Individual Rights Going Up in Smoke

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 5, 2001 | by John Elvin

Perhaps this is more of a last gasp than a Last Word. An emotional, pervasive campaign against secondhand smoke has been undertaken (if that is the appropriate term) in Albany, N.Y., the major city in my neck of the woods, echoing similar government-dictated lifestyle-modification efforts across the nation. Funds from the tobacco settlement have enabled New York and other states to follow in the trend-setting footsteps of California and Massachusetts, two notoriously progressive states that were breathing down the necks of smokers back when that landmark lawsuit was but a gleam in some lawyer's eye.

Tearjerker advertisements prepared by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now attempt to guilt-trip and shame smokers into giving it up. This is achieved by implying that smokers are killing loved ones, friends, neighbors, strangers. Smokers, ax murderers, serial killers -- it's hard to tell them apart.

These government ads are creating yet another victim class, encouraging the vigilante, lynch-mob mentality that in the past has produced other sordid social consequences. Soon, angry and mindless mobs will be hunting down puffers: "If that weed doesn't kill you, we will!"

It almost would seem that the establishment has to keep creating a "them" for the masses to fear and hate, perhaps as a mechanism of self-preservation. One group climbs up out of the barrel and, ker-plop, they toss in another.

But, even assuming this campaign is well-meaning and rational, are the sponsoring town fathers -- and, of course, town mothers -- aware that they are addressing just one minor aspect of the massive airborne assault on our health? Indeed, it is so.

A new report, Death, Disease and Dirty Power, by the Clean Air Task Force of the Public Interest Research Group, for example, notes that "Fine-particle pollution from U.S. power plants cuts short the lives of over 30,000 each year and harms hundreds of thousands of others by bringing on asthma attacks, cardiac and upper and lower respiratory problems."

Elsewhere, the Natural Resources Defense Council offers reams of documentation for its finding that "Cars, trucks and buses account for soot and smog that damage human lungs." And in trendsetting California the government has seen fit to place a warning on items such as manufactured fireplace logs: "Burning fireplace or wood-stove fuels, natural-gas and manufactured fireplace logs results in the emission of carbon monoxide, soot, and other combustion by-products which are known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive [difficulties]." No doubt charcoal briquettes are similar threats to our wellness, even more so than the dangerous fatty hot dogs or contaminated fish we incinerate on their embers.

In addition, California requires similar notices to customers of firms providing fossil fuels such as natural gas and petroleum, all of which soot up the air. And in Berkeley, the burning of wood in homes is a serious subject of civic debate. If the practice has not been banned, those nasty mini-forest-fires in our living rooms are next up.

These are but a few of the smoking guns. Any one of them may be a more serious health concern than passive smoking. True, anything negative about tobacco is very "in" these days and so those who feed off research grants or public contributions will cluster in that area, as will the elite, follow-the-herd media. And yet, at least as regards secondhand smoke, a few jurors remain reluctant to convict.

The Media Research Center (MRC), for instance, has shown that popular TV newscasts on NBC, CBS, CNN and ABC played up an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on secondhand smoke as a carcinogen but couldn't find much to say when a federal judge ruled that the agency had manipulated statistics in reaching its findings.

At about the same time that the media were ignoring the judge's ruling on EPA's cooked figures, the British press reported the findings of "the largest-ever study of actual exposure levels of non smokers" That study, performed by air-monitoring experts who worked in real-life situations instead of computer-modeling labs, found the danger of passive smoke "so tiny that it could not be measured statistically." Living with someone who smokes would be no more harmful than smoking one cigarette every other month for a year, according to that study.

But, even though the jury may remain unconvinced, it probably is wise that governments unload their tobacco-settlement gains swiftly. Other claimants might come to the fore. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the collusion between the tobacco companies and the government to deprive the true victims of any reparations due from tobacco-company malfeasance toward actual smokers and their heirs, past and present. Certainly some enterprising lawyer who failed to cash in on the initial bonanza will find grounds to seek a goodly portion of the settlement for these real victims of such tobacco propaganda as "You've come a long way, baby" and the "Marlboro Man" to name but two examples. It is ironic that the brainwashing techniques honed by purveyors of tobacco now are employed by the antismoking lot.