sons of St. Patrick last year as well, at which time I wrote:
Evans has discovered the pain of having one’s treasured tradition banned by a bunch of meddling bureaucrats. I’d be sympathetic if not for the fact that Evans is one of those meddling bureaucrats. If he doesn’t like the law, he should introduce changes that open up smoking venues to everyone, not just to clubs that happen to have a city councilman in their membership.
In 2005, Evans voted for the DC smoking ban that took away the rights of business owners, employees, and patrons to determine tobacco policies by voluntary exchange.
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In the past year alarmist studies about “thirdhand smoke,” the particles left behind from tobacco combustion, have proliferated. There’s no evidence such residuals are actually causing cancer but that hasn’t stopped anti-smoking activists and journalists from running with the story. Michael Siegel has recently spotted a couple ways this research has been abused to discriminate against smokers. First there’s the “sniff test” policy now in place at Kimball Physics, a technology company in New Hampshire:
No tobacco-residuals emitting person, article of clothing, or other object is allowed inside any Kimball Physics building. This restriction also applies to anyone or anything emitting characteristic tobacco odors. Anyone who has used a tobacco product within the previous two hours is automatically to be turned away, unless measures have been taken such that residuals-sensitive persons are not exposed. The determining factor, regarding allowable residuals levels and/or exposure durations, is whether anyone is either significantly bothered, or even worse, made ill.
This is an absurd policy and it should come as no surprise that the person who created it is a board member of the extremist anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health. Nonetheless it creates a precedent that less fanatical employers might decide to follow.
Speaking of ASH, Siegel also catches them advocating bans on smokers adopting or fostering children. From ASH’s press release:
Midlothian Council in the U.K. is just the latest entity to prohibit smokers from adopting or providing foster care for children, a step Portsmouth, Hants, in England and other jurisdictions took several years ago, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Anyone wanting to care for a child under the age of five will be required not to have smoked for at least six months, even if they only smoke outdoors. [...]
… thirdhand tobacco smoke, what the New York Times called “the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing,” has just been reported by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to combine with a common indoor air pollutant to form very potent cancer causing substances. This, the researchers say, places children at serious risk, even if parents smoke only outside the home, because they carry the residues inside with them.
I criticized that Times article when it came out last year for taking such a credulous approach to the “thirdhand smoke” study it covered, buying into the researchers’ hype despite the fact that the study consisted of nothing but a phone survey. At the time the author couldn’t have known that her words and the reputation of the paper would be used to deny children foster care, but that’s how low the anti-smoking movement has sunk. Reporters need to realize that today’s anti-tobacco researchers should be treated with just as much skepticism as the Big Tobacco-funded scientists of the pre-Master Settlement days.
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Having recently banned smoking in its restaurants, North Carolina is now considering a rule change to allow pets on restaurant patios:
North Carolina health officials are proposing a rule change that would let pets come to the table at outdoor restaurants as long as they don’t go inside or do anything else that might contaminate people’s food. [...]
On the other hand, some people don’t think restaurants should open their al fresco seating to patrons who scratch, pant, lick themselves and eat indiscriminately off the ground.
Dyrl Wood of Smithfield, an empty nester now, wrote the state to support Wake’s dog ban, though he had a Brittany spaniel for years.
“But we didn’t take the Brittany spaniel out to eat,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “My view is that you can have them and love them and care for them, and when you go out to eat you can bring them some scraps to have when you come home.
“But don’t require other people to dine with them. It’s unappetizing.”
If the rule change is approved, restaurant owners will be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to allow pets on their patios. What a concept! It’s amazing how foreign the idea of having diverse policies is to some people. If they don’t like pets, pets shouldn’t be allowed at a single restaurant in the entire state. If they don’t like smoking, smoking needs to be banned. That’s the problem with deciding these matters politically: The “right” decision is forced onto everyone, leaving people who have different preferences with no venues in which to act on them.
For the record, this blog is pro-pooches on patios.
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Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading related to tobacco policy in preparation for some upcoming writing projects…
Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, Christopher Snowdon — I link to Chris’ blog of the same name frequently here. He’s one of the best critics of paternalist excesses writing today and one of the few journalists exposing the shoddy science put out by many anti-tobacco researchers. His book-length review of the anti-smoking movement goes back all the way to Columbus and is essential for putting the current movement in historical context. His coverage of secondhand smoke and bibliography of ETS papers is also very valuable. Highly recommended and lively written.
Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, Richard Kluger — A 700+ page doorstop of a book chronicling the history of the American cigarette business. Though a little dated by its publication prior to the Master Settlement Agreement, the book presents a remarkably balanced view of the players involved. Though by no means a tobacco apologist, Kluger manages to portray Big Tobacco executives with enough sympathy to make them human and sometimes admirable businessmen working in an embattled industry. Reformers, too, are shown in a balanced light. (Only John Banzhaf appears completely without redeeming qualities; he manages to come off as an ass no matter who is profiling him.)
Kluger fairly describes the progress of science, from when tobacco companies could legitimately claim skepticism of cigarettes’ health effects to when their denials became absurd. Similar scrutiny is given to the overblown claims of secondhand smoke by their opposition. In the final pages he even comes close to predicting the MSA, though in the details he fails to guess how the tobacco companies would use it to raise prices and create a legally protected cartel.
Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, Gene M. Heyman — The title is a bit off-putting, suggesting that the book accuses addicts of choosing to have their disorder. That’s inaccurate. Heyman, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, is actually offering an economic model of addiction, explaining substance abuse in terms of individual decisions and the way they can be distorted by addictive substances. Specifically, addictive substances tend to offer immediate benefits and long-term costs (exacerbated by withdrawal symptoms), to induce intoxication, and to undermine the value of more productive activities, all making habitual use hard to break.
Heyman is primarily concerned with illegal drugs but cigarettes do get a mention as a partial exception to the pattern. They don’t intoxicate the user and don’t interfere too much with other valuable activities, making the choice to smoke in any given situation very easy. This suggests that a useful approach to treating cigarette addiction would be to develop safer products that fill the same niche. This perspective is of special interest now given the development of e-cigarettes and research suggesting that nicotine alone can only partially explain cigarette addiction.
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Though bans just get worse here in the US and UK, they’re still meeting resistance elsewhere. Bulgaria is having second thoughts:
Bulgaria’s ruling party has proposed watering down a new smoking ban in the country with the second highest percentage of smokers in the European Union.
The centre-right GERB party, which won general elections last July, said its proposed relaxation of a ban on smoking in all public places would avoid hurting the tourist industry during tough economic times. [...]
According to a draft submitted to parliament, restaurants and cafes smaller than 100 square metres (1,000 sq ft) in size will decide whether to allow smoking while larger establishments would be required to designate separate non-smoking halls.
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Reuters reporter Maggie Fox buys into the thirdhand smoke scare:
Old tobacco smoke does more than simply make a room smell stale — it can leave cancer-causing toxins behind, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
They found cancer-causing agents called tobacco-specific nitrosamines stick to a variety of surfaces, where they can get into dust or be picked up on the fingers. Children and infants are the most likely to pick them up, the team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California reported.
“These findings raise concerns about exposures to the tobacco smoke residue that has been recently dubbed ‘third-hand smoke’,” the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, available here.
Of course there are policy implications:
James Pankow, who also worked on the study, said it may raise questions about the safety of electronic cigarettes, or “e-cigarettes.” which produce a nicotine vapor but not smoke.
The researchers said regulators who have cracked down on second-hand smoke with smoking bans may decide to consider policies on third-hand smoke.
That nicotine works on surfaces in this way is interesting from an abstract, scientific point of view. What the article fails to mention is that there is essentially no evidence that anyone, anywhere, has ever suffered from exposure to so-called “thirdhand smoke.” The reason these carcinogens are so deadly to cigarette smokers is that smokers inhale them deeply through their mouths directly into sensitive lung tissues dozens of times per day. Exposure from surfaces or from dust inhalation through the nose is going to be far less substantial.
Nonetheless, you probably shouldn’t wrap your infant in smoky blankets. Fair enough. But spreading paranoia about thirdhand smoke has significant negative consequences. We’ve already seen employers discriminate against smokers using these fears as justification. And if this research is used to back legislation against e-cigarettes — devices that are unequivocally safer to smoke than actual tobacco — that will be a blow to public health.
Unfortunately journalists tend to be extremely credulous of any research that condemns tobacco and its related products. Last year The New York Times gave significant coverage to a thirdhand smoke study that consisted entirely of conducting a telephone poll of random people. Soon after Scientific American published an uncritical interview with the study’s author, Jonathan Winickoff, who said in an unmeasured words, “Smokers themselves are also contaminated…smokers actually emit toxins.”
If reporters are going to cover these sorts of stories, they owe it to readers to put the actual risks in proper perspective.
[Via Lene Johansen's Twitter feed.]
Update: Since writing this some debate has gone back and forth on Twitter among science writer Lene Johansen, Jeff Stier at the American Counsel on Science and Health, and Reuters health editor Ivan Oransky. Since Twitter isn’t the most conducive format for extended comments I thought I’d clarify here why I object to the article.
The problem is not that this is junk science or that it shouldn’t be covered. The problem is that people reading the article aren’t interested in the abstract question of how nicotine reacts with other chemicals on a household surface. What they want to know is whether tobacco residue presents a real health hazard to them and whether there are policy implications stemming from the research.
A layman reading about all the carcinogens mentioned in the article would conclude that the health hazard is real. Given the dosages involved this belief is likely false and is certainly unproven. As science journalism, the article fails to give readers the context they need to make sense of the research.
As for policy, the article itself notes that the research is bound up with political goals. The findings may be used to justify such measures as employment discrimination, bans on e-cigarettes, and further restrictions on smokers. This makes providing the proper context doubly important. There are plenty of reputable skeptics of these measures and at the very least the article could have quoted one.
Update 2/9/10: Chris Snowdon’s lengthy debunking of thirdhand smoke fears from last year is worth rereading.
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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