*Outdoor* Secondhand Smoke is a Hazard?
 

I'll try to keep this short.

There's an article I read tonight entitled Smoke-free parks: a 12-year old made it happen. In that article is a specific line that caught my attention.

Negative health effects from exposure to secondhand smoke include asthma, wheezing, ear infections, chronic coughs, and upper respiratory infections. (2) This was the basis the "California Smoke-free Workplace Law" that became effective in California in 1995, requiring worksites to be free from indoor tobacco smoke. Bars, clubs, gaming facilities and taverns became smoke-free in 1998 to protect workers from the effects of secondhand smoke. What is relatively unknown is the extent of the effect that outdoor secondhand smoke has on children and adults. Exposure to outdoor secondhand smoke can negatively impact asthma and allergies. (3)

What is specifically so disturbing about this line is that there is a study referenced.

(3) National Cancer Institute. Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke: The Report of the California Environmental Protection Agency. Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph no. 10. Bethesda, MD. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, NIH Pub. No. 99-4645, 1999, pp 185-264.

Here are the questions I have:

1) Are the readers to believe that outdoor secondhand smoke is now such a problem that it's logical that smoking be banned outdoors while pollen producing plants and allergenic materials are not?

2) How can ODSHS possibly have an impact on my health if the wind is blowing when I am outdoors with an evil, uncaring smoker?

3) What is the "effective range" of ODSHS? I'm in Pa.. If there's a guy in Texas outside smoking, should I be concerned? Are my rights somehow being violated by this evil bastard? Should I call the ATF to have them extinguish his butt?

4) Does anyone else see this ant-smoking crusade going a bit too far?

5) If you support this ban on smoking outdoors in public places, can you explain why? It seems downright silly and irritating to read this crap peddled as reasonable policy. Please, help me understand this.

The logic is really quite simple:

- FACT: Smokers enjoy smoking.
- FACT: Europeans call cigarettes 'fags'.
- THUS: Smokers like having fags between their lips.
- THUS: Smokers are all fags.
- THUS: Smokers are sinners.
- THUS: Smokers should be killed, because they're fags. And European.

Q.E.D.

(slaps forehead) How could I have overlooked such simple logic?

But the question still stands. If a Europen fag smokes a cigarette in my back yard. how many millimeters are in an inch?

Doesn't matter because the SHS has killed you and those European fags all exaggerate their millimeters of prowess anyway.:(

I would think that unless you're right next to a smoker and inhaling the smoke from that smoker, the effects of outdoor second-hand smoke are negligible compared to car pollution, air pollution, etc.

Apparently the ban in CA has worked well, though I've heard a lot of griping about the one in NYC.

Maryland's setup is interesting--most restaurants I've been to there are non-smoking, but you can smoke in the bar (if they have one), which in many cases is completely separated from the restaurant.

I understand that many people don't like smoke, and many know of the risks of SHS. But I do think that some of the persecution of smokers has gone a bit too far--especially the tax increases.

And what really pissed me off about the tax increase here in PA last year is that they stressed how it was "to protect children" when it was really more about helping to reduce the budget deficit.

If you keep increasing the cost of cigarettes and limiting their use, all you're going to do in the end is encourage crime. It'll become like Prohibition.

The next step for many of the smokers around here has become to roll their own cigarettes. The tax hasnt been levied against the tobacco so the cost of a huge can costs only a few bucks.

The next obstacle for the die hard cheapazz smoker will then be making their own rolling paper.

There very well may also be some rural entrapreneur that would like to work from home rolling cigs in bulk rather than put up with the shitjob. Think about it. Is it feasable you could make and sell cigs for 18k a year full time? I'm amazed there arent people doing that now.

If I was a smoker that's the only way I'd go. You'd get higher quality tobacco that was less bajangled with additives and stuff. You could roll with a filter in place - good friend of mine had a rolling device that would pop out perfect cigarettes every time, with filter if you wanted.

As well as whatever else you wanted to roll in there

Ok, so soon the rolling devices will be banned. Not for the possibility of rolling up pot, but for "screwing" THE MAN out of the tax money the Indians havent gotten to (yet).

GRRRRRRRR

Yes I'm a smoker.

Yes I know it's bad, but I still do it. No I don't smoke in restaurants I usually wait until I'm outside, but now in the great state of Oklahoma I no longer have a choice.

I realize the concern the non-smokers have with second hand smoke and wanting not to be around it, but to misquote Bill Hicks, it's not a war on smoke, it's a war on personal freedom. Yes your taking away my personal freedoms. Not my freedom to smoke anywhere I want to, but if I owned a business, I no longer have the freedom to let people light up or not. We are the land of the free, but slowly our rights are being taken away one by one. Go ahead ban smoking all together. Make it to wear you can't light up anywhere but inside your locked house, but don't come crying to the smokers when they want to take away your guns, beer, violent video games, <insert your favorite vice here>. Why should we care, we have already lost some of our freedoms. I hope people will soon realize that by lobbying the gubment to make a 'ban' on their most hated slice of society is only making the gubment more powerful, more controlling, and more likely to come after them next.

just my 2 cents.

CA is full of politically correct sheep. NY'ers bitch about anything and everything.:D

I really think this SHS issue is over rated. It's a tool to use against smokers.

I chew snuff. What's their excuse for keeping me from dipping Skoal? Secondhand spit? What if I dont spit? Am I somehow endangering the person standing next to me?

Fuck these Nazi bastards.

Next thing ya know I wont be able to FART, for Christ's sake. :D

They're running locally produced SHS spots on the radio here. They start with the vague invented stats, as many people die from SHS as go to BU and BBC combined. Those people are cured now. Then they go to the the smoke free work places embracing the fresh air. It all sounds very righteous.... except that its mandatory, so what are you bragging about? Then a local coffee shop guy endorses it and mentions that they've always been smokefree. So how is your place different now? I don't care for cigarette smoke but but its better than being babysat.

You got that warning from the EPA, remember? Did you ever respond to it, or did you just use it to wipe your ass?

:D

Did you know the "average" person farts 14 times a day. Of course I've always considered myself "above" average.:)

Man, if more things were methane powered, I'd be set!

Clearly you also think a shower (bathing) is overrated. I don't understand smelly drug addicts. But then I believe in being fair to my neighbors. Just because they like it means other's don't suffer. First indication of a self serving drug addict is my sinuses expand. Followed later by the smell. Then followed by a headache. But then that is my problem? Smokers are more important than anyone else.

How smelly are these drug addicts? I can even smell them from time to time as they drive past me - while on a bicycle! They smell that bad - and will often deny I can smell them. Just more symptoms of denial from drug addicts. Why do they even bother to take a shower?

NYCs ban on smoking has been working well. Non-smokers are now able to visit many restaurants and bars from which they were banned by nazi, drug addicted smokers. As in CA, it has meant about a 5% increase in businesses where self serving smokers once forced out all other customers.

Yes its all about what is fair. Smokers must first ask and obtain permission from everyone in that room and who will be in that room before they can smoke - if they are being fair. It smells worse that the worst fart in history. And unlike farts, it also creates health problems (long term) and headaches (short term).

But then smokers are also distinguished by another well proven fact - lower intelligence. Smokers have a lower intelligence (according to tests). Smoking is the need to temporaryily restore a drug addict's thinking ability - as even demonstrated by PET scans. That is what is we call addiction. A drug addict needs a cigarette just to restore thinking to normal levels. Why should they impose their addiction and body odors on everyone else? Low intelligence means no on else matters?

Shame on such drug addicts for claiming any rights. First they should fix themselves. The facts about smell and how it adversely affects others cannot be denied. But drug addicts will do so anyway. Denial is part of being an addict.

I'll fix my habit when you fix your mental retardation.

He's also clearly never been exposed to geniune smelly drug addict ...

Had one tonight. SOOOO funky that the doctor came into the office and told me that I had to go and experience the level of extreme stank. It was indeed one of the more intense and amazing such experiences ... nose hairs catching fire kinda yucky. The lobby still reeked of his presence an hour after he had been removed from the area and the Air King™ was plugged in.

Exposure to such things builds up your resistance. You have to develop an immunity. It's the overconcerned, overcleaned, HEPA-filtered world we're in, IMHO, that's resulting in an increase in allergies, asthma, etc.

Unrelated to the original topic - ever have a human come in smelling so bad that someone on staff actually vomitted? Now that would be a benchmark for bad.

Asthma - a new reason for the increase in asthma was recently cited in a research paper. When children are given too much antibiotics, especially the broad spectrum type, then there is a strong corrolation to asthma later in life. Apparent too many antibiotics to young kids causes immune disorders later in life. Maybe a reason why we don't want the kitchen floor so clean constantly?

Yes, but she was pregnant, and might not actually count for the purposes of your question.

If someone stinks THAT bad my department has several solutions.

1. Breathe through your mouth. This doesn't really work.

2. Limit actual contact. Talk to patient through the closed door if necessary. When your eyes start watering, the interview is over.

3. Rub a bit of orange essential oil in your nostrils. This stuff replaces the scent of stinky homeless guy with that of Florida-fresh oranges. Extends amount of time you can spend with patient. You may recall simliar usage of Vicks Vap-O-Rub from Silence of the Lambs. This also works, but the smell of Vicks is horrendous on it's own AND you have those white smears under your nose you can't get rid of easily.

(Crap, that reminds me. We have to hide the orange oile from the accredidation surveyors that are coming next monday because I bought it at a new age store and we can't get a Materials Safety Data Sheet for it ...)

Material Safety Data Sheet: the only time I needed it - and quickly - no body could find it.

Of course the most toxic substance in many building can be the human. How come those perfumed human don't require the equivalent of a MSDS? Oh, and cigarettes. Where is the MSDS for them?

Actually...once when I was taking SEPTA to college this filthy homeless bum got on. (50% of the time they're piss soaked& shit stained. At times I wonder if they do it on purpose. It can't be hard to get clothing washed.)

I swear, he stank so bad it made my eyes watery and I felt as if the skin inside my nose and throad was burning. Everyone shifted away from him and then when the train got moving he stumbled and pretty much wraped himself around a nicley dressed thirty yearold or so business woman. He pushed himself off her, appologized, by that point her face was green, and she had some filthy stains on her...she just stood there for about a minute and them threw up all over the doors...looked like she had kellogs for breakfast...then she began to cry.

I wasn't sure who I felt more sorry for....the bum or the woman...

http://www.pdmchemicals.com/MSDS/MSDS-Orange%20Oil.doc

Of course, an MSDS can make water look scary.

The Smoking to-do....
 

Yeah, yeah, everyone bitches about second-hand smoke, but I don't see them leaving behind their cars and trucks and walking to work. I'm a smoker, but I don't particularly enjoy gas or diesel fumes...but I have to tolerate them, even though they pose a risk to my health (regardless of whether I smoke or not). I don't hear the anti-smokers bitching about non-cigarette related toxic fumes....

And I agree that the government should get over the extreme hiking of prices for cigarettes. It costs almost five dollars a pack for cigarettes, and LESS than five dollars for a six-pack of beer or a small bottle of liquor. What's up with THAT? Seems like the government is saying. "We don't want you to kill yourself slowly. We want you do do it quickly, and if possible, take as many people with you as you can."

While I smoke, I do not drink. However, I don't make it my life's work to villainize all drinkers. Yet, the same people who bitch about us cigarette smokers are the ones who go out on the weekends and get plastered, putting everyone else on the road with them at risk. I have only one thing to say to these people: I can smoke and drive without killing anyone.

Lady Sidhe

Drug Addicts??
 

Actually, research has shown that drinking coffee and/or smoking cigarettes increases ANYone's mental faculties in the short-term. It is not a permanent effect, and thus intelligence does not go up or down, despite TW's claims. This was a big thing when I was taking my psychopharmacology class (I have degrees in psych and CJ, not that they've done me a whole lot of good in the job market *grin*).

Anyway,what the most recent research has shown is that when a person smokes a cigarette, or drinks a cup of coffee, they do better on tasks that require quick thinking and alertness. It has nothing to do with native intelligence, IQ, or the lack thereof. It is a broad-spectrum effect on the brain (alertness) caused by the chemicals caffiene and nicotine.


Lady Sidhe

Re: Drug Addicts??
 

Now lets add the rest of the facts. When a smoker first starts smoking, his mental activity goes from normal to high. But because he is addicted, his overall mental abilities drop over time - as the addiction continues. It explains why smokers routinely have lower SAT scores. A smoker must keep smoking incessently just to maintain a normal mental activity level. That is fact proven by studies using Positron Emmission Tomology (PET) scans.

Coffee, on the other hand, is not a dangerous drug. It does not appear on the list of addictive drugs. And it does not cause an overall diminishing of intelligence levels. Coffee drinkers typically go from normal mental activity levels to accelerated levels. Unlike cigarette addicts, many coffee drinkers don't suffer long term diminished intellectual abilities. Of course, coffee is a powerful drug. Just does not diminish overall mental abilities as cigarettes do. Furthermore, coffee drinkers don't make adjacent non-addicts physically ill.

They stuck me in a hotel room in the smoking section. I did not notice until I was suffering the typical 'someone in the area is smoking' headache. Desk told me they put me there because they had no non-smoking rooms. A problem when one checks in late. Next week I got a non-smoking room. Got a headache. Went out to the hall and smelled the drug addicts. Hotel staff immediately discovered smokers in a non-smoking room about 3 doors down. Smokers are that evil because they smell that bad and because they make non-addicts physically ill. That they have diminished mental abilities - that is their problem. And diminished mental abilities are their problem.

It is a problem especially for smokers who were addicted before 18. Something like over 90% in this group cannot quit. It is a problem we all must admit to - and let the Aprils, et al of this world learn. In the meantime, smokers have this elephant on their back and must take special considerations to protect the rights of others - because they are addicts.

Don't make me come over there. :mad:

>>Now lets add the rest of the facts. When a smoker first starts smoking, his mental activity goes from normal to high. But because he is addicted, his overall mental abilities drop over time - as the addiction continues. It explains why smokers routinely have lower SAT scores.


If that's true, then why was I Dean't List throughout 8 years of college? I took all honors classes, got an honors degree, have two degrees (Psych and CJ), and two minors (English and History). I took and passed Italian, Old English, and the history of the English Language (which involves learning to read and write phonetically, and learn the basics of Indo-European, Latin, Greek, Old High German, Old High French, Old English, and Middle English). I took several special-study classes on subjects such as The History of Ancient Rome, The History of the Middle Ages, violence and aggression, criminal psychology, and profiling, and passed them all with high scores. I graduated with two degrees, and a 3.62 gpa.

To be honest, I don't know any smokers who are below-average intelligence. Perhaps it's because I'm picky about the people I associate with, but all the smokers I know are highly intelligent, witty, and quick on their feet.

It seems to me that since the PC thing nowadays is AGAINST smokers, the studies would be skewed. Just as such drugs as prozac, which are touted as miracle drugs, were given high praise in clinical trials, but later found that they did BARELY better than sugar pills....It's all about what's popular, and about what people want, or need, to hear.

And caffiene IS an addictive drug, be it coffee or tea. Ever heard of a caffiene headache? There's a reason for that. The body reacts in a negative way when the drug is withdrawn, same as cigarettes and alcohol.


Sidhe

I know plenty of dirt stupid people who smoke.

I get out more than you ... ;)

I also know more crazy people that smoke. It's not a myth that folks with schizophrenia have a higher ratio of smoker/nonsmoker than other psychiatric illnesses and persons who are not diagnosed.

Not all smokers are schizophrenics, but most schizophrenics smoke. (79% of the schizophrenic patient population according to the first study)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
http://www.med.umich.edu/niclab/rese...izophrenia.htm

I worked in a psychiatric facility for almost three years. I worked with everyone from small children to adults, and I can offer up an opinion as to why all the crazy people smoke. They have nothing else to do. Ever been in a psych hospital? They're wretched, depressing places where people are warehoused like animals in a zoo. All they have to do is fight and smoke, and they do plenty of both.

Besides, the evidence indicates that schizophrenia is genetic...

Sidhe

Long term care and acute care are very, very different.

You've been in the wrong hospital.

Goodness, just think of what you might have accomplished if you hadn't smoked.:)

aside- How come you haven't done anything with all that education? I see waitress/ driving instructor in your profile.

Well, the main reason I haven't done much with my education (aside from working in a mental hospital for three years--whoohoo) is because I live in Louisiana. It's very difficult to get a good job down here, which is sad. You get paid $15 an hour to flag traffic for road construction, but you only get paid $7 an hour to do a job that requires a degree...*sigh*

My family is here, and I really don't want to move. Most jobs I go for, no matter how skilled, tell me I'm overqualified. I mean, whaddaya do? ((YOU SMOKE CIGARETTES!! WHOOHOO!! :D )) So my hard-won diplomas are just collecting dust until someone doesn't give a hoot that I'm overqualified, I guess....

Sidhe

Not sure if the long-term care/acute care comment was for me, but to reply anyway, our hospital did both.

All of our wards were lockdown wards except for an open adult male and open adult female ward, and not many of the adults made it to the open wards...those who did didn't stay there very long because they couldn't handle it and had to be moved back to the lockdown wards.

We did short-term care for children with behavior problems, daycamp-type care for kids with only slight behavior problems, long-term behavior-mod, on lockdown wards for teenagers with both psychiatric problems, some of which were acute, and behavior problems (for lots of our kids, we were the last stop before jail)...for the adults, it was strictly long-term care/acute care. Most of these adults will spend the rest of their lives in the hospital on locked wards, and many of them have been there since they were children, moving up through the wards as they aged. These people are severely schizophrenic, or have severe personality disorders, or are dangers to themselves or other people. 90% of them are noncompliant with medication, meaning that they can't be released because they end up refusing to take their meds and wind up right back in the hospital in a few weeks, or they wind up in jail for assault and battery, vagrancy, or behavior that disrupts the public. All of the adult patients we had were acute. They were actively delusional and very violent, the females more so than the males.

So I've worked both, if that answers your question.

Sidhe

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gah, I'm sorry. In my childhood I spent a lot of time in Louisiana. I always knew when we were crossing the state line because I could feel a wave of depression coming over me like an inky cloud. It didn't seem so bad last time I was down there, for my grandfathers funeral. Still I could sense it as I crossed the border at ten miles under the speed limit...

I feel your pain, which is why I fled Missouri 7 months after I got my degree.

Is there some known or theoretical reason why females would be more violent than males? I would have expected the reverse.

The reverse (psychotic males are more likely to be violent) is also my experience.

Usually when we get females that are violent toward others they are drunk. Also, the majority of times I've had to put females in restraints (yes, there are exceptions, and I'm thinking of a few right now), it has been because of self-injurious behavior.

In the three years I worked at the psych ward, I found that the females were much more violent overall than the males. I think it may have something to do with hormones...who knows? All I know is that the females were much more prone to fight over a perceived slight, they lost all sense of personal hygiene (some had to have doctor's orders to make them bathe) and were much more devious and sneaky. The males tended to be not so violent, unless they were actually actively psychotic. Now, the boys were kinda bad, but generally, if you appealed to their vanity ("dude, he's making you look stupid if you fight him. just ignore him, and he'll be the one who looks stupid.") than the females. You try to get in between two females, and they forget about each other and try to kill you. I don't know...but I've worked at a couple of psych wards, and I've always been warned about females by the employees and doctors, so there must be something to it.

Sidhe

I've also found that the females are usually in for violence, such as killing their children in horrible ways....one smothered her child, one put hers in the oven...or attacking people and trying to kill them. The men are in for things like exposing themselves, public menace/vagrancy (due to med noncompliance), acting psychotic in public, things like that. Some were in there for assault or battery, but none for murder, whereas most of the females were in for things like physical violence and murder.

Sidhe

Is it possible the 'system' will give your their most violent females but not the most violent males? A function of how the legal system makes decisions that can vary between states?

There are three possibilities:
1) Crazy women are more violent than crazy men.
2) Crazy violent men aren't given the benefit of the doubt as much as women on the insanity defence.
3) Crazy women who aren't violent aren't put in asylums as often as nonviolent crazy men.

And any combination of the above, of course.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nah, it's the state. I've dated women from there, they're all insane.

I'm going with crazy people are different down south ...

Or perhaps we are seeing another force at work here.

There are ABSOLUTELY more violent males in the general population than violent females.

The ratios hold for crazy people.

But in many communities, instead of being placed into mental health treatment, mentally ill criminals end up in and stay in jail. Some of you have probably seen the documentaries indicating that there are more crazy people in prisons than in nuthouses. It's a common theme on "The Big House" and "Supermax" shows on Discovery Channel and History Channel.

Given the difference in treatment for the "flower of southern womanhood," it may be more likely for female criminal offenders to be seen as mentally ill or for that to be understood to be the primary problem.

(My hospital operates a very active, nationally recognized Jail Diversion program.)

Well, I don't know if it's the state or the courts *grin*, but I really think it's because women are, as a general rule, more volatile than men.

A lot of our kids were little jailbirds, and the only reason they came to us was because we were their last chance. In my experience, the kids we had who suffered from organic brain damage weren't violent. The ones who really had problems weren't violent. It was the gangsta wannabes who gave us the problem. In my opinion, they shouldn't have been taking up space in a psychiatric ward that could have gone to someone who REALLY suffered from psychiatric problems. Plenty of the ADULT females had simply moved up the wards. One girl started out in the children's ward, moved up to the teen ward, and on to the adult ward. Two that I worked with personally on the teen ward ended up on the adult ward, one of them AFTER she'd been discharged and ended up in jail for two months.

I was thoroughly disgusted working there because, as far as the particular teen ward I worked on (there were two--I worked on the DNP...the developmental neuropsychiatric ward, where the kids were SUPPOSED to have both mental illness and mental retartdation). I found that in the three years I worked there, maybe five of the kids actually had organic brain damage, or actual mental illness. The rest of them were little brats whose parents had let them get away with so much for so long that they were terrified of their own kids and had called the cops on them for things like assault, battery, and the like. It soured me on psychology because rather than make these kids take responsibility for their criminal actions, they were giving them a psychiatric excuse for their behavior. What these kids needed was a good switching, applied when necessary.

You know, it's a shame that, nowadays, if your kid runs wild, it's your fault because you didn't discipline them....but if you try to discipline them, you're an abusive parent....*sigh*

Sidhe