Have the tobacco police gone too far?

[kramwest1]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

they don't make happy cartoon characters smoking weed, yet somehow, someway, kids still manage to find out about it.

I blame Towelie for the current wave of pro-weed laws.

[PhilsFan]

You're a towel.

[the iron horse]

Sheen warned not to smoke on Toronto stage - CBC News

[MrsSpringsteen]

Well if no one else is allowed to smoke in that hall then why should he be able to?

He can smoke all he wants in his home and in places where it's allowed-right now that's probably the least of his problems.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

If the worst thing Charlie sheen does on that stage is smoke then everyone in the crowd will be relieved.

[deep]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

If the worst thing Charlie sheen does on that stage is smoke then everyone in the crowd will be relieved feel cheated.

fixed.

[Canadiens1131]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

If the worst thing Charlie sheen does on that stage is smoke tobacco then everyone in the crowd will be relieved.

Double fixt.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

well i can only really speak for NYC... and smoking outside of bars is still very much legal and in practice, even in the dead of winter.

the recent ban went for public parks... meaning central park, the times square pedestrian plaza, city beaches, coney island boardwalk, etc. etc. i'm in favor of this, and would have liked to see it also include outdoor subway and train platforms as well.

if you want to smoke on the sidewalk, i've got no problem with that... i just walk to the other side of the street.

Public ban on outdoor train platforms and subway stations is in the governor's desk

[Canadiens1131]

Originally Posted by kramwest1

I blame Towelie for the current wave of pro-weed laws.

Wanna geh hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh?

[kramwest1]

Originally Posted by Canadiens1131

Wanna geh hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh?

I have no idea what's goin' on.

[MrsSpringsteen]

New Cigarette Warnings Released (PHOTOS)

The Food and Drug Administration released nine new graphic warnings for cigarette packages today -- the first new labels in more than two decades. The new warnings, which depict the negative health impact of cigarettes, are required to cover at least 50 percent of every pack of cigarettes sold in the U.S. by mid-2013.

"The introduction of these warnings is expected to have a significant public health impact by decreasing the number of smokers, resulting in lives saved, increased life expectancy and lower medical costs," the FDA's web site states.

The new labels replace the smaller, text-only warnings that have appeared on packages for more than 25 years and feature jarring images, including a man with a tracheotomy hole and a mouth filled with rotting teeth. They are a result of The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, passed in 2009. It gave the government authority to regulate the marketing and labeling of tobacco products, which are currently responsible for nearly 450,000 deaths in the U.S. every year.

Last fall, the FDA released 36 potential warnings, which featured images like a mother blowing smoke in her baby's face and a a grey, damaged lung. The labels were made available to public comment and were the subject of some concern among experts who questioned whether they went far enough.

Joanna Cohen, PhD, director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at Johns Hopkins University explains that the key to effective warning labels is their ability to spark emotion, be it empathy or fear.

"What we've seen in terms of best practices globally is that you want pictures and accompanying text that elicit an emotion from the viewer," she said. "It makes people react."

She also said that the size of warning labels is important.

"Bigger is better, just because people notice [the labels] more," Cohen explained.

She thinks that the FDA's requirement of 50 percent of a pack is "respectable," though it doesn't necessarily "push the boundaries in terms of what's happening globally." (Earlier this month, Australia proposed plain packaging on all cigarette packs, meaning they would be stripped of all logos, colors and branding and just contain the product name alongside a large health warning.)

Research has shown that warning labels are effective in getting smokers to consider quitting.

A recent Centers for Disease Control study found in 13 out of 14 countries that ratified a World Health Organization treaty requiring warning labels on cigarette packs, a quarter of smokers who noticed them indicated they were considering quitting. And in six of those countries, more than half of the smokers who saw them said they were considering quitting because of the warning labels.

But intent to quit is different than actually quitting, Cohen cautioned, adding that warning labels are only part of a very serious and costly picture. Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and, according to CDC estimates, costs the economy some $200 billion per year in medical costs and lost productivity.

"Graphic images are probably not as important as raising the price [of cigarettes] or eliminating them from the work place," concurred Dr. Dr. Richard Hurt of the Mayo Clinic's Nicotine Dependence Center. "But it's a good first step."

[cobl04]

They're bringing in plain packaging here Jan 1 I think. All boxes will be identical, with the warning label taking up something like 75% and the brand name appearing down the bottom.

[maycocksean]

They have this type of packaging on the cigarettes in Singapore. Quite graphic. I imagine they'd be compelling.

I can already imagine the horror of certain smokers on this forum over this latest development.

[KhanadaRhodes]

good. the graphic images are already on packs here in nz. i would never ever smoke anyway but the pictures are so gross. the only downside is i can imagine some kid who's smoking right now, by the time he's 50 he might become desensitised to the pictures anyway.

but hey, if seeing someone with rotting teeth or gangrene will make a 14 year old decide not to smoke, then the pictures did their job. that's what matters.

[maycocksean]

^I think the key really is the kids. What adult in their right mind starts smoking? I would imagine most smokers begin smoking in their teens when it was "cool" and they were less cognizant of their own mortality. Older smokers I would guess wouldn't be affected by the pictures as much, but for teenagers or younger considering smoking, I think it could have a big impact.

[cobl04]

yeah that's why i agree with plain packaging. it's not going to stop smokers from smoking, but if it stops kids from taking it up, then it's a great idea.

[financeguy]

The Independent Review Tuesday 16 November 2004

Smoke screen

There's never been more pressure on Britons to stub out their fags. But the anti-tobacco lobby exaggerates how dangerous cigarettes really are, says Tim Luckhurst



Smoking is under attack as never before. Today, the Government is expected to publish a white paper proposing restrictions on smoking in public places in England and Wales. Meanwhile, the Scottish Executive has agreed on a "comprehensive ban" on public smoking. Promoting the Scottish ban on the Today Programme, the country's deputy health minister, Rhona Brankin, declared "One in four of all deaths in Scotland is directly attributable to smoking." In a separate interview she said "one in four of all deaths (is) attributable to smoking. About 13,000 people die every year as a result of smoking." She was wise to omit the "directly" that sneaked onto Today.

The most recent statistics reveal that 57,382 people died in Scotland in 2001. If one in four of them died for the reasons Rhona Brankin offers that would give a smoking-related death toll of 14,345, not 13,000. So is the minister guilty of modest exaggeration in the service of a noble cause? The one-in-four statistic is more than that; it is an article of faith among anti-smoking campaigners, but it is not as straightforward as it sounds.

These are not just lung-cancer deaths. Brankin's toll includes every Scot who has died of "smoking-related complaints." To get into that category alleged victims of smoking do not need to have smoked. They are counted in on the basis that killers including heart disease, strokes and bronchitis can be caused by smoking. Nobody checks the lifestyles of the victims to ascertain that they did smoke.

Some of these dead Scots did smoke, but died at or beyond the average Scottish life spans of 73 years for men and 78 years for women. The same applies to many of the 140,000 English men and women whom the leading anti-smoking charity, ASH, asserts die each year as a result of smoking. ASH justifies including them on the grounds that deaths from smoking can follow years of painful disability and are thus worth preventing, even if they have not technically shortened a life.

The issue here is not whether smoking kills, but whether it is legitimate to lie in the service of a good cause. Amanda Sandford, the head of research at ASH, offers an intriguing response. "Smoking is the biggest single cause of preventable death, and anti-smokers do not deliberately abuse statistics. But I don't really want to be drawn into that. It isn't black and white." Pushed to explain precisely what she means, Sandford says: "Epidemiology is not a direct science. Our business is promoting public health. It is possible that in certain cases some anti-smoking campaigners do exaggerate [she is adamant that ASH does not] but if statistics lied it would be bad. There needs to be a justification for it. To deliberately distort would not be acceptable. If there is an element of doubt we should express that. Scientists usually express their statements in terms of caution."

She acknowledges that figures like Rhona Brankin's 13,000 deaths and ASH's 140,000 are sometimes "rounded up" but insists that any inflation is slight and is ironed out by annual variations in death rates.

ASH has excellent motives. The problem is that the degree of exaggeration that has converted hostility to tobacco from a health cause to a neo-religious crusade does not look slight when it is exposed to careful analysis. It has created a very misleading impression about the real chance of a smoker dying from lung cancer.

Habitual, lifelong smokers face a 30-to 40-fold higher risk of contracting lung cancer than non-smokers. That sounds massive and many smokers are persuaded to quit because they believe it is. But, since the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers is minuscule it does not amount to an objectively high risk. Amanda Sandford admits "Smokers are more likely to die of heart disease than lung cancer." The pro-smoking campaigner Joe Jackson argues "Even if you're a heavy smoker, your chances of NOT getting lung cancer are still more than 99 per cent."

Jackson's claim is based on Professor Sir Richard Doll's research on smoking and lung cancer. It calculated that 166 smokers in every 100,000 died from lung cancer. Subsequent research has proved that conservative. One doctor says "If you smoke 30 a day for 50 years you probably face a one-in-10 chance of developing lung cancer. It is a horrible way to die."

For that reason, the demonisation of tobacco companies as merchants of death does not offend me. Above the desk in the office where I used to smoke 15 cigarettes a day, until health concerns persuaded me to give up, hangs a reminder of the lies told in defence of a vicious business. It is a Camel advertisement from about the time of Professor Doll's ground-breaking report. Beneath the question "How mild can a cigarette be?", it asserts that there has been "not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking Camels" and supports this with the evidence of "noted throat specialists".

Cigarette manufacturers have murdered facts and perverted science to persuade consumers to continue smoking. When they first learnt that cigarettes killed, they responded by deliberately advertising preposterous claims about health benefits. Smokers of my father's generation were told that the habit eased digestion by increasing the flow of digestive juices and the alkalinity of the stomach.

But, as Scotland's devolved administration leads Britain towards a ban on the public indulgence of a dangerous but legal habit, it is worth recognising that the lies told by anti-smoking campaigners are substantial as well. Their intentions may be magnificent, but their tactics are not. If objective truth counts for anything then the title "merchants of sanctimony" is too generous. Anti-smokers have allowed their moral antipathy to smoking to distort their scientific advocacy. In private, many scientists and some doctors acknowledge this.

Dr Ken Denson, of the Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation, says: "I simply do not know where they conjure up their statistics. The statistics for passive smoking, in particular, would not be published or even considered in any other scientific discipline. Deaths from smoking in general have been grossly exaggerated, particularly in relation to heart disease. " Dr Denson is a medical scientist. He has published peer-reviewed research in respected academic journals. He is not funded by tobacco companies.

Is he right? The method by which Rhona Brankin arrived at her "one in four" claim and from which ASH derives its 140,000 deaths categorises 16 diseases as "smoking-related". Many of them are also caused by poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity and other poverty-related problems that are regrettably common in urban Scotland and similar post-industrial areas. If you use cigarettes and are poor, fat and reluctant to eat vegetables, you are substantially more likely to die young than a smoker who is affluent, active and well-fed. "One in four" includes people who would have died when they did without smoking a single cigarette. It also includes affluent smokers who pass away from heart attacks in their late eighties.

The evidence that passive smoking harms health, on which the Scottish and UK governments both base their arguments for statutory restrictions, is even more inflated. Dr Denson, whose work on passive smoking has been published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, says much of the evidence that passive smoking harms health "has been exaggerated, contrived, or at worst falsified". Even Amanda Sandford admits: "A lot of the studies that have been done on passive smoking produce results that are not statistically significant according to conventional analysis." But she still insists that passive smoking is a real health risk, made worse by the fact that it is involuntary.

There might appear to be no objective difference between overlooking conventional scientific method and deliberate distortion. But that is the problem with the modern debate about smoking. It is no longer conducted between good people who say that smoking kills and liars paid to deny it. Now it involves an industry that has, belatedly, been forced to admit that smoking kills and campaigners who are simply not satisfied with that. They want to convince the public that death is always the result and that every smoker and many non-smokers are at risk. They see no moral fault in lying to advance their case. Perhaps they are right and the end does justify the means. But I suspect their tactics may make the remaining minority of smokers still more determined to smoke. As one GP told me: "The danger of overstating a very real problem is that people always know anecdotal exceptions. They say, 'I ken Tarn and he's smoked 40 a day since the battle of Narvik and never had a day ill in his life.' We might do better to admit that people like that exist, and even to speculate about why. That would lend authority when we point out the real risks."

The willingness of militant anti-smokers to corrupt a good case has turned the smoking debate from a laudable campaign to improve public health into a bitterly resented attack on the minority who choose to risk smoking. One medical researcher says: "Statistically the evidence for the evils of smoking has been grossly distorted. For many people the ideal of a complete end to smoking has become a sort of Holy Grail with a limited basis in fact. More of us would say this, but it is politically unacceptable to speak the truth about these things." He suggests that rabid anti-smokers should look at the prevailing rates of smoking among young people born after the relationship between smoking and cancer was admitted by the tobacco industry - and remind themselves what happened to the boy who cried wolf.

Smoke screen by Tim Luckhurst

[Headache in a Suitcase]

smoking ban on subways and LIRR in and around new york city went into effect this week

[trojanchick99]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

smoking ban on subways and LIRR in and around new york city went into effect this week

You could smoke on subways in NYC until this week? Seriously? Wow. So glad they changed that.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Originally Posted by trojanchick99

You could smoke on subways in NYC until this week? Seriously? Wow. So glad they changed that.

There are a ton of outdoor subway platforms outside of Manhattan, not to mention the commuter rail lines... like the one I'm sitting on right now.

This law applies to those stations.