Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

Dear Editor,

This is in response to the letter from Johnny Payne on Feb. 13, 2002. In your letter concerning an earlier letter by Joseph Elrod, you presented us with an anecdotal and totally unscientific theory about your personal experience with smoking. Your theory about second hand smoke causing illness in your family does, of course, go totally against all scientific evidence. On the other hand, there are some people who have adverse reactions to most any substance that can be named.

For instance, most so-called air fresheners and many colognes and perfumes cause my breathing to become very labored and give me a headache that lasts for hours. However, I am not so self-centered that I would call for a legal ban on air fresheners or perfumes, I just try to avoid them as much as possible. Other people become thoroughly nauseated at the smell of fried chicken, but they do not call for a legal ban on fried chicken because of their personal disability.

You assert that your second hand smoke has caused your family members to have respiratory illnesses, yet you getting hundreds of thousands of times as much smoke by being a smoker did not cause you to have these illnesses. On the other hand, you also said, by insinuation, that Mr. Elrod was correct. After you quit smoking in your home, the illnesses of your family members went away, thus, the extremely minute quantities of second hand smoke they encountered in restaurants, on the street, in other businesses, etc., have not caused them any problems.

You also asserted that while all of the hundred oldest persons on this earth are smokers and while the average age of death for smokers in this country is higher than for non smokers, your smoking caused your heart to go bad. Perhaps you should look to other hereditary or lifestyle problems for the cause of your heart problems. Of course it is easy to jump on the bandwagon built on lies, propaganda and twisted science and blame everything on smoking. Much easier than blaming your problems on things more difficult to change such as activity levels, diet, stress, genetics, etc.

Let’s get away from personal anecdotes for a moment and look at some scientifically correct, rather than politically correct studies. According to “Leitch DN, Keeley J, Bromly CL, et al: Effect of changes in passive smoke exposure on asthmatic symptoms [Session A39]. ALA/ATS International Conference, San Diego, Ca, 1999" there is no evidence to show that asthma or asthmatic attacks are related to passive smoke.

Take a look at one of the most prevalent lies about smoking, the 400,000 deaths per year caused by smoking. Incredibly, analysis of the ages of the 400K supposed deaths computed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) SAMMEC (Smoking Attributable Mortality, Morbidity and Economic Costs) program shows that tobacco is not a major health threat at all - the supposed victims did not die early! THE SMOKING "VICTIMS" LIVED LONGER THAN THE REST OF US, BY ABOUT 2 YEARS - 71.9 vs. 70. OVER 70,000, or about 17%, DIED "PREMATURELY" AT AGES GREATER THAN 85. Of course to perpetuate the lie, a smoker dying at any age had to be defined as a “premature” death. This often repeated lie just falls in line with the rest of the anti-smoking rhetoric. Surprised by these numbers? You won’t be when you learn more about the anti-smokers attack on truth.

Truth attacks such as the pictures of the “black lung” that Capt. Rob Pankiw, drug demand reduction administrator with the Delaware National Guard's Counterdrug Task Force, happily shows of a blackened, diseased lung and tells people that it is the lung of a 150 pound man who has smoked for 15 years. Actually it was a pigs lung purposely shot full of carcinogens. In the finest tradition of anti-smoking liars, when confronted with this, Pankiw said , “My lesson was made stronger by not passing along that tidbit of truth.” 

Of course the anti-truth campaign of the anti-smokers continues into the second hand smoke category as well. Although it has been shown that asthmatic children of smoking parents have fewer and less serious asthma attacks than asthmatic children of non-smokers, they still tell us that passive smoke causes asthma. Although the SIDS foundation has threatened to sue the anti-smokers for claiming that passive smoke causes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the liars still push this misinformation. Numerous studies, including one recently done by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have proven that even people working full shifts in “smoky” bars, much less casual restaurant diners, are exposed to so little passive smoke as to be totally insignificant and of no health danger. In spite of this, these anti-truth organizations and our own Senator Thomas try to scare us into letting government regulate private businesses with smoking bans by telling more lies about smoking in restaurants being a health risk.

You also mention wealth. People like lead counsel Michael Ciresi who helped Minnesota sue the tobacco companies (actually the smokers) got $440 million dollars just for seeing to a settlement.

Florida lawyers got $3.4 Billion in that states tobacco suit. The head of the US ACS, an anti-smoking group has a salary twice that of the President of the United States. Yes, it pays well to tell lies, twist science and make fools of US and Georgia citizens with anti-smoking propaganda.

As Mr. Elrod mentioned in the letter you refer to, it is, indeed time to let our elected employees know that we are tired of their lies, their nannyism and their constant intrusion int private property, private lives and private businesses. I have already contacted Senator Thomas to let him know that the marketplace is fully capable of letting business owners know whether or not people want smoking areas in those businesses without any interference whatsoever from government moguls.