Senator John Crown has said the manufacturing and sale of tobacco products should be banned by 2025.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0627/senator-calls-for-ban-on-tobacco-products-by-2025.html

The senator, who is also a consultant oncologist, said the measures should be adopted at a European level.
He said placing a ban on the manufacturing and sale of cigarettes  should be a long-term goal. 

Senator Crown said  "It will give the companies time to re-tool the machines to make something else.

"This is a time when the world is short of food. Imagine all that agricultural land being used to produce cancer causing tobacco instead of being used to grow food




Imagine the lack of tax revenue Imagine the lack of jobs. 


I always wondered how many people were employed by the large tobacco manufacturers or how many people grew tobacco.


None of these things seem to matter to these people 


Their lack of vision is astounding and their prejudice blinds them to the truth that anyone can plainly see.


Just from an economic standpoint calling for this is shortsighted,foolish and painfully stupid.

Businesses Face Choice In Smoking Ban

Businesses Face Choice In Smoking Ban

Duffy’s Pub & Grub, 717 S. Huntington St., Syracuse, will remain a smoking establishment. A sign on the door reads, “Notice to all customers: Effective July 1, 2012, we will no longer have a family room. You must be 21 years or older to enter our facility.”

Owner Greg Greed said the decision was a financial one, and an easy one at that. “Economically, adults that smoke bring in more money to my facility,” he said. “Banning it would hurt my business.”

The four or five patrons sitting at the bar Tuesday afternoon were all smoking cigarettes, agreeing with what Greed said about the ban.

He also said he believes it should be the owner’s decision on whether smoking should be allowed in a restaurant. “I already have enough government in my life,” Greed said, laughing.

Why isn't every business owner and taxpayer allowed this choice?

Wouldn't this just make sense in these tough economic times?

Parallels

http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/06/18/a-response-to-popular-ad-hominem-err-science-magazine-on-global-warming-skeptics/

I thought I knew what “science” was about:  the crafting of hypotheses that could be tested and refined through observation via studies that were challenged and replicated by the broader community until the hypothesis is generally accepted or rejected by the broader community.

But apparently “popular science” works differently, if the July 2012 article by Tom Clynes in the periodical of that name is any guide [I will link the article when it is online].  In an article called “the Battle,” Clynes serves up an amazing skewering of skeptics that the most extreme environmental group might have blushed at publishing.  After reading this article, it seems that “popular science” consists mainly of initiating a sufficient number of ad hominem attacks against those with whom one disagrees such that one is no longer required to even answer their scientific criticisms.

The article is a sort of hall-of-fame of every ad hominem attack made on skeptics – tobacco lawyers, Holocaust Deniers, the Flat Earth Society, oil company funding, and the Koch Brothers all make an appearance.

Sounds familiar

The "science " is settled right?

No one can even question it.

http://ep-ology.blogspot.com/2012/06/enstrom-sues-ucla-school-of-public.html 

This time it was not smoking, but his work on fine particulate air pollution (called PM), especially from diesel engines.  He not only published research that did not conform to the political preferences of his UCLA School of Public Health (SPH) colleagues and their political allies, but pointed out several bits of fraud being committed (by basically the same cabal) in the policy arena. 

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of his PM research, though it sounds credible based on what I know of the subject, which is limited but not nothing.  I do not know whether his results might have been outliers in the current research, though obviously they are what they are.  His second-hand smoke research certainly was good work -- I can vouch for that, and for the fact that it was more similar to the bulk of the evidence than the politicized conventional wisdom is.  Enstrom is a much better scientist, and has ten times the integrity, compared to most people in public health, so I am certainly inclined to believe him about PM.

I hope Enstrom doesn't settle,it would be excellent to see this sort of stuff go before an impartial judge.

But I will say this,I know for a fact that when you deny or ask questions abut these subjects,let's just say pollution and smoking people treat you like you're crazy.

I might not be a great scientist or writer but I do know what I can read and what my life experiences are and they simply don't add up with what I'm being told.

Dutch ignore smoking ban in bars and clubs

http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/dutch-news/dutch-ignore-smoking-ban-in-bars-and-clubs_234734.html

The smoking ban in Dutch bars and clubs is being widely ignored, according to the authority responsible for enforcing it. Almost half the cafés in the Netherlands turn a blind eye to smoking customers.

The figures come in a report by the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority NVWA based on inspections between December 2011 and May 2012. They authority says customers are still smoking in 49 percent of bars – around the same proportion as in 2011.

I guess you can say anything is banned but that doesn't mean people have to respect it.

Bits and Pieces

The case of the missing data (Old but still worth a glance)

So, heart disease remains an enigma though the striking rise and fall over the past 50 years is strongly suggestive of a biological cause. No doubt those who smoke or take insufficient exercise or whose cholesterol concentrations are greatly raised may be at "increased risk," but none can be determinant (in the way the putative biological cause clearly must be), which is why the pattern of the disease has changed so dramatically quite independently of them.


Junk Science Week: The obesity paradox

This surmise — the opposite of what you’d hear from your doctor — follows from a startling study of mortality rates among 542,000 hospital patients who suffered their first heart attacks without having had previous cardiovascular disease. The more risk factors that a patient had, the study found, the better the chance of survival.

Someone with all five risk factors that the study looked at had only a 3.6% chance of dying in hospital after an initial heart attack. The chance of dying increased to 4.2% for people with just four risk factors, to 5.3% for those with three risk factors, to 7.9% for those with two risk factors and to 10.9% for those with one risk factor.

What about patients with no risk factors at all? These were the likeliest of all to die — their likelihood of dying in hospital was 14.9%.

Researcher sues UCLA, says his firing was political


Some of Enstrom's research provoked much debate as he suggested that the negative health impacts of some pollutants had been exaggerated to impose draconian rules on industry. He also contends he is a victim of retribution for exposing wrongdoing on the state air pollution board. He previously encountered opposition to his research, funded in part by the tobacco industry, that said the health risks of secondhand cigarette smoke were not as bad as other health advocates had portrayed them.


UCLA administrators "discriminated against Dr. Enstrom based on his ideological and political affiliations and sought to purge an academic dissenter from their ranks," according to the lawsuit, which also is seeking financial damages and reinstatement.




Islamists in north Mali burn cigarettes, whip smokers


Islamists from an Al-Qaeda offshoot in northern Mali have confiscated and burned cartons of cigarettes and whipped those caught smoking as they enforce strict Islamic law, witnesses said Friday.

"Things really got lively on Friday, Islamists from MUJAO (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa) took cartons of cigarettes that were on sale and set them alight," said Moussa Guindo, who works for the town council in Bourem.

A youth from the north Mali town, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "I received 40 lashes because I was smoking and continued to smoke after I was told not to."

A civil servant in the town, also asking not to be named, said he was whipped even though he was not smoking.

"It was my friend who was smoking but they whipped both of us saying that the cigarette is Satan. Shopkeepers who still have cigarettes hide them and to smoke, you have to hide," he said.

Bloomberg vs. Science and Common Sense

I’m referring to the 2008 law that mandated the posting of calorie counts in the city’s chain restaurants. When researchers studied the law’s effect, they “found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect.”

In other words, Bloomberg is contributing to–or at least doing nothing productive to fight–obesity in the city. No one should pretend this is good health policy when our empirical research (not to mention common sense) tells us this isn’t.

Canadian airports being wired with listening equipment that 'will record conversations': CBSA

Already, though, the union representing about 45 CBSA employees at the airport is concerned personal workplace conversations and remarks could be captured and become part of employees' official record, Jean-Pierre Fortin, national president of the Custom and Immigration Union, said Friday. He added that the union only learned of the audio-recording development this week, after reporters began making inquiries.

Strange Reason for Baby's Positive Pot Test Found

In the study, urine samples that contained minute amounts of any of five baby soaps — Johnson & Johnson's Head-to-Toe Baby Wash, J&J Bedtime Bath, CVS Night-Time Baby Bath, Aveeno Soothing Relief Creamy Wash and Aveeno Wash Shampoo — gave a positive result on a drug screening test  for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana.

The researchers began their investigation after nurses at a North Carolina hospital reported an increase in the number of newborns testing positive for marijuana .

The amount of soap in the urine needed to produce a positive test result was tiny, less than 0.1 milliliters, the researchers said.

Tobacco will one day be outlawed worldwide, says expert

http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=273787

As for the “numbered days of organized tobacco,” Hausner said that public opinion surveys in New Zealand show that twothirds of the public – including many smokers – advocate complete abolition of the import, manufacture, sale and use of tobacco products so it becomes a “completely tobacco-free country.” Other countries will follow, he said, adding that he hoped Israel would eventually be among them.

The same term, abolition, was used in mid-19th century America, when slavery was legal, regarded as economically beneficial and widely supported in the South. But just a few years later, slavery was completely abolished – as if it never happened. The same, said Hausner to much applause, can happen with smoking.

“Today, we are in the midst of an irreversible process that will lead to the termination of organized tobacco,” he said.

“The environment will be completely tobacco-free. This is what people all over the world want.”

I'd have to disagree with this man.

If I were to go by what the people I see and speak to on a daily basis I'd have to say what they most want is just to be left alone.

No one I know wants to be told how to live,what to eat how to behave as though they are nothing more than children.

People I know who are adults know the decisions they make in life have consequences and they accept them and live by them.

If someone wants to fucking smoke then let them smoke.

If someone wants a fifty five ounce cup of soda let them have it.

If someone wants to load a steak up with half a shaker of salt then so be it.

I'll never understand this mentality behind treating grown adults as if they don't even know their own minds.

And honestly telling people they stink or they will look bad if they smoke is a truly juvenile way to deal with this.

I thought tobacco control the world renowned experts in why we behave the way we do (ha ha) could have come up with something better than bullying,persecuting,lying to and vilifying smokers.

They act like spoiled children who aren't getting their own way.

Stamping their feet and telling Mommy and Daddy they could stop the bad people if only,if only they had more money.

And after all it's what they're all about right?

More money....................

O.K. I'm done ranting.

On Food

I mentioned before that I work in retail.
I just never mentioned what sort of retail,oddly enough I work in the food industry.

It's not exciting or glamorous and definitely not fun,but being on the inside of the food industry even on the retail level means you get to see you know trends and how things will start to be in the future.

It wasn't too far back that I can remember the schools here started a policy of no junk allowed in kids lunches they could take a fruit snack in their lunch and  vegetable (but not potato) chips.
A complete meal was a grain,a meat,a dairy and fruit and or vegetable.

We never heard about the sorts of things you see so commonly now where teachers had to check kid lunches.

That's disturbing......

But other things I remember that didn't seem to mean too much at the time have started making so much more sense now that I step back from it and truly look at it objectively.

I did notice that in the last few years Coke and then pepsi came out with their cute mini 8 pack cans.

I remember being sort of shocked last year when people tried blaming obesity on breakfast cereals.

Of course there was the soda hoopla not too long ago.

Which makes me wonder of course if back in the beginning if you looked closely enough if you could see patterns emerging in the war on tobacco.

I'm sure looking back it was sort of evident but who ever would have believed it would have gone as far as it has?

Certainly not the "obese" people.

Because there is no"slippery slope" right?

And you know the Anti Food crowd and the Anti Tobacco crowd don't learn from one another....