Bets on when this happens here?
Australia: Drivers face smoking ban
Smokers could be banned from lighting up in their own cars following the New South Wales’s Government’s decision to ban the habit in pubs and clubs.
Health Minister John Hatzistergos will today support a parliamentary inquiry to debate the pros and cons of imposing a motorist smoking ban.
“Most adults are responsible when it comes to their child’s health but the few who smoke with children in the car are placing their child at considerable risk from passive smoking.
“The World Health Organisation says children are particularly at risk from second-hand smoke because they are still developing and have higher breathing rates than adults.”
We should just ban smoking completely it has worked so well with marijauna.
Didn’t this happen 6-8 years ago in Mesa or Tempe Arizona?
Tobacco companies should threaten to CLOSE ALL PRODUCTIONS in 90 days…. and CEASE OPERATIONS. (Although it would never happen). The states and federal government would freak out – that loss of tax revenue would cause the legalization of smoking anywhere!
When it’s all said and done, it’s all about the money.
Chris Vaughn
http://chrisvaughn.org
BTW, the WHO’s own second hand smoke study shows that there isn’t any conclusive evidence that second hand smoke is as harmful as smoking. I remember several years ago when the report broke, and they hushed it up – the hypocrisy of it amused me. That is not to say that people shouldn’t be considerate of others!
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs starts with physiological needs first in this order:
air
water
food
sex
The MOST important of all things before anything else can be had is AIR. Quality of air is very important. People who smoke might as well throw away the Kyoto Protocal because it is useless. Clean air is of the utmost priority. In New York, our mayor has taxed cigarettes to the point where a pack of cigarettes costs $7 and has banned smoking in all public places. It took guts to do that. Now, I can go out to a bar and not come home reeking of nicotine. People should stop smoking because the habit disrespects your temple, your church, your synagogue– the real and only temple is your body because it sustains you and does whatever you command it to do. It is your servant. We should force people to honor it. Banning smoking is the right thing to do.
P.S. Sex is number 4.
“We should force people to honor it. Banning smoking is the right thing to do.”
That is INSANE and to put it bluntly, completely anti-American and anti-freedom. Unless the smoke is infringing on another unwillingly, you can’t ban it, that’s crazy. How can you justify banning smoking in a private home or car? The legal precedents you’d be setting reach FAR beyond smoking…which of course has nothing to do with Kyoto and clean air, that;s just a crazy, lunatic-style connection you made.
What behaviors do you have that may not jibe with others? I bet I can find 15 things you love to do that I could use your logic for which to argue a ban. And they’d all be as wrong as your position here.
This is one on which I really waffle with regards to what I want vs. what is probably right. Personally, I think that smoking is a detestable olfactory nuisance. Smokers reek. Any room they have been in reeks even if they did not light up in that room. Anything they sit on reeks even if they did not light up. Here’s a little clue for smokers out there: non-smokers can pick out a smoker from 20 ft away because of the smell. They are one (small) notch below women that wear too much perfume. I rejoiced when California passed the restaurant ban. I was actually able to taste my food again (non-smoking sections were a joke). So, personally I wouldn’t mind if no one smoked.
On the other hand, minor nuisances are not illegal and smoking is a rather benign nuisance in the grander scheme of things. People should have the right to make stupid decisions with respects to their body even when all evidence points to that action being harmful. On top of that, evidence that second hand smoke is harmful is bullshit.
Although law is designed to change behavior, smoking is clearly a personal choice. Laws that ban smoking in personal locations such as a car tread too much on personal liberties. Even though I hate being behind a car with a smoker that has their window open and plume coming from their car, I have a hard time arguing that they shouldn’t have the right to do it.
15 things I love to do:
eat, sleep, sex, walking, writing, reading, watching TV, seducing beautiful women, watching beautiful women, spend time with my kid, shopping for flashlights, traveling, relaxing with a cappucino at an outdoor cafe on a warm Spring day watching passersby, swimming in azure waters, and thinking.
“But what about the Children!!!” The battle cry for every half baked law that couldn’t stand on it’s own. Ya know I’m starting to think that late term abortion (at about the 200th trimester) for the legal and political arena isn’t such a bad Idea.
Flashback – nineteen-seventy-something:
“All we want is a couple of non-smoking tables in the back of the restaurant. Honestly – that’s all we’ll ever ask for. It’s not like we want to outlaw smoking or anything like that.”
Smoking while driving should be banned! I’ve seen people driving here in the UK with a cigarette in one hand a mobile in the other! How they can drive with no hands is beyond me. It’s illegal in Brazil already, as is eating while driving and using a mobile while driving. As far as passengers smoking, that’s a personal decision for the driver surely!
The best part about this would be that smoking drivers will stop throwing lit butts out the window. Not only is it littering, but I don’t enjoy having something thats on fire thrown onto my car or under it.
Lets just replace “intoxicating liquors” in the 18th amendment with “cigarettes” and be done with it. After all, thats what all this is, the new temporance movement with a smarter marketing plan. They are just doing it peice by peice instead of all at once.
Smoking and driving is as bad as talking on your cellphone and driving. Maybe even worse, since you have a burning object in your hand. All one has to do is drop a bit of hot ash on your lap and instant accident. I’m all for the ban.
Such angry anti-smokers.
Here, have a square and relax.
I can smell someone smoking five cars in front of me on the freeway. I hate drive-thru’s where someone else pulled in before me smoking, and now I have to breathe their crap to get my food. I can’t open the windows to my apartment to let in a cool summer breeze without chain-smoking-grandma’s smoke, or yells-at-tv-guy’s smoke, or screams-at-her-kid’s smoke, or any other number of neighbors pollution. Small wonder I’m moving from Orange County, CA to Washington state. At least the new smoking law in Washington puts a minimum distance from entrances you have to be to smoke. In college, I could never go to bars to have fun, way too much smoke. Now it is fun.
Why, you ask, do I hate smoking so much? Because one whiff gives me an instant, pounding migrane. I don’t know what this medical condition is called, but it sucks. I’m all for less gov’t and personal freedom, but here is one case where second-hand smoke is massively harmful.
Smoking isn’t a right, and I have only ever met ONE considerate smoker. Banning smoking is no solution, but smoking when anyone else that doesn’t want too can possibly smell it or breathe it CANNOT CONTINUE.
Oh a couple things Thomas forgot to kick in, the EPA “study” that was tossed out of court for bias, the WHO discovery that it has no real effects, um, Nazi Germany were the first ones to push for the Second Hand Smoke ban, forces.org has all the info. If the ciggy companies would shut down production, just imagine how fast the governments of the country would have to scramble and tax the piss out of everything else to make up.
Mr Fusion, almost all of these are based on the same flawed EPA study. The EPA had the policy section of what to do about it worked out even before the study was concluded. They then had to cook the numbers to get things to work, for example lowering the threshold for ‘statistically significant’ and merging their studies together, including one that showed secondhand smoke was beneficial!
“In recent years, (the author) has received funds from the tobacco industry” pg 9
Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98 – May 19th, 2003
”… for all causes of death compared to the general German population” pg 4
Mortality from Cancer and Other Causes among Airline Cabin Attendents in Germany, 1960-1997
Not a very good argument when you are comparing younger, healthier people against an entire population, including the older and presumable more exposed. Especially with diseases that may not show for 20 or 30 years. To be valid the control group would have to be equal and not exposed to second hand smoke. They also lost several people being studied after they quit or moved to different airlines which only had the earliest years included in the study.
Passive Smoking Exposure and Female Breast Cancer Mortality
No comment, it links back to this page.
As I said earlier, that was an abbreviated list. Here is a few more. Perhaps someone might provide a link that suggests WHICH E.P.A. and WHO studies have been discounted.
Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (California Environmental Protection Agency, 1997)
http://www.oehha.org/air/environmental_tobacco/finalets.html
The National Toxicology Program’s 9th Report on Carcinogens (National Institutes of Health, 2000)
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/may2000/niehs-15.htm
Environmental Tobacco Smoke (Chapter 8, WHO Air Quality Guidelines for Europe, Second Edition) ( World Health Organization)
http://www.euro.who.int/air/activities/20050223_4
International Consultation on Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) and Child Health (World Health Organization, 1999)
http://www.who.int/tobacco/resources/publications/general/en/
Report of the Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health (United Kingdom Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health, 1998)
http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/doh/tobacco/contents.htm
Australian National Health And Medical Research Council Report (1997)
http://www.health.gov.au:80/nhmrc/publications/synopses/ph23syn.htm
”Secondhand smoke meets the requirements to be classified as a potential cancer causing agent by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for health and safety regulations in the workplace.”
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_10_2X_Environmental_Tobacco_Smoke-Clean_Indoor_Air.asp
I will stop here. If this isn’t enough to convince you that second hand smoke is harmful then nothing will.
AB CD
C’mon. Which EPA study? They’ve done hundreds. I have a difficult time finding any honest research demonstrating the second hand smoke is benign.
Mr. Fusion,
You are answering the wrong question. The question is no whether it is harmful. The question is whether it is sufficiently harmful. For example, take your last mentioned Australian survey:
“Secondhand smoke meets the requirements to be classified as a potential cancer causing agent…”
Charcoal bar-be-ques, automobile exhaust, campfires and a host of other permitted pollutants emit “potentially cancer causing agents.” I’d bet if we did enough studies we could find women’s perfume emits cancer causing agents (certainly money draining agents ;->). The real question is whether they emit sufficient cancer causing agent to warrant the legislation enacted.
This is one of those fuzzy determinations. Second hand smoke is not absolutely healthy nor is it absolutely deadly. The truth lies somewhere in between. The proponents of the second hand smoke legislation would have us believe that it is as deadly as smoking directly and that is just nonsense.
Now, that said, since it happens to annoy the piss out of me, I’m not that bothered by the second hand smoke legislation even though it is based on debatable results. Yet, even with that stance, banning smoking in vehicles is going too far and giving the government too much power to regulate our lives.
Thomas
You make some good points.
I think the issue here is about smoking in cars with children in them. The children in the car have no escape in the enclosed environment. They must sit there breathing the smoke that didn’t get filtered in someone’s lungs.
While I can be more lenient about smokers then my posts above suggest, I agree with this. If you must smoke around me, OK but just please stand downwind.
When Hitler rose to power the first thing he did was take away the right to own guns because he believed it would reduce the crime rate, the second thing he did was he made smoking illegal because it was bad for you, the third thing he did is now history….. I ask you, which was worse?
These are my thoughts!
I suppose that smoking in the open air is not good enough for you. It’s too bad that you concern yourself with things that other people do. Did your ever sit behind a semi-truck or a bus? I suppose that is better for all of us. But then again, you people probably want us to stop drilling for oil too, so we can save the caribou, grizzly bears and other endangered species.
You would be better served if you would take this energy and place it into something more worthwhile like, fighting hunger in the world.
Gee now there’s a real problem or don’t you folks know this by now.
Remember what Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying, “When you surrender personal liberty for safety, you deserve neither.”
I believe you deserve nothing!
I think is should be band to smoke in your car all together. All it does is hurt you and everyone in your car. Whats the use of smoking any way? I understand that people are addicted to smoking but really do you want the people you love in harm? think nexy time you even smoke at all.
love always, Rachel
by the way im a 7th grade student at blue moutain middle school student doing research.
Well, i think that your all right but seriously its America people will say “This is the land of the free, we are here knowing that we can do what we want in our own car.”
Meg-ann