PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Think Anti Smoking is Nice, or Anti Corporate? Think Again.
by Watchdog Tuesday, Sep. 12, 2006 at 3:45 AM

Odd that so many progressives/lefties etc believe and join the Corporate Promoted Smoke bans. Few remember Refer Madness...the previous Smoke Ban. Few notice that the proposed laws are fraudulent.

A point by point debunking of Philadelphia'a Smoke Ban law...that serves not only Big Cig but Big Pesticides and far more. Since most laws are almost identical, this applies to other legislation. It's about abuses of law and medical science that affect us all, not just those darn smokers that we have been told to hate.
This was written to address the Philadelphia Smoke Ban legislation, but it applies to just about all other municipalities...including Pittsburgh and Allegheney County.

TWENTY REASONS WHY VIRTUALLY ANY
“SMOKING BILL”, IS UNNACCEPTABLE

1) It accepts deceptive, misleading, unqualified cigarette industry marketing language about the products being just tobacco, or being tobacco at all. (See US Patent Office for "tobacco substitute material", for info on cigs that contain NO tobaco, and can causse no dreaded "tobacco smoke".)

2) It accepts EPA material on “secondhand” smoke despite that very material having been declared “fraudulent” in Federal Court years ago. (Though the judge was later ruled to have been outside of his jurisdiction, the substance of that condemnation of EPA tactics remains intact. Even the EPA has not done anything to challenge.)

3) The bill fails, as much as the cigarette industry does, in describing what, exactly, is meant by “cigarette”, “tobacco” or “smoke”, words integral to the issue.
a) “cigarette” is a catch-all term, like “sandwich”. It can contain just about anything.
b) “tobacco” is just a category. Qualifications regarding Contaminated Tobacco, or
Un-contaminated Tobacco, or Pesticide-Contaminated Tobacco, or Radioactive
Tobacco, etc., are crucial in matters relating to medicine and science.
c) “Smoke” can be from an infinite number of things and combinations. Smoke from
natural plants or incense may be either an irritant or pleasant. Smoke from industrial
chemicals and other substances can be and often is deadly.

4) The bill speaks of “69 known or probable carcinogens in tobacco smoke”, yet some of those carcinogens cannot possibly be from a tobacco plant or its smoke.

5) The bill speaks of “4000 known chemical compounds” in” tobacco smoke” and in “secondhand smoke”. Staff at a Council Member's office 3 days before this hearing did not know what these chemicals were or where to find a list. We do not know how many of the “chemicals” are natural to tobacco, how many are natural in smoke from any plant, how many are exclusively in tobacco smoke, or how many are INDUSTRIAL chemicals that contaminate tobacco in most cigarette products.

6) It proposes the Most Burdensome “solution” to the health problems. Instead of addressing the SOURCE of the problem at the cigarette production end with the many pesticide residues, chlorine contamination, radiation contamination from certain fertilizers, and the over 1000 un-tested cigarette additives, the bill would involve thousands of businesses, more thousands of workers and even more thousands of patrons. It would involve the time and cost of police, health officials, prosecutors, courts, jurors, and on and on. This bill just “swats the flies”, so to speak, created by the garbage sneaked into typical cigarettes with full approval of government officials. The bill fails to take the Least Burdensome route of addressing the garbage.

7) The burdens and costs of this law are to be unjustly put on the victims and uninvolved parties, those who had no part in recklessly making typical pesticide- and radiation-contaminated products, had no part in approving those and other contaminants, and had no part in keeping the information from consumers.

8) The bill refers to fire dangers but ignores the matter of still-legal Burn Accelerants added to typical cigarettes in order to speed up use of the products for the sake of maximized sales and profits--- and “sin” tax revenues.

9) The bill persistently refers to “smoking”---that is, the behavior of the defrauded, uninformed, unprotected, insufficiently-warned, secretly poisoned, and uncompensated smokers---victims of products they think, and are told, are just “tobacco”. The bill does not address Reckless, Homicidal, Public-Endangering Product Manufacturing.

10) The bill creates inconvenience and nuisance to neighbors of “no smoking” establishments by a) pushing smokers out doors to smoke, and b) by pushing them in some cases onto sidewalks and proximity to neighbors who are just outside the 20 foot no-smoking zone around entrances. We also do not know if the 20 ft. measurement is taken from the edge of a door, the woodwork, the center, or what.

11) The bill, as written, could snare any smoker walking past an unidentified “no smoke” building, and even those in cars on the street within the 20 feet. As written, the bill forbids even smoking on one’s own property in areas that may be within the 20 ft. limit.

12) Many theatrical plays involve smoking characters. So may films or TV programs being produced in the city. Some magic and circus acts involve cigarettes and flames. The bill, as written, would cancel all such performances. This may constitute a Free Speech issue. If there is no enforcement in these artistic areas, while there is enforcement elsewhere, an injustice will be taking place.

13) The bill is so vaguely and generally written that it would prohibit church candles and incense, candles in any of the “no smoke” places, Bunsen burners, welding equipment, stoves and even fire places.

14) The Bill is extensively arbitrary and selective in “protecting workers” from air pollutants. Nothing in the bill protects workers from exhaust in indoor parking lots or auto repair shops. Nothing protects workers from fumes from plastic and other synthetic building and furnishing materials. Nothing protects workers from chlorine disinfectants and cleansers or indoor pesticides…or from sawdust, paint fumes, welding fumes and on and on. And the bill does nothing to protect workers or anyone from pollutants unconscionably permitted in tobacco products and the smoke.

15) The bill, ostensibly crafted out of concern for worker’s health and well being, fails to address the matter of worker compensation for being unknowingly exposed to smoke from cigarette contaminants known to the world to be among the worst industrial pollutants. Nor are workers even yet advised or warned about the dangerous non-tobacco components of most (not all) cigarettes.

16) Nothing in the bill offers the Constitutionally Guaranteed compensation for such a Public Interest “takings” (as per Fifth Amendment) of profits or business…not that a public interest has been adequately proven. Supporters of this bill claim that bans are “good for business”, yet at the same time call for bans in neighboring areas to prevent bar, restaurant and bowling patrons from flocking to the still-smoking establishments.
No method of determining business losses has been established, yet widely criticized claims of business gains due to bans are accepted without scrutiny.

17) Nothing in the bill offers compensation to business proprietors for the expense of posting signs and perhaps even training employees to police any smoking violations on the premises.

18) The bill creates the endangerment of employees who are compelled to step 20 feet away from the safety of entrances, sometimes in dark alleys, to legally catch a smoke. Increase of muggings in such instances are being reported.

19) Supporting testimony for the bill from certain entities must be questioned or dismissed. The NCI (National Cancer Institute) is notorious for being composed almost exclusively of members of the chemical/chlorine/pharmaceutical industries, the very entities that make and supply non-tobacco cigarette ingredients…and who understandably do not care to be implicated. “Tobacco Free Kids” (who testified in 2005) had as its first president the founder of a top pesticide PR firm. TFK accepts funding from top chlorine AND alternative nicotine delivery product interests. TFK, therefore, fails to say or do anything about pesticide residues in typical cigarettes, about chlorine content, about the resultant dioxin in the smoke, OR about how these things are especially harmful to children (i.e., “kids”) and fetuses and pregnant mothers...and etc.

20) The bill ignores these facts:
* According to other material by the EPA, there is dioxin in cigarette smoke.
* According to that same material, dioxin is “anthropogenic”, man-made, a by-product of industrial chlorine, and “not likely in nature”. That is, it is not from tobacco.
* Although this is public government information, the NCI failed to list dioxin as one of the “69 carcinogens” in cigarette smoke. (Think...National Chlorine Institute.)
* Typical cigarettes contain residues of chlorine pesticides, and are and have been wrapped in chlorine-bleached paper. A third source of chlorine and dioxin is the added agricultural products, likely contaminated with pesticides. A fourth source would be any chlorine-treated paper waste cellulose used to make fake tobacco.
* Many, if not most, “smoking related” diseases are identical to symptoms of dioxin exposure…and are impossible to be caused by tobacco or any plant, even burned.
* Inhalation of dioxin is the worst possible exposure route---because of the efficiency of the lungs. (If there’s one place dioxin ought NOT be it is cigarette smoke.)
* The notorious case of Agent Orange was a dioxin matter. Few learned people can be unfamiliar with the harmfulness of dioxin.
* The U.S. classified dioxin as a Known Human Carcinogen…the worst class. There is no safe dose. (Note that anti-smoking forces use the same terminology regarding “tobacco”. They mean Chlorine-Contaminated Tobacco, but forget to say so.)
* The U.S. signed the Stockholm Convention to rid the world of dioxin and 11 other of the worst industrial pollutants. (Fully 9 of which are or have been tobacco pesticides and/or cigarette contaminants!…dioxin being the worst.)

This bill accepts that it is legal to make and provide such deceptively marketed, secretly toxic, carcinogenic and fire-causing products, and that the perpetrators may avoid exposure, scrutiny, liability and criminal charges, and that it is right to make it more and more illegal for uninformed, unprotected, insufficiently-warned, poisoned, defrauded, and uncompensated consumers to use them. This is pure Backwards-Land. This bill, like its clones around the world, greatly supports the very industry it purports to condemn. It does a great disservice to the public at large, be they smokers or consumers of any products “regulated” in this manner.
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A Few More Reasons the Bill is illegitimate….for good measure:

* The bill claims that “nearly 75% of Pennsylvanians do not smoke”.
- Is that really 74%, or some fraction beyond or below?
- Does this refer to all Pennsylvanians, including babies, prisoners, elderly and infirm, religious groups who do not smoke, etc?
- Is this to pretend that this 75% therefore disapprove of smoking and therefore support ban legislation?
- How many non-smokers disapprove of smoke ban laws?
- How many do not smoke because of the effects of contaminated tobacco, tobacco that the persons do not know is contaminated?
- How many of those ex-smokers have been checked for body-burdens of dioxin, radiation, and the various tobacco pesticide residues? (How many of their doctors have economic links with chlorine industries or their insurers and investors?)
- Is this to imply that such matters ought be left to a vote…by uninformed, mis-informed
voters?
- Did we outlaw murder because “nearly” 99% of Pennsylvanians are not killers?
- How many Pennsylvanians would vote to outlaw toxic, cancer-causing product adulterants? “Nearly” 100%, one would hope. Too bad they aren’t asked.
- Likely, 75% of Pennsylvanians do not play classical music.

* The bill prohibits smoking of not only tobacco but also “other smoke producing products” that are not named nor, apparently, studied in order to show a public interest purpose for the prohibition. Understand that one can be fined or arrested for allegedly endangering others with material that is not named or studied, and for which no victim can be found.

* The bill, mysteriously, exempts functions where people are “seated at tables”.
- Does this therefore exempt poker establishments and other sit-down gambling operations, bingo parlors, etc?
- What if one gets up from the table to go to the bathroom, to get a drink, to visit other tables, or to dance?

* The bill exempts beauty parlors with ventilation. Can customers have drinks and watch TV football while sitting under hair dryers?

* The bill makes no exemption for Rastafarians who years ago won the Constitutional right to smoke ganja for religious purposes…as Roman Catholic children are permitted to have wine with communion.

* Smoking is prohibited within 20 ft. of “entrances”. Exits seem to be exempt.

* Though called the “Clean Indoor Air Worker Protection Act”, the bill sneaks in prohibitions of smoking in various OUTDOOR areas such as sports/entertainment venues, and decks, patios, and sidewalks associated with bars and restaurants…not to mention that 20 ft. no-smoke area outside of entrances. No studies have been presented, and no victims have come forth, to show a public interest justification for outdoor bans of tobacco smoke OR Contaminated-Tobacco smoke OR smoke from fake tobacco.