Abusive Rhetoric
A bill to ban smoking in motor vehicles when children are present has passed the State Senate. Violators could be fined $100.
"This is about the health of our children," said the bill's sponsor. There's a shock. These days, every proposal under the sun is sold as necessary for the sake of the children.
On the other hand, not every proposal is sold as necessary to prevent child abuse -- but that's how Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw put it. Noting that child abuse is illegal, he said smoking in the car with children should be, too. "If [that] isn't child abuse, what is?"
Ask that question of a kid who really has been abused.
Those who seriously believe the bill merits enactment also might want to consider more stringent state intervention to prevent single motherhood. By just about every measure -- from poverty and scholastic performance to delinquency and emotional problems -- children who grow up in single-parent households fare worse. It's even worse for kids than secondhand smoke. Anyone for making divorce tougher?
In addition, there's a question as to whether the bill goes far enough. If smoking in the presence of children constitutes child abuse, then a mere fine won't suffice. Social Services ought to be called in. And if smoking in the car is bad for children, then surely smoking in a home where children are present must be nearly as hazardous.
If present trends continue, maybe one day social workers backed up by sheriff's deputies will show up on the doorstep of parents who smoke, to haul their kids off somewhere safer. And if Saslaw's serious, that would be the entirely appropriate thing to do.
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( Argonaut15 ) Also, there were nine states, not seven, and CA was NOT one of them. They are all little bitty states, and the reason the data are not reliable is because the numbers are so small. They represent only a very small part of the country’s population.
Argonaut- save your breath (or fingers) with CarolT… she posts the same old BS on each and every article in the RTD that mentions cigarettes, smoking, or any related topic.
Maybe if we all ignore her she will go away.
( Argonaut15 ) And the EPA’s data about cotinine levels proves that children had less exposure to secondhand smoke during this peeriod, better than indirect measures such as when smoking bans were passed. For that matter, there isn’t even any correlation whatsoever between the percentage of smokers in the states, and their asthma death rates.
http://www.smokershistory.com/SmokAsth.gif
It’s all nothing but a pile of lies they’re telling us.
( Argonaut15 ) That proves that YOU look for lies to believe in, while ignoring the HARD FACTS which prove they’re lying. They should be objects of PUBLIC RIDICULE for the rubbish they spout. Look at EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, blathering about “the progress we have made as a nation to reduce environmental risks faced by childen,“ including “Reducing emissions of diesel pollutants from trucks and buses, which will help prevent hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks in children each year” and “Implementing the Smoke-Free Home Pledge campaign, designed to protect millions of children from the risks of tobacco smoke at home.“ Then down on page 73 you see that the percentage of children with asthma doubled! DOUBLED! Don’t you think that the percentage of children with asthma should have at least stayed the same after all their so-called “progress?“ Honestly, you really really really have to be dumb not to see through a liar like that!
In response to CarolT. I love how you manipulate the data and claim it is the anti-smokers who lie. I looked at both the EPA and the CDC articles you posted and guess what? Both say smoking is BAD and tobacco smoke is a leading irritants for asthma.
You claim that these documents illustrate that smoking bans do not decrease asthma. Well, hold on! We have to look at the facts. There are only 23 states with statewide smoking bans. Of those 23, the year 2002 was the earliest smoking bans went into effect for seven states (exception is CA, whose ban went into effect in 1998). So, the EPA document you posted is a report from February 2003. Far too early for the bans to show any effects.
Likewise, the CDC reports covers 1980-2005. Again, too early to tell much, but let’s look at those seven states (AK, CA, DE, MT, ND, SD, and WV). According to the map’s legend, there is no reliable data for five of those states. So that leaves California and Delaware the latter’s smoking ban did not go into effect until the end of November 2002. According to that same CDC map “Estimates for Delaware . . . ha[s] a relative standard error greater than 30 percent and less than or equal to 50 percent and should be interpreted with caution as they do not meet the standard of reliability or precision.“ California is in the lowest percentile (4.4-7.8 percent). No much here to suggest smoking bans don’t work.
In conclusion, your manipulated data, along with smokers’ lives everywhere, comes up way short.
We have a bad habit lately of redefining things. This broadening of the use for the word ‘abuse’ is just one example. How often do we hear or read of someone claiming a ‘right’ that does not exist. What’s next? Fines for parents smoking in their homes when their child or guests are present? What if I think feeding a child candy is ‘abuse’ because it will lead to obesity? Do we go after everyone for that too? Some legislators think being elected means they are experts in behavioral engineering. Let them practice on themselves first.
Those psychotic anti-smoker criminals are getting away with these grotesque abuses of the public because the media refuse to expose their lies!
Every smoking ban, everywhere, has been rammed down the public’s throat by falsely framing the issue as “freedom versus public health,“ and CONCEALING ANTI-SMOKER SCIENTIFIC FRAUD.
More than 50 studies have implicated human papillomaviruses as the cause of over 22% of non-small cell lung cancers. This equals over 30,000 cases, which is over ten times more lung cancers than the anti-smokers pretend are caused by secondhand smoke. Passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus, so the anti-smokers’ studies, because they are all based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires, are cynically DESIGNED to falsely blame passive smoking for all those extra lung cancers that are really caused by HPV. A significant proportion of lung cancers blamed on active smoking are actually caused by HPV as well. Obviously, there is a corrupt, politically-motivated coverup of a far larger cause of lung cancer than radon or secondhand smoke!
http://www.smokershistory.com/hpvlungc.htm
The anti-smokers lie that smoking bans cause “immediate, dramatic” declines in the number of heart attacks. In the Pueblo study, the death rates from acute myocardial infarction actually increased in the year after the ban, the same time they were boasting that the number of admissions declined! That suggests that people were dying because they weren’t admitted to hospitals when they should have been! And in the Indiana study, they exploited an anomalous spike in acute MIs during the “before” section of the study, to make the “after” part look better! And in the Helena study, the actual death rates from acute myocardial infarction (as opposed to hospital admissions which were the endpoint of the study) were nearly identical in 2001 (before the ban) and 2002 (the year of the ban), and reached their lowest point in 2003, the year after the smoking ban was repealed.
http://www.smokershistory.com/etsheart.html
If smoking or passive smoking were real causes of asthma, the rates of asthma would have gone DOWN. But the EPA’s own report says, “Between 1980 and 1995, the percentage of children with asthma doubled, from 3.6 percent in 1980 to 7.5 percent in 1995.“ The graph on pdf page 65 boasts of declines in cotinine levels during this same period.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eermfile.nsf/vwAN/EE-0438A-01.pdf/$file/EE-0438A-01.pdf
And the CDC says, “Despite the plateau in asthma prevalence, ambulatory care use has continued to grow since 2000… Increased ambulatory care use for asthma has continued during an era when overall rate of ambulatory care use for children did not increase.“
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad381.pdf
The government has no right to restrict peoples’ liberty without a compelling justification. The anti-smokers have no such justification, so THEY COMMITTED SCIENTIFIC FRAUD TO DECEIVE THE PUBLIC. This is a classic example of how the unscrupulous manipulators of public opinion have railroaded Americans into tyranny!
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