This one goes out to the nicotine addicts and their apologists:
In one of the largest analyses to date of the dangers of passive smoking, researchers found that smoke-free laws reduced the rate of heart attacks by an average of 17% after one year in communities where the bans had been adopted. The benefit increased with time: After three years, the rate had dropped about 26%. The biggest declines in heart attacks were seen among non-smokers and people between the ages of 40 and 60 years…. While smoking tobacco is known to heighten risk of heart attacks over a lifetime, there is some evidence that even short exposure to second-hand smoke can raise the risk of heart attacks. It can increase blood pressure, cause blood platelets to become sticky and injure cells that line the interior walls of blood vessels—all factors that can promote heart attacks.
One physician who has seen first-hand the effects of second-hand smoke on heart attack rates is Richard P. Sargent, a family doctor in Helena. He and some colleagues noticed a sharp drop in heart-attack admissions at the city’s main hospital about three months after a ban against smoking in bars, restaurants and casinos went into effect in June 2002. Then in December of that year, opponents succeeded in getting the ban revoked. “We performed an ideal experiment,” Dr. Sargent recalls. “We turned [the ban] on, and we watched the heart-attack rate go down. We turned it off and watched it go back up.”
The people who succeeded in getting the ban revoked undoubtedly refer to themselves as pro-life. They have sown the seeds for a renewal of the ban and probably for bans elsewhere.
Not quite a perfect experiment – it could be that cigs screw with your health in the short term, but you compensate in the longterm. Perhaps when you cut out the smoke arteries open, but perhaps they open to wider than they would have been without exposure to smoke.
Aspirin does something that is the opposite of this – prevents heart attack by thinning your blood, but there is evidence that in the long term you adjust so if you stop taking it you are worse than you would have been without it.
Not saying this is the way it works, just chiming in for arguments sake.
And the way I see, it’s not really a ban on smoking. It’s rules on where folks can smoke. People can still smoke, they just have to go to the proper place to do it. Just like I have to go to the lavatory to pee, they have to go to the smoking area to smoke. I don’t go home smelling like smoke, and they don’t go home smelling like pee.
correlation or causation?
@4 Parsnip: Causation.
There was a clear intervention done (particularly in Montana, where it was done in crossover fashion). There is a well understood mechanism in basic science to explain why such an effect would occur.
It’s good to think about such things when studies like this are published. This is one case where the science is solid.
Damn you and your science Golob!
I officially stand corrected. Fuck.
@1 “The people who succeeded in getting the ban revoked undoubtedly refer to themselves as pro-life.”
Huh? Where the hell did that come from?
@3 That’s the right way of looking at it. There are plenty of behaviors that are generally restricted to certain designated areas. Adding smoking to that list just isn’t that big of a deal.
#3
Rob, just to convince us – here is Seattle – pl post pix of you pissing …. please.
And to the smoking stuff, glad I have never smoked at all.
Next to be banned will be barbecues, then fireplaces. Both of those emit cartons worth of alleged second-hand smoke. Then maybe someone should think about banning those asbestos brake pads, the ones on all the cars (unless you’ve got porcelain pads). Then Mommy ‘Merica might be happy for a minute…
I suspect that it is already illegal to build barbecues and fireplaces and vent the exhaust directly into a Casino. Maybe we should apply the same standards to burning tobacco that we apply to everything else in the world.
Oh geeze…fallacy of causation anyone? Run the experiment in a community where dietary habits don’t change and the food supply remains constant (all those trans-fats stay put in other words), and nobody exercises any more or less then they always do, and see what you get.
9, Barbecues are held outdoors, and don’t fill a closed in room with smoke. Fireplaces are vented to the outside for the same reason. People can still barbecue, have fireplaces, and smoke. The just have to do them under the appropriate conditions.
What smoker would expect to puff punishment-free where people are conditioned to not expect second-hand smoke? Honestly. It’s like holding my boyfriend’s hand walking down the street of a small town. Yeah, individual rights blah blah, but we know it’s inflammatory to flout convention so we have to be prepared to run like hell or fight or whatever.
@ 11, what makes you think that Helena’s dietary habits changed and the food supply remained constant during the period in question?
13, It has nothing to do with flouting convention. It’s not a non-smoker is offended, it’s that they are physically injured by the smoke.
Well, shit… I’m no libertarian; I support universal healthcare and public education and stuff like that. Still, I think that unless my actions are hurtful to society, I should be free to do them.
Although I can easily find plenty of studies that second-hand smoke is harmful, I couldn’t find any evidence that the amount of smoke you get in bars and casinos (as opposed to living with or being raised by a smoker) justifies banning smoking in them.
I guess I stand corrected.
@9 don’t use terms like ‘alleged’ where there is plenty of solid evidence to be had.
@11 if the main cause were due to dietary changes, we should expect the annual rate of heart attacks to fluctuate similarly in other places or other years. Check “Graph 1” out on this page, I see no more than about 2% change year over year: http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/epht/crudeh…
oh wait, that graph was showing crude rate per 10,000, so ~2 people out of 10k is <1% change year over year. Also, that was only hospitalizations for heart attacks, but should still be a fair figure. Also, note this wasn’t just Helena. From TFA: “The studies, conducted since 2004, involved a combined total of roughly 24 million people.”
I’m so tired of seeing the same “correlation isn’t causation” trope from people who have no clue about how observational epidemiology studies are done.
@18, No kidding, I used to work for one of Canada’s top cardiologists, my mother is his research coordinator. Dr Salim Yusuf is one of the doctors at the forefront of these studies, he headed the study that showed the day you quit smoking, you cut your risk of heart disease in half. Within two years, your body has repaired itself so it’s as if you never smoked at all. There is mountains of research and documentation and lab work that shows cigarettes are BAD for you, whether you smoke, or the person next to you is smoking. It has no hidden positive effects like red wine or dark chocolate. In a nutshell, cigarettes are legalized suicide, so if people want to kill themselves, they can at least not bring anyone else down with them – take it outside.
Wow i love numbers… studies even slightly unbiased are extremly hard to perform. Correlation is not Causation. Theres no doubt that smoking either first hand or second hand is bad for you period. Just dont start throwing out this study proves it or those numbers are all the data I need, becuase there is no perfect study. Eventually smoking will not be allowed in any public area, so what happens when lung cancer and heart disease doesnt get reduced by the amount all the test data would predict. wasn’t to many years ago we stopped putting lead in gasoline or in paint. how about emmisions from the cadillac suv that cardiologist drives? there are so many known and unkown negative factors in our health that everbodys love affair in hating smoking would be almost humorius, if it wasnt so serious. You all want to help peoples health than ban McDonalds and about 99% of the crap that is sold in stores.
Thoughts comments welcomed on this post
desistohater@yahoo.com
Ok so I live in a no-smoking condo complex in seattle. The no smoking rcw ban is for common areas of buildings not individual unit’s. K you with me so far right right. Well I am not the only smoker in the building, nor on this floor. Yet the only complaint’s for 2nd hand smoke seem to be directed at my unit, and I believe it is because I am disabled and the association is being discrinminative, because they cannot prove that the 2nd hand smoke is coming directly from my unit.
Futhermore I have a medical marijuna card in the start of Washington which gives me the right to consume my medical marijuana in my dwelling legally. So the no smoking ban is affecting my right to not only smoke a ciggarette in my own unit, But also makes it so I cannot smoke my medicinal cannabis. I think the smoking law’s are fine in public places no biggie, but in your own unit in a house you can afford after you spent 10 years on the street now that’s just fucked up and a little anal. So I filed a discrimination report with Hud and hired an attorney to sue under the ground’s of discrimination cus I am disabled and they want me to move, I will not make it that easy for this fucked up association FAIR HOUSING ACT people. Last time I checked we lived in America? choices.