Leon
05-19-2003, 11:07 AM
We've certainly heard a lot about Mayor Bloomberg's (NYC Mayor) smoking ban and Bloomberg's claim that his little ban will "save innocent lives" by helping bar patrons avoid the horrible dangers of secondhand smoke, and we've also heard about anti-tobacco activist Stanton Glantz, who claimed (http://www.no-smoke.org/HelenaPowerPoint.pdf)(PDF Download link) that smoking bans cut heart attack deaths in half. I cannot, however, find any sign that this research has yet made it into a peer-reviewed publication.
Unfortunately for Bloomberg and Glantz, real reseachers have performed a genuine large-scale longitudinal study that compared nonsmokers married to smokers and nonsmoker married to nonsmokers, and found that, when properly adjusting for other factors, exposure to secondhand smoke doesn't appear to cause any increases in mortality. (http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057)
The researchers do say a very small increase in risk "cannot be ruled out," but they could not find any statistically significant results that indicate that secondhand smoke increases an individual's health risks, at least proxying for secondhand smoke exposure using spousal smoking habits. Notably, this study has indeed appeared in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.
Does this mean Bloomberg will lift the ban and the anti-tobacco lobby will stop trying to push these bans onto the public. Or were these "public health" justifications just excuses for people to impose their values on others?
Edit: Adding Guardian article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/smoking/Story/0,2763,957231,00.html) which summarizes more of the above.
Unfortunately for Bloomberg and Glantz, real reseachers have performed a genuine large-scale longitudinal study that compared nonsmokers married to smokers and nonsmoker married to nonsmokers, and found that, when properly adjusting for other factors, exposure to secondhand smoke doesn't appear to cause any increases in mortality. (http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057)
The researchers do say a very small increase in risk "cannot be ruled out," but they could not find any statistically significant results that indicate that secondhand smoke increases an individual's health risks, at least proxying for secondhand smoke exposure using spousal smoking habits. Notably, this study has indeed appeared in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.
Does this mean Bloomberg will lift the ban and the anti-tobacco lobby will stop trying to push these bans onto the public. Or were these "public health" justifications just excuses for people to impose their values on others?
Edit: Adding Guardian article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/smoking/Story/0,2763,957231,00.html) which summarizes more of the above.