Secondhand smoke

[Tiassa]

I was surprised to see this editorial in the Seattle Times. Not because it's the Times, but because I was surprised to see it at all:

A match for the challengers

Although the legislators did not respond to my challenge, 15 well-credentialed public health officials claimed there are hundreds of studies linking secondhand tobacco smoke to disease in adults and children ("Breathe deep," The Reader's View, July 19). Where are they?

The public health officials urged me to read "Monograph on Tobacco Smoke and Involuntary Smoking," volume 83 by unnamed authors from the International Agency for Research on Cancer. I did. It is not a scientific study, it is a meta-analysis; that is, a study of other studies. Meta-analyses can be valuable to guide scientists where to look for the solution to a problem, but are not themselves conclusive proof of anything. Correlation still is not causation.

So I did a meta-analysis of my own and went looking for some of the studies that were studied by the monograph. From anti-tobacco researcher Dr. Stephen Hecht, I learned, "The results indicate that questionable data alone can be pretty useless in confirming exposure to tobacco smoke. It can lead to misclassification of exposed children and inaccurate conclusions about carcinogen uptake." From the School Health Initiative Environmental Learning Disease study on children exposed to secondhand smoke: "In analyzing all of the urine samples, the researchers found uptake of the tobacco components even in the absence of reported exposure." It turns out that many popular foods of the nightshade family contain nicotine, thereby confounding sampling of exposure to tobacco.

It has to be understood, though, that the author of the piece, Gustav Hellthaler, has a stake in the Blue Moon Tavern, a gritty Seattle landmark. The place looks like a dive, but it's actually rich with history. It is a common cult story in Seattle that poet Theodore Roethke received an urgent telegram during a lecture he was giving at the University of Washington, where he finished his teaching career. According to the story, the telegram informed him that he had won a prestigious award for poetry. Roethke looked up at his class and announced, "I've just won the Bollingen--to the Moon!"

The point being that come the day Seattle bans smoking in all public places, they'll have to raid the Moon. Regularly. Until they put it out of business and snuff an amazing corner of Seattle history.

Yeah ... that's what the author has a stake in. Let that speak what it will or won't.

Nonetheless, it's a very interesting article.

:m:,
Tiassa

 

[420Joey]

Uh...


where the weed at!! :m: