When you're done with this collection there's more!
 
 

The Liberty Manifesto P. J. O'Rourke - Cato Inst.

All we have is the belief that people should do what people want to do, unless it causes harm to other people. And that had better be clear and provable harm. No nonsense about second-hand smoke or hurtful, insensitive language, please.  There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.

 

I'd rather smoke than kiss National Review - Florence King - 7/9/90

A misanthrope is someone who hates people. Hatred of smokers is the most popular form of closet misanthropy in America today. Smokists don't hate the sin, they hate the sinner, and they don't care who knows it. Their campaign never would have succeeded so well if the alleged dangers of smoking had remained a problem for smokers alone. We simply would have been allowed to invoke the Right to Die, always a favorite with democratic lovers of mankind, and that would have been that. To put a real damper on smoking and make it stick, the right of others not to die had to be invoked somehow, so "passive smoking" was invented. The name was a stroke of genius. Just about everybody in America is passive. Passive Americans have been taking it on the chin for years, but the concept of passive smoking offered them a chance to hate in the land of compulsory love, a chance to dish it out for a change with no fear of being called a bigot. The right of self-defense, long since gone up in smoke, was back.

 

Do We Deserve It? Townhall.com - Walter E. Williams - December 28, 2005

Philosopher David Hume warned that, "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." That's why we should guard against any encroachment on liberty, no matter how small. Let's look at a couple of instances where, at our peril, we've failed to do so.   The Christmas season reminds many Americans of the attack on religion. A number of stores have caved in to pressures to ban Christmas celebrations, greetings and symbols, among them: Target, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears, Costco, Kohl's, Barnes & Noble, Toys 'R' Us, and Walgreens. Cities have banned nativity scenes. Some schools have banned the singing of Christmas carols.   Much of the attack on religion had its birth with the 1963 Supreme Court decision in Murray vs. Curlett, which banned organized school prayers. For a moment, let's ignore the debate on whether that decision was right or wrong and instead focus on tactics. Suppose, in 1963, America's atheists had revealed and demanded their complete agenda: elimination of religious Christmas symbols in public places, elimination of the words "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance, elimination of "In God We Trust" from our currency and elimination of caroling in public schools. There would have been so much resistance that they wouldn't have achieved any of their agenda, including the ban on prayers in school. Given our weak resistance, you can bet the day will come when the attack on religion will include demands that crosses be removed from Arlington and Normandy cemeteries and bans on religious television or radio broadcasts.   While many Americans are disturbed by the ongoing attack on religion, they applauded the identical strategy when it was the attack on cigarette smokers. In the 1960s, when the anti-tobacco zealots started out, they only demanded "reasonable" things like no smoking sections on airplanes. Suppose they started out revealing their complete agenda: no smoking in airports, restaurants, places of employment and parks, confiscatory taxes on tobacco products, and multibillion-dollar suits against tobacco companies. There would have been so much resistance that the anti-tobacco zealots wouldn't have succeeded with no smoking sections on airplanes.   The institution of private property offers the liberty-oriented solutions to both the school prayer and the smoking issues. I believe it's a parental right to be able to decide whether one's child will, or will not, say a morning prayer. Conflict emerges because of government-produced education. While there might be an argument for government financing of education, there's absolutely no argument for government production of education. Therefore, if each parent were given an education voucher to pay for education, those parents wishing prayers, or those against prayers in school, could enroll their children in the school that meets their preference. Thus, conflict would be eliminated. Of course, a superior solution would be getting government entirely out of education.  Private property would solve the smoking issue. Suppose you owned a restaurant, and you didn't wish to permit smoking. How would you like it if people used the political system to enact laws that forced you to permit smoking? I'm sure you'd consider it tyranny, and I'd agree. But there's symmetry. It's just as much tyranny to use the political system to enact laws to force a restaurant owner who wished to permit smoking to ban smoking. The liberty-oriented solution might be to post a sign saying you don't permit smoking, and customers wishing otherwise wouldn't enter. The same principle would apply to restaurant owners who wished to permit smoking.   I fear that too many Americans have contempt for the principles of liberty and opt for solutions that employ the political arena to forcibly impose their wills on others. If that's the preferred game, then those Americans shouldn't whine when others employ the same tactic to impose their wills.

 

Lord, save us from nanny state do-gooders pushing guilt about our kids’ diets Asheville Citizen Times - Jeff Dreibus - December 24, 2005

‘The children were nestled all snug in their beds, / While visions of wheat-germ danced in their heads.” OK, that’s not quite the way Clement Clarke Moore penned it. But it’s how a childhood obesity panel at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) might rewrite “The Night Before Christmas.” The IOM, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences which is congressionally chartered to advise the government on medical issues, has decided that it’s up to them to do something about your fat kids, by gum, and they’re prepared to “Joe Camel” the snack food industry to death in order to accomplish it. Nobody’s going to have a broad face and a little round belly that shakes, when he laughs, like a bowlful of jelly if these regulation-happy meddlers have anything to say about it! Just as with the nanny state’s initial assault upon a cigarette-smoking cartoon camel 12-plus years ago (resulting in his premature death from causes other than lung cancer), the Guardians of What’s Good For Us are prepared to do battle with SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek and other animated entertainers. What’s their big beef? SpongeBob et al. are responsible for childhood obesity because they advertise foods which are “predominantly high in calories and low in nutrition” according to an Associated Press article from Dec. 7. You see, the cartoon industry, which must operate in a real-world economic environment (unlike the IOM, which is on the federal gravy train), pays its bills by creating advertising for snack food which features its lovable characters, and that’s a big no-no for those arbiters of pediatric well-being. Now, all of this might not be so disturbing if they were able to prove that there is an actual correlation between the advertising of snack foods by cartoon characters and childhood obesity. The trouble is, they haven’t, according to the AP article. “The reports said evidence is limited on whether TV advertising leads to obesity in children. Still, the panel found evidence compelling enough to call for a concerted effort to change the nature of foods being marketed to children,” said panel member Ellen A. Wartella (I am not making up this name), psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. Nonetheless, they are recklessly plowing ahead with demands for cartoon characters to promote only healthy foods. The panel said that “the government should use tax breaks to encourage the shift away from junk food and said if it doesn’t happen, Congress should mandate it.”  “But, Jeff, how could you possibly have a problem with encouraging our kids to eat healthier? Besides, it’s only one little chip out of the First Amendment to the Constitution! Is your heart really that hard? It’s for the children!” Yeah, there are a bunch of little chips lying around the base of our ever-shrinking First Amendment and quite a few have “For the children!” scrawled all over them. What you folks who would selectively relegate ol’ Amendment One to the ash heap of history don’t realize is: if they can regulate the free speech of the tobacco, snack food and cartoon industries, they can do it to just about anybody. They have even done it to NASCAR; notice how we now have the Nextel Cup instead of the Winston Cup? It’s just a matter of time before they run out of conservative and corporate voices to silence and progress to the left side of the equation. But what really bugs me is that the IOM wants to use “weapons of mass destruction intelligence” to fight baby fat! Look above my ugly mug: I bet there’s a letter to the editor up there which contains the terms “Bush administration,” “Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction,” “incomplete intelligence reports” and “deliberately misleading the American people.” This is such a popular theme amongst President Bush bashers that it will probably dominate editorial letters well into the next decade.  Now, compare these allegations to the IOM’s cry of “We’ve got no real proof but, golly, we gotta do something even if it’s wrong! People are suffering!”  Isn’t this the same federal rationale which is now roundly criticized for getting us into the Iraq war? You bet it is. But, hey, “Ain’t got no proof, but it feels right” is a hunky-dory justification when it comes to piddling matters such as freedom of speech.  And may I remind you that we, the taxpayers, are financing such very scientific recommendations. We should all be wearing a big “happy hat” about that. Merry Christmas to all, and to all — better eat right!

 

The sugar police Washington Times - Editorial - December 19, 2005

In an appalling extension of the nanny state, New York is slated to become the first city to monitor diabetics' blood-sugar levels. It plans to register them like HIV or tuberculosis sufferers and nag them when their levels aren't healthy enough. Drop the cupcake; here come the sugar police.  Sensible people will laugh at this, but New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, an appointee of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is dead serious about the Big Apple's sweet tooth. He's the man behind New York's onerous smoking ban; he doesn't shy from alleging "epidemics." Since Mr. Frieden recently told the New York Sun that diabetes and obesity will be the signature issues of his second term, this begs a question: Will diabetes be the next big thing for public-health bureaucracies?  This much is for certain: For years, the public-health establishment has been comfortable making an "epidemic" out of conditions like diabetes and obesity, which -- though prevalent and debilitating -- are not communicable and can be combated with a few modifications to personal habits.  The American Diabetes Association is not standing athwart the gates, at least not yet. Last week it called Mr. Frieden's ideas valuable, which comes as no surprise given the ADA's occasional use of the "E" word in policy papers and official statements (and its obesity scaremongering as well.) It hedged, however, insisting that permission from sufferers would be necessary before entering people into a city diabetes database.  If the ADA holds fast on the permission issue, it will clash with Mr. Frieden and his cohorts: They are all too eager to coerce. Last week the health commissioner dismissed concerns about doctor-patient privilege. "We will ensure that the utmost care will be taken to keep people's information protected," he said.  We won't hold our breath, however. This is a classic case of permanent government inventing a new mandate in which the permanent interest groups all too often acquiesce. Having all but conquered germ-born diseases like tuberculosis and cholera, a city bureaucracy now needs another reason to exist. It will need to raid people's refrigerators and living rooms, but that is no matter, since the measure comes as a regulatory decision. At least for now, real voters have no say.  No one denies diabetes' ill effects on Americans: There are nearly 21 million sufferers nationwide on whom one of every 10 health-care dollars is thought to be spent. But who put city bureaucrats in charge of peoples' eating and exercise habits? The sugar police don't want to answer that question. In reality they are trying to install themselves as regulators of citizens' personal lives. The rest of us should oppose them.

 

Smoke Got In Their Eyes Washington Post - Leonard Glantz - December 18, 2005 The writer is a professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at the Boston University School of Public Health.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the health branch of the United Nations, has announced that it will no longer hire smokers. Its spokeswoman said, "As a matter of principle, WHO does not want to recruit smokers." The "principle," according to the spokeswoman, is: "WHO tries to encourage people to try and lead a healthy life." By this action WHO has transformed its war against smoking to a war against smokers. On its new job application, WHO asks applicants if they are smokers. If the applicant answers "yes," the application will be discarded. With the hanging of the "No Smokers Need Apply" sign on its door, WHO has joined a long line of bigots who would not hire people of color, members of religious minorities, or disabled or gay people because of who they are or what they lawfully do. To outlaw discriminatory hiring practices, both state and federal governments have passed a series of anti-discrimination laws that all share an underlying basis: The only legitimate job requirements are those that are related to the applicant's ability to do the work, as long as they do not endanger others. In the language of the law, employers may impose bona fide occupational requirements. Thus, it is one thing to ban smoking in the workplace but quite another to ban employees who smoke away from the workplace. What WHO's new policy says is that it will not hire any member of a group that constitutes 25 percent of adults in the United States -- no matter how well qualified, dedicated and caring they are -- because of activities away from the workplace that have no impact on their job performance. Under WHO's policy, if Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler applied for a job, only Hitler, the sole nonsmoker in the group (and someone who would not allow anyone to smoke near him), would be eligible for consideration. The organization's "principled" stand could, and logically should, be applied to other unhealthful activities. While WHO would be the first to note that smoking is the leading cause of premature deaths, there is no reason this policy should not be applied to the second- and third-leading causes and to various other unhealthful activities in which so many engage. And, of course, if WHO succeeds in eliminating smoking, some other activity will take its place as the number one cause of premature death. WHO's logical next step in amending its application form is to ask for the height and weight of applicants so it can discard the applications of obese people. In adopting this policy, WHO is not acting in its capacity as a health care organization but rather as an employer. And the principle that it argues for is that employers can impose job requirements based on what its employees do off the job. One can only imagine WHO's reaction to a tobacco company that requires all its employees to smoke or a gun company that requires them all to keep a gun and ammunition in their homes. The position that WHO has adopted would neatly support such ludicrous employment requirements. I imagine that the health organization sees itself as leading the way in encouraging other companies to adopt similar oppressive and arbitrary job requirements. In doing so it encourages the most coercive form of social control short of outlawing smoking. Other than the very rich, people must work, and WHO's position is that smokers should not be allowed to work. The proper response to such an oppressive condition of employment is for federal and state governments to adopt laws that prohibit job discrimination based on activities that employees engage in outside the workplace that have no impact on job performance. Several states have already adopted such laws, and WHO's actions demonstrate the need for them in every jurisdiction.

 

Crying “Smoke” in a Crowded Theater National Review Online - Shawn Macomber - December 15, 2005

In the wake of a recent study which (cue bad pun) breathlessly warns that adolescents who see characters smoking on the silver screen are nearly three times more likely to start smoking, the usual suspects — Smoke Free Movies, Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids — are once again demanding that every film depicting smoking in a positive or even neutral light to be branded with an “R” rating. To do any less, they claim in a recent full-page ad in the New York Times, is to participate in the “knowing recruitment of multitudes of new young smokers.” Reason’s Jacob Sullum has already penned a good take-down of the study, noting, among other things, that the survey of 6,500 10–to-14 year-olds it is based on “did not consider which came first, the movie viewing or the smoking, which you’d think would be a minimum requirement for drawing a causal inference.”  Then again, does anyone believe there was any way this National Cancer Institute-funded study would not have found a correlation between youth smoking and movies? Was the National Cancer Institute just going to say, “Hey, we checked it out, but it just wasn’t there. Bring back Joe Camel!”? Media-circus studies such as this always begin with the causal inference and work their way back to the evidence, which on examination here is not nearly as dramatic as the state attorney generals’ calling for studios to place free anti-smoking ads on DVDs. Nevertheless, the report’s lead author, Dr. James Sargent has been going far beyond causal inferences in interviews. “Let’s imagine a kid who’s a little insecure about their masculinity,” the Dartmouth professor told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “He sees Clint Eastwood, a very masculine actor, light up a cigarillo and that becomes part of his notion of what he wants to be. That changes him from being someone who’s against smoking, like most little kids before the third grade, to someone who sees it as something that might get them a little more toughness and masculinity. So they try it.” Well, so long as we’re using our imaginations, what about the kids who potentially cracked their heads open and risked permanent damage to their spinal chords attempting head spins after seeing the Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo? Or ate ridiculously large fat-filled burgers glorified in the Nickelodeon movie Good Burger? Or decided to try their hand at dangerous motorbike jumping after seeing last year’s Motocross Kids? Han Solo no doubt seemed tough and masculine to many kids in Empire Strikes Back, mostly for driving like an idiot and mouthing off to guys with guns. And to think all of these are — tsk, tsk — PG-rated films. How has the republic survived? Here’s the heart of the matter: The original Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system was created as a response to a 1968 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the rights of states and cities to keep certain books and films available to adults out of the purview of children. The “R” rating, as it stands today, warns parents that a film contains nudity, sexual situations, obscene language, or illegal-drug use, a fairly reasonable cultural demarcation line considering each of these acts in a public setting with children would be illegal. A 15-year-old who can’t get into a strip club, for example, shouldn’t be allowed in to see Striptease. (How Ashton Kutcher feels about this is anyone’s guess.) Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth, smoking is simply not the same. Cigarettes are not an illegal product. Parents, leatherjacket clad mallrat rebels, older siblings, and teachers all can smoke in public, in front of children and do so without consequence. Further, smokers are not rare. Their natural habitat is everywhere. They have not been added to the endangered-species list. Thus, even if the MPAA were to cave on the issue, there is not a single child in America being protected from anything in a darkened theater that they will not be privy to on any sunlit street.  Since the average “R”-rated film does approximately half the gross of a PG-13 film, groups working to affect this change are engaged in a form of politically correct economic warfare, which is, of course, absolutely fine. However, when beginning such a fight one should have better weapons than a study of dubious reasoning, hyperbolic rhetoric unsubstantiated by said study, and battle cry of “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, We don’t like it so it’s got to go.” Perhaps with friends in such high places, the anti-smoking lobby doesn’t need a solid argument. During congressional hearings with former MPAA president Jack Valenti last year on this issue, Sen. John Ensign (R., Nev.) announced, “We’re calling for personal restraint. We’re calling for personal responsibility,” which Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) quickly explained translated to, “If something isn’t done by the industry, something will be done by Congress.” Such is the state of individual rights and choice in America today when there is a bipartisan consensus on abridging them.  The blood, you see, has been in the water ever since the tobacco industry signed onto the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, effectively ending lawsuits pending against the industry by the states in exchange for a payout of more than $200 billion spread over 25 years and an agreement to fundamentally change the way it advertised its products. Considering what a public relations coup this was for all involved, it was foolish to believe it would end there.  So to get in front of cameras now and be heralded as the last standing bulwark between Evil Rich Men and Millions of Dead Kids, researchers and state attorney generals must stoke new fires to smoke out new enemies. Today it’s the movie industry. If they cave as the tobacco industry did, tomorrow it will be someone else.  The only thing left to be seen, then, is if crying "smoke" in a crowded theater will be met with scoff of derision or the easy accolades the new crusaders have become so accustomed to.

 

Does Obesity Justify Big Government? Cato Institute - Radley Balko - December 9, 2005

Last January, media outlets reported that cancer had overtaken heart disease as the number one killer in the United States. Sounds scary, no? Fear not. As is usually the case, beyond the scary headline, deep into the copy, came the real story. Both diseases are in steady decline. Cancer rates and deaths from cancer have fallen every year since the early 1990s. The thing is, incidence and mortality rates of heat disease and stroke have fallen even more over the same period (25 percent since 1990). So while it's true that cancer has "overtaken" heart disease, that's really not the story. The story is that both are in decline, heart disease remarkably so. Late last February, another health story hit the wires: Americans are living longer than ever before. Life expectancy is up across the board, among both genders and all ethnicities. The gaps in life expectancy between men and women and between black and white are shrinking, too.  At the same time all of this good news has transpired, the number of Americans classified as "obese" and "overweight" has been on a steadily upward trajectory since about the mid-1970s. In 1985, 8 states reported that at least 10% of their populations were obese. By 1990, the number rose to 33. By 2001, it was all fifty.  Of course, as you might expect, the scariest numbers about the condition of America's waistline are overblown – there are significant problems with the way the government measures obesity, which I'll discuss in a moment. But most researchers agree that the average American is carrying 10-15 more pounds than he was thirty years ago.  If you believe media, nutrition activists, and public officials, those extra 10-15 pounds portend a looming healthcare catastrophe. U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, for example, said in 2004 that childhood obesity is "every bit as threatening to us as the terrorist threat." A congressionally commissioned report from the Institute of Medicine published in the fall of 2004 called for massive government intervention to stave off the crisis. One author said we need "nothing short of a revolution." The World Health Organization warned "If immediate action is not taken, millions will suffer from an array of serious health disorders." But if we've been getting fatter for 30 years, shouldn't we be seeing at least the front end of this coming crisis? Why are we getting healthier? In fact, a closer look at the statistics suggests that even some of the diseases most associated with obesity are in retreat. Take cancer, for example. In 2002, the BBC reported researchers had found that "the more excess weight a person carries, the greater their risk of certain types of cancer." In 2004, USA Today echoed that claim. "The nation's current epidemic of overweight and obesity is likely to drive up cancer rates in coming years," the paper wrote. The Associated Press wrote that, "heart disease and diabetes get all the attention, but expanding waistlines increase the risk for at least nine types of cancer, too" (other sources put it at ten). But of the ten types of cancer commonly associated with obesity, deaths from nine – pancreatic, ovarian, gall bladder, stomach, prostate, kidney, colal-rectal, cervical-uteran, and breast – have decreased since 1992, some of them significantly. Only one – pancreatic cancer – has seen an increase in mortality rates over that period. And heart disease? Case Western Reserve University researcher and obesity skeptic Paul Ernsberger notes that "The greatest improvements are in cardiovascular disease deaths, which are most strongly linked to obesity." As noted, the gap in life expectancy between black and white is shrinking. But at the same time, blacks as a group have put on more weight than whites. Incidence of obesity among black women, for example, jumped 11.7% between 1988 and 2001, compared to 7.3% among white women. Yet black women increased their life expectancy by 2.3 years, versus 1.3 years for white women over that period. It's true with men, too. The rate of obesity among black men jumped by 7.5%, versus 7.0% among white men., yet black men on average added 4.2 years to their lives, versus 2.8 for white men. So blacks have narrowed the longevity gap with whites, even while widening (pardon the pun) the "obesity gap." In 2003, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study commissioned by the Center for Disease Control that said 400,000 annual American deaths are attributable to obesity. A Lexis search reveals that as of late fall of 2004, that 400,000 figure had been cited over 1,000 times in mainstream media outlets. It was also routinely cited by politicians, activists, and bureaucrats as justification for large-scale government intervention to curb our pudginess. At a Time Magazine-ABC News summit on obesity in June of 2004, attendees were inundated with the refrain that "obesity will soon overtake smoking as the number one cause of preventable death in America." Demands for government action inevitably followed. But there were fatal flaws in the CDC study's methodology. First, it was a "meta" study, which incorporated data from dozens of other studies, some of them dating back to the 1940s, and attempted to apply that data to today's demographics. Second, the study used the Body Mass Index as its arbiter of obesity, a crude formula that factors only height and weight, and which consequently mislabels as "overweight" or "obese" people who are extremely fit. According to the BMI, for example, half the National Basketball Association is either overweight or obese. But few would suggest they're out of shape or unhealthy. Third, the study assumed that all premature deaths by obese people were caused by obesity – a leap of faith, to say the least. Finally, the study lumped the "overweight" in with the "obese," even though there's little evidence that overweight has any seriously ill-effects on health. The study's own data, in fact, showed no correlation between being overweight and premature death, and in fact showed some benefit. In December of 2004, the CDC reluctantly admitted its study was flawed, but only by a little -- 20 to 25 percent. Critics insisted the flaws in the study's methodology was much more significant, and in response the National Institutes for Health finally commissioned a review. In April, an independent team of researchers led by the University of North Carolina's Katherine Flegal released a new study sharply at odds with the original 400,000 study. Flegal's team determined the original study exaggerated the effects of obesity by some 300 percent. She put the real number of annual deaths attributable to overweight and obesity closer to 100,000. What's more, the new study found that modest overweight actually protects against premature death. When adjusted for the lives saved by extra weight, the number of deaths due to obesity falls to around 25,000 -- putting the original figure off by a factor of fifteen. A subsequent internal investigation revealed that CDC officials were actually made aware of the original study's flaws during the peer review process. So why was the more alarmist study published and relentless promoted anyway?  As it turns out, one of the co-authors of the original 400,000 study was Dr. Julie Gerberding. Gerberding also happens to be the current Director of the Center for Disease Control. Comments from members of the internal investigation team reveal that the study was likely published over objections from other scientists at the CDC because the head of the agency's name was on the study. Gerberding still refuses to accept the new numbers. She has told the media that the CDC will continue with its anti-obesity campaign, and the campaign will continue to ignore the subsequent study. Local and state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, regulators at all levels of government, and public health advocates have since seized on the idea that nearly a half million people are needlessly dying every year because of their love handles. The Bush administration has earmarked millions of federal dollars for anti-obesity initiatives (though not nearly enough for the obesity warriors). Congress is considering menu-labeling laws, some in Washington have suggested taxes on high-fat or high-sugar foods, and others are calling on the FTC to regulate the marketing of junk food. Many states have banned junk food from school cafeterias and vending machines. And the Medicare program announced last summer that it would begin considering paying for treatment for obesity, a new entitlement that could prove to be more costly as the prescription drug benefit. America is at war with obesity. We could eventually come to find, however, that this war's origins are dubious as the sinking of the Maine. None of this is to say extreme or morbid obesity is healthy, or even benign (though again, there seems to be some modest protective effects to carrying some excess weight). The decline in incidence and deaths from heart disease and cancer are almost certainly due to advances in medical research and technology. We're getting better at uncovering these diseases early, and with pharmaceutical marvels like Statin drugs and chemotherapy, we're making huge leaps in treatment once we've diagnosed them. And it's of course likely that the gains we've made would be even more significant were the most obese among us a bit more svelte.  But the notion that our expanding waistlines have put us on the verge of a calamitous offensive against our health care system simply isn't borne out by the evidence. And so these incessant calls for immediate, large-scale government interference in how we grow, process, manufacture, market, prepare, sell, and eat our food ring hollow, hyperbolic, and needlessly invasive.  The Seattle Times recently did an investigation of the obesity hype, and found that much of the panic could be traced back to an aggressive campaign in the late 1990s by the pharmaceutical companies with diet drugs like Phen-Phen in the pipeline to get the government in the business of weight-watching. In 1996, the industry convinced the federal government to move the goalposts when it comes to determining the definition of "overweight" and "obesity." At hearings dominated by researchers with ties to the pharmaceutical industry, an FDA panel eventually agreed to the change. One magical night in 1997, then, some 29 million Americans went to bet healthy, and woke up the next morning "overweight" or "obese." And none of them gained a pound. Debunking junk science studies and bogus chicken-little pronouncements are important to refute the idea that obesity represents a looming healthcare crisis. But those of us who value free markets and personal liberty wouldn't support government intervention even if the worst pronouncements of the anti-fat activists were proven true. What we put into our mouths, how often we exercise, and what we feed our children are simply none of the government's business. How did we get to the point where it could be?  There are two answers to that question, and they should be considered separately. First, we've vastly expanded the concept of "public health" to include government intervention into nearly every sphere of our lives. And second, our health care system is slouching toward socialism, a troubling trend that undermines personal responsibility, and exacts a public cost on private behavior. Public Health The proper conception of "public health" is innocuous enough. There are unquestionably some threats to our health and safety for which the remedies constitute a legitimate public good. They're limited to risks to which no rational person would submit himself – examples might include communicable diseases like tuberculosis or typhoid, calamitous events like asteroid impacts or tsunamis, or biological or chemical terrorism. Under these limited circumstances, it's understandable, even advisable, for a government limited to protecting the lives and property of its citizens to take collective measures to eradicate or minimize such risks, or minimize the damage should they come to pass. But "public health" as it's advocated today goes well beyond public goods. Over the last century, "public health" has come to mean state pressure coercing us to avoid risks, even risks we knowingly and willingly undertake. The most obvious and conspicuous example was alcohol prohibition. And though Prohibition took an untold number of lives, bred corruption, and legitimized criminal behavior, it is distinguishable from more recent expansions of public health in that lawmakers at least recognized it as a failure, and repealed it (Unfortunately, we don't seem to have learned. The last twenty years have seen increasingly aggressive restrictions on the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol by local, state, and federal government). But the Harrison Act – which fired the first shots of the drug war – was passed even earlier, in 1914. Drug prohibition has marched onward since. Its episodic ratchetings-up and coolings-down have commenced to a particularly aggressive and militaristic incarnation over the last twenty-five years. Once we've accepted a definition of "public health" expansive enough for government to dictate what we can and can't put into our bodies, it's a short leap to seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws, assisted suicide bans, and prohibitions and restrictions on all sorts of other risky behavior. More recently, we've been given "public" smoking bans that extend to private businesses such as bars and restaurants. The Supreme Court recently upheld an Alabama ban on sex toys and marital aides. And parents are all too aware of the myriad regulations on the risks to which they can legally subject their children. Over just the last several years, governments at some level have prohibited motor scooters, "pocket bikes," all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, alcohol vaporizers, and fireworks, to name just a few -- all designed to keep people from hurting themselves.  So it shouldn't be the least bit surprising that "public health" might now come to include the size of our pants and the content of our refrigerators. The justification for expansions of the government's power to promote the "public health" is typically couched in "the number of lives this will save." Sometimes, we're told that a law will add x number of years to the average life. The most-used and easiest tactic is to simply state that the law's necessary to protect "the children." The ad naseum recitation of the 400,000 figure is a good example. As is a report released in January of 2004 stating that being overweight at forty would cut several years off the typical life. The public health activists at the Center for Science in the Public Interest have long been fighting for marketing restrictions on junk food, particularly on programs directed "at our children."  Longevity seems to be an obsession among the public health crowd. There seems to be no limit to the costs they're willing to endure if some policy promises to lengthen lives. It seems improbable to them that there may be people who'd sacrifice a month or two of their senior years for the lifetime of pleasure some get from a daily cigarette, a night of hard-drinking, or a slice of cherry pie after dinner. It's as if adding more days to the end of our lives were the only reason for living.  Even then, as British doctor and author Michael Fitzpatrick explains in his book The Tyranny of Health, death can't be prevented. It can only be postponed. And "death can generally be postponed only for a relatively short time by relatively intensive preventative measures," Fitzpatrick writes. That is, high-cost measures that would typically add just a few days or months to the average life. There's certainly nothing wrong with studies or public awareness campaigns designed to discover and inform us about how we can make healthier choices. It's that the "advice" rarely stops there. Inevitably, such studies and campaigns lead to calls for government policies aimed at increasing longevity, and in so doing, take options and choices away from people who may value pleasure, convenience, or indulgence more than perfect health or a prolonged geriatry. In the eloquent polemic Cigarettes Are Sublime, Richard Klein writes, "Healthism in America has sought to make longevity the principle measure of a good life. To be a survivor is to acquire moral distinction. But another view, a dandy's perhaps, would say that living, as distinct from surviving, acquires its value from risks and sacrifices that tend to shorten life and hasten dying." Classical liberals should argue against the ever-expanding "public health" initiatives not only because they're supported by junk science or manipulated data (though that's often the case), but because the freedom to risk, indulge, and "sin" are essential to preserving individual liberty and a free society. Governments of free people aren't authorized to ensure good health, they're charged with securing liberty, which most certainly includes the liberty to hold bad habits. Socialized Medicine The other chief reason why "public health" has been able to include ridiculous measures like obesity legislation and seat belt laws is because of our increasingly collective system of healthcare. Even private health care has a collective component to it. Today, routine, maintenance-oriented doctor visits are typically paid for by employer-provided health insurance, calling to mind the old Milton Friedman axiom about how generous we tend to be with other people's money. Health insurance by definition pools risk. But many states (as well as the general culture of the health care industry) put restrictions on so-called "medical underwriting" – or allowing health insurers to vary premiums base don risk, the same way auto or life insurers do. All of these factors together create a system of perverse incentives which undermine the notion that we ought to let people take personal responsibility for their own health and well being. Healthy people subsidize unhealthy people. When the consequences of poor decisions are shared, there's less incentives to make good decisions. And that's just the private sector. At the same time, politicians seem to be falling all over themselves in a rush to expand Medicare and Medicaid benefits for the aging, politically potent Baby Boom generation. The Cato Institute estimates that the new prescription drug benefit could in the end exceed a trillion dollars. Medicare's noodling with the idea of covering obesity treatments could very well end up costing nearly as much. This creeping socialization of medicine gives government new license to meddle with our private affairs. It creates a climate where excessive state interference in the most intimate of personal matters – what we put into our mouths – becomes not only acceptable among the electorate, but desirable. After all, if that cheeseburger you're eating clogs your arteries and puts you in the hospital, your poor choices will be reflected in my health insurance premiums. If you're on Medicare or Medicaid, it'll show up in my taxes. That's exactly the argument the government put forward in the summer of 2004 when the Department of Health and Human Services announced that Medicare would consider covering the costs of obesity treatments, including diet plans, counseling, and gastro-bypass surgery, all new frontiers for preventative government intervention. HHS officials insisted that the change would save taxpayers money over the long haul if obesity were prevented or treated before the ill-health effects associated with the condition begin to present themselves. It isn't difficult to see how this argument could be applied in a larger sense – that we need to tax fatty or sugary foods, for example, to save everyone money on health insurance premiums and to keep the obesity problem from bankrupting Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, that exact argument has been made – and by a credentialed conservative, no less. Writing on National Review Online, David Frum wrote: And as Americans struggle with an epidemic of obesity - and the ensuing costs to the taxpayer - conservatives who favor (as almost all conservatives do favor) Medicare and Medicaid need to ask themselves whether their easy libertarian attitude to the worst practices of the fast food industry retains its relevance. Big Gulp drinks and super-sized fries are making America sick - and you are paying the bill. A little moderation would cure a lot of medical and fiscal ills; and a little incentive might induce that moderation. It's bad enough hearing that kind of talk from the left. But when it comes from the right, too, it's a bad harbinger for what might be ahead. The solution to this is to return some semblance of personal responsibility to the health care system. Health or Medical Savings Accounts, for example, enable consumers to roll money not spent on routine medical procedures into a retirement account, tax free. In contrast to the current system -- which if anything incentivizes poor decisions -- HSAs or MSAs encourage consumers to take care of themselves. Money not spent on visits to the doctor's office is money saved for retirement. Another suggestion would be to free up health insurers to do medical underwriting. The Bush administration has said it sees no federal barriers to the practice, so to the extent that barriers exist, they're likely at the state level. Congress could facilitate the process by passing legislation (justified by the Commerce Clause) that would allow consumers in any state to purchase health insurance from companies in any other state, under the laws and regulations of the state where the insurer is incorporated. This would not only free up health insurers to medically underwrite, it would create a kind of competition between the states to ease regulatory burdens to attract insurers. The result would unleash market forces on the task of finding the best carrot-and-stick approach to encouraging healthy lifestyles. Insurers would compete amongst themselves for customers, while states would lower regulatory barriers while competing for insurers. Currently, there's much debate over whether the ill-health effects often associated with obesity are from obesity itself, or from the sedentary activity levels that often accompany being overweight. Hundreds of insurers competing with one another to both attract consumers and develop plans that reward the healthiest habits among their patrons (which of course benefits the insurers in the way of lower healthcare costs) might bring us closer to an answer to such questions. At the very least, if each us were solely responsible for the consequences of our diet and activity level, the point would be rendered moot from a public policy perspective. The bizarre thing about the obesity debate is that less than a decade ago, the very thought of it was often discussed only in parody, or in a reductio ad absurdum context. Opponents of the tobacco lawsuits often invoked the idea of trial lawyers suing fast food restaurants as one example of the "parade of horribles" that might follow should the tobacco suits be allowed to go forward.  Well, we're here now. This is post-reductio America. If the anti-obesity proposals currently up for debate become law, it's difficult to come up with any aspect of our lives that's out of the reach of the public health activists. Or, as one advocacy group that represents the food industry has put it, the question will no longer be "what's next?" ...but "what's left?"

 

State's smoking ban should leave us fuming Yakima Herald Republic - By Drew Toop - December 6, 2005 Drew Toop attends Davis High School

So Washington wanted a smoking ban. And they got it. So now what?  Well, a lot of things.  It may seem strange that a nonsmoker such as myself would care about such a thing, but believe me, I do. When voters approve such a measure 63 to 37 percent, something's up.  For starters, why did so many nonsmokers (I can't imagine many smokers approving this measure) feel it was necessary to tell others what to do? I can see the government banning smoking on its own property: sidewalks, schools, courthouses, etc. But people telling private businesses what to do?  That's really what it is, telling other people what to do.  If I own a bar, for example, it's assumed that many, if not most, of my customers are going to want to light up. No one should walk into a bar and expect to smell fresh mountain air. It's just common knowledge.  Now, if I don't want to smell cigarette smoke, I can choose to not enter that bar, or leave if I'm already in it. Why should the smokers inside have to stop just because one person doesn't like it?  For some reason though, 63 percent of the voter turnout thought that those smokers should.    This measure proved two trends that have long been growing nationwide. The first, the overwhelming persecution of smokers, whether casual or chain. And two, the overwhelming demand people seem to have to control other citizens' lives. Now, the vast majority of us out there know of the deleterious effects of smoking. Yes, there's the increased chance of cancer. Yes, there's the increased chance of emphysema. It's so kindly posted on the side of every box of cigarettes, as well as other tobacco products. People, smokers aren't stupid.  If people know that smoking can be harmful, but still choose to do so, why should that bother you? I can understand concern about one's own health, and that's why a ban on sidewalks and in publicly owned buildings makes sense.  However, if you don't have brains enough to figure out that you don't have to go to restaurants with a smoking section, then maybe you don't have the brains enough to vote.    Personally, I'd prefer to be around smokers than nonsmokers. They tend to be more interesting and traveled than the numerous white-bready, nonsmokers one encounters in the average eatery or store. So, why not, then, a nonsmoking ban? Nonsmokers are dangerous to my sanity. Let's ban all of them. They're bad for the brain; you know, always telling people what to do. Let's make it a law that everyone in a public space has to smoke at least two cigarettes before exiting a building in public.  Why is it that so many people want to control other people's lives? If a deli serving food from Bhutan wants to serve snake, why, then, does it bother you as long as they tell you what you're about to order? If I want to sell liquor and television sets on Sunday at my local shopping outlet, why do you care? You certainly don't have to come to my establishment and give me your money.  Nevertheless, the rants of this blowhard will probably fall flat.  There are still going to be the seat-belt laws, the Sunday laws, the smoking bans. Soon, there will be codes instructing business owners that they must carry an on-hand doctor in case any customer should fall ill. It's a health concern, after all. Just like the smoking ban. We'll call it Infirmitive Action.  In fact, fetch the forms right now; I feel like I'm going to throw up.

 

The busybodies are at it again Townhall.com - John Stossel - November 30, 2005

Smoking can kill you. That's why I don't smoke, and it's why you shouldn't, either.   There. I've just done the only things that should be done in a free society to stop people from smoking: I've told you that it's dangerous, I've urged you not to do it, and I've even set a good example. If you'd like other people to be healthy, you should also discourage smoking, too.   But if you'd like to be free, and you'd like your neighbor to be free, that's all you should do. It isn't my business to come into your home or business and stop you or your guests from smoking. If you like smoking so much you're willing to give up years off your life -- 6.6 years for the average man -- that should be your choice. I have no right to force you to stop.   The busybodies, however, want to force you to stop. When they get themselves elected, they can. Sadly, it's the busybodies who most often run for public office. Most of us want to run our own lives, and help people by selling them things, or offering them charity or advice -- any of which they can take or leave. People who want to run other people's lives are ... different. They are the people we should be most worried about.   I once interviewed the mayor of the tiny community of Friendship Heights, Md. He got his town to pass the most stringent anti-smoking law in America. It banned cigarette smoke outdoors.   "We're elected to promote the general welfare, and this is part of the general welfare," he told me. After I interviewed him, he was arrested for touching a 14-year-old boy's genitals in a bathroom at Washington National Cathedral. The village council finally repealed his law. Finally, we know what it takes to get an anti-smoking law repealed.   Unfortunately, the busybodies keep running for office and, once elected, keep imposing new restrictions on our freedom.   So far, they haven't prohibited smoking entirely. So far. But Tom Constantine, who ran the Drug Enforcement Administration under President Clinton, once told me: "When we look down the road, I would say 10, 15, 20 years from now, in a gradual fashion, smoking will probably be outlawed in the United States."   That is the road we're moving down. New York and California already ban smoking in restaurants and bars. All but two counties of West Virginia have some sort of anti-smoking law. Two cities in Georgia have, like Friendship Heights, banned smoking in public parks. This week, Chicago's city council may ban smoking in most public places.   The excuse is secondhand smoke. But there's only flimsy evidence that secondhand smoke is harmful. Studies were done on people who lived with smokers and were exposed to huge amounts of secondhand smoke at home and in cars. The idea that restaurant patrons are threatened is silly, and it's even sillier to fear exposure outdoors. But the politicians have become zealots.   Granted, secondhand smoke is a nuisance. But so are many other things.   If I don't like secondhand smoke -- and I don't -- I can choose to go to restaurants that don't have smoking, just as I can choose restaurants that don't have bad music. If I don't want to work in a smoky place, I don't have to.   But when the politicians ban smoking in bars, people who actually like old-fashioned smoky bars are stopped, by force, from enjoying the kinds of establishments they like. Smoky bars cease to exist. Workers who don't mind smoke are deprived of jobs. Can't the smokers have some bars?   Most Americans don't smoke. If we make it clear we want smoke-free restaurants, many existing businesses will choose to go smoke-free and new ones will open. That's a much better idea than politicians imposing force on everyone.   Some people think the government must decide everything. But when government decides, minorities, even large minorities, lose rights.   When we get to make our own decisions, we don't all have to make the same decisions. Some of the time, at least, we can all get what we want -- even when we don't all want the same thing.

 

Passive thinking is fatal The Times (UK) - Tim Luckhurst - November 29, 2005

AS MPS CHOOSE today between partial or total bans on smoking in public places they must ask themselves whether lying to promote a cause is ever legitimate.  The question is urgent because the claim that secondary smoking kills is alchemy, not science, and honest anti-smoking lobbyists know it. The theory that cigarette smoke kills non-smokers was dreamt up 30 years ago by anti-smoking activists; only after inventing it did they attempt to prove it.  Dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies have followed. All point to a compelling consensus that there is no causal link between passive smoking and fatal illness. One of the most comprehensive studies was published in the British Medical Journal in 2003. It concluded: “The results do not support a causal relationship between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality.”  That was unsurprising. The International Agency for Research on Cancer notes that of 23 scientific studies into the effects of workplace exposure to second-hand smoke only one found a statistically significant risk for lung cancer. One in 23 is what objective science calls an anomaly.  Even the research director of Action on Smoking and Health admits: “A lot of the studies that have been done on passive smoking produce results that are not statistically significant according to conventional analysis.” In plain English that means there is no convincing evidence that secondary smoking kills.  That is why anti-smokers have resorted to asserting that secondary smoke is responsible for problems such as asthma and bronchitis instead of fatal diseases. It is why they claim that “there is no safe level of environmental tobacco smoke” instead of trying to enumerate a death toll from a syndrome that does not exist. In 2003 the BMJ’s editor confessed that the debate about secondary smoking is “more remarkable for its passion than its precision”. Sir Richard Doll, the scientist who proved the link between smoking and lung cancer, said: “The effect of other people smoking in my presence is so small it does not worry me.” It should not worry MPs either.  Parliament should assert the primacy of facts. Disliking cigarette smoke is reasonable, but pretending that secondary smoking kills means abandoning science for quarter-truths and irrational sanctimony.

 

Anywhere except inside and outside Townhall.com - Jacob Sullum - November 16, 2005

If you've gotten used to smoke-free bars, here's a new concept to wrap your mind around: smoke-free cigar lounges. This innovation comes to us courtesy of Washington state's voters, who recently approved an initiative that bans smoking in nearly every indoor location except for private residences.   The ban makes no exception for businesses whose raison d'etre is tobacco consumption, even if they have ventilation systems that whisk smoke away as soon as it's produced. By forbidding smoking within 25 feet of entrances and windows, it even threatens to eliminate sidewalk smoking sections and quick outdoor cigarette breaks.   As these provisions suggest, the real motivation behind government-imposed smoking bans is not to shield customers and employees from secondhand smoke, although that rationale is popular with the general public. For the activists and government officials who push the bans, the main point is to discourage smoking by making it inconvenient and socially unacceptable, transforming it into a shameful vice practiced only in privacy and isolation.   That doesn't mean everyone who voted for the Washington ban, which will be the most restrictive state law of its kind in the country when it takes effect on Dec. 8, is eager to save smokers from themselves. By and large, I'm sure, the ban's supporters simply wanted to avoid tobacco smoke without having to make any sacrifices.   For example, they did not want to have to choose between tolerating smoke and passing over otherwise appealing bars and restaurants that allow smoking. Instead they decided to force the owners of those establishments to change their policies by threatening to fine them and take away the licenses on which their livelihoods depend.  Contrary to the propaganda put out by the initiative campaign (which raised about $1.4 million, more than 100 times as much as the opposition), support for the ban probably had little to do with the possible long-term health effects of secondhand smoke. It's hard to believe there are many people who sit in smoky bars and worry that, if they stay there for 30 years, their tiny risk of lung cancer might increase slightly.   People who object to secondhand smoke are much more likely to be worried about the immediate smell and discomfort. But they feel that if they pretend to believe the smoke is not only bothering them but (SET ITAL) might be killing them (END ITAL), their complaint becomes a legally enforceable right.   There is nothing noble about this impulse to impose one's own tastes and preferences on everyone. "People ... stood up and said we believe this is the right thing to do," an American Cancer Society spokesman told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer after the vote. "We're proud to stand along [with] others who are trying to protect their community."   How much courage does it take, in a state where nonsmokers outnumber smokers by four to one, to declare that the minority's desires should count for nothing, even when business owners want to accommodate them? How admirable is it, in a state where 80 percent of restaurants already are smoke-free, to insist that the rest follow suit?   The employee protection excuse does not make this demand any more reasonable. As a nonsmoking Seattle bartender told The Seattle Times, "You know what you're getting into when you work in a bar. If I had a problem with smoke, I'd get another job."   Secondhand smoke is, in any case, not the main concern of those who promote smoking bans in the name of "public health." Laws like Washington's are "one of the most effective ways to provide the strong incentive often needed to get smokers to quit," according to John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health.   "We know tough indoor laws are a motivator to quit," a spokesman for the Washington Department of Health told the Everett Herald. "We want to help people do that." How could smokers be anything but grateful?

 

The authoritarian odor of I-901 Seattle Times (Editorial) - Bruce Ramsey - November 2, 2005

That canny old Communist, Deng Xiaoping, once exhaled a lungful of burnt tobacco in the presence of Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, a headstrong woman who, Deng knew, hated smoke. China's leader did not cotton to criticism about human rights, and he wanted to make a point. He said, "In my country people are very free. Our people are not oppressed." This was dung of another spelling, but Deng was having fun. He sucked down another hit of Nicotiana tabacum and exhaled, saying, "I understand that in some countries people who smoke are isolated in special rooms." That was in 1979, when nicotine addicts in America were just starting to be isolated in special rooms. A few years later, they were driven outside to huddle around doorways. Now comes Initiative 901, which would drive smokers out of every restaurant, tavern and bar and 25 feet from every entrance or open window. It is unreasonable. It is also mean. Taverns and bars are places for the enjoyment of lawful chemicals — and, for some reason of human biology, a smoke goes well with a drink. Most bars and taverns allow both. Some restaurants do also; some have divided sections, and some forbid smoking entirely. A free society, meaning one in which you and I are free to make our own reasonable decisions, calls for a certain tolerance. If 20 percent of the people smoke and 80 percent do not, there will be some places that allow smoking and some that don't. The traditional American way to do it is through the principle of ownership. Let politicians set the rules for public places and private owners set the rules for private places. Each chooses for the space they control, and let each hear the complaints. As people's thinking changes, the rules for the spaces around them will change. My neighborhood, which is so progressive that 2-ounce chocolate bars are organic and cost $2.79 each, has four restaurants within four blocks of my house. All ban smoking. There are two taverns. One allows smoking and the other bans it inside but has outdoor benches for the incorrigibles. That suits my neighborhood. A different neighborhood will do it a different way. A few weeks ago, I stopped in the old downtown of Centralia, a town whose tradition of tolerance, if you know labor history, is none too good. I ate at a diner that had been there for more than half a century. It is too small for a non-smoking section, and allows smokers everywhere. The owner told me half his patrons are tobacco users. I-901 imposes the same intolerant, absolutist rule on Centralia as Seattle. It is the same rule for Wild Ginger and the Five Point Cafe. Diversity is extinguished, discretion erased, freedom gone — and not only inside all spaces where employees work, but 25 feet from every door, open window or air vent. The smokers who now cluster around doorways on blustery November days will be forced out into the rain or under a dripping tree. I-901 says: If you want to smoke in a bar, tavern or restaurant, go to an Indian reservation. Only there will it be allowed. Thus the tribes are granted another commercial monopoly. Somehow, the argument about the public health does not apply to them. It is a thin argument anyway. The plain fact is, if you don't want to be around cigarette smoke, it is easy to arrange your life so that you almost never smell it. A few jobs are offered that put one close to smokers, but not many, and no one is forced to take them or to keep them. Now and then in a restaurant you get a whiff of cigarette, but in my experience, not much and hardly ever. I-901 is not about health really. It is about one group of people who want to set the rules for everyone else.

 

Case against secondhand smoke vanishes into thin air Chicago Sun-Times - Dennis Constant - October 22, 2005

Despite the claims of anti-smoking groups that research studies have conclusively proved that secondhand tobacco smoke causes lung cancer, the city councils of Arlington Heights, Evanston and Wheeling rejected smoking bans. The three Illinois municipalities have created significant restaurant industries that play an important role in their economies, and the council members concluded that the risks of loss of businesses were not worth the health benefits that some claimed would result from a ban on smoking.  Now the Chicago City Council is considering banning smoking in virtually all restaurants, bars and commercial buildings. Anti-smoking groups with a collectivist political agenda, allied with "cancer industry" organizations that rely on fear to enhance their considerable cash flow, have filled the media with claims about secondhand tobacco smoke that are questionable at best, and fraudulent at worst. It's important to look past their shrill propaganda and examine their claims without bias. The keystone of their argument for banning indoor smoking is that exposure to "secondhand" smoke is a serious health hazard that causes lung cancer. To hear them tell it, there simply is no debate: Studies conclusively have shown a causal connection between lung cancer and secondhand tobacco smoke. In fact, the research studies tell a different story -- a story that largely has been ignored by the media. A study often cited by anti-smoking groups is the 1993 study by Michael Siegel, "Involuntary Smoking in the Restaurant Workplace," published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which declared that non-smoking restaurant workers have a 50 percent higher risk of lung cancer than the general population. However, a peer review of the study completed in 2000, authored by Martha Perske, revealed that the claimed 50 percent increased risk was based on six studies that had absolutely nothing to do with secondhand smoke in restaurants, bars, or anywhere else. Small increased risks for lung cancer were found in food service workers, but there was no evidence in any of the six studies that food service workers had been exposed to tobacco smoke! According to Michael Fumento, writing in Health Care News, in 2003 professors James Enstrom of UCLA and Geoffrey Kabat of the State University of New York reported in the British Medical Journal that their 39-year study of 35,561 Californians who had never smoked showed no causal relationship between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality. Fumento also reports that in 1999, an Environmental Health Perspectives survey of 17 studies of environmental tobacco smoke and heart disease found only five that were statistically significantly positive. And in 2002, an analysis of 48 studies of environmental tobacco smoke found only 10 studies that were significantly positive, one that was significantly negative, and 37 that were not significant in either direction. Fumento adds that in 1975, when many more individuals smoked in restaurants, cocktail lounges and transportation lounges, the concentration of tobacco smoke then was equivalent to 0.004 cigarettes an hour -- a very small amount. Despite the claim of anti-smoking groups that scientific studies unanimously have shown that secondhand smoke is killing thousands from lung cancer, the truth is that the vast majority of such studies failed to find any statistically significant link. The arguments of anti-smokers are sometimes ludicrous. They claim that smoke contains 4,000 poisons and carcinogens, but a 2005 California EPA analysis found only 405. Not only that, the average American diet contains about 10,000 poisons and carcinogens. Perhaps Chicago should ban food instead of tobacco.

 

The Scofflaw Swimmer Government takes too much authority and not enough responsibility. Opinion Journal - Peggy Noonan - September 29, 2005

...The day before hurricane Rita hit Texas, last Friday, I saw on TV something that disturbed me. It was not the usual scene of crashing waves and hardy reporters being blown sideways by wind gusts. It was a fat Texas guy swimming in the waves off Galveston. He'd apparently decided the high surf was a good thing to jump into, so he went for a prehurricane swim. Two cops saw him, waded into the surf and arrested him. When I saw it the guy was standing there in orange trunks being astonished as the cops put handcuffs on him and hauled him away. I thought: Oh no, this is isn't good. This is authority, not responsibility.  You'd have to be crazy, in my judgment, to decide you were going to go swim in the ocean as a hurricane comes. But in the America where I grew up, you were allowed to be crazy. You had the right. Sometimes you were crazy and survived whatever you did. Sometimes you didn't, and afterwards everyone said, "He was crazy." Last week I quoted Gerald Ford: "The government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." I was talking about money. But it applies also to personal freedom, to the rights of the individual, including his right to do something stupid as long as it's legal, like swimming.  Government has real duties in disaster. Maintaining the peace is a primary one. But if we demand that our government protect us from all the weather all the time, if we demand that it protect us from rain and hail, if we make government and politicians pay a terrible price for not getting us out of every flood zone and rescuing us from every wave, we're going to lose a lot more than we gain. If we give government all authority then we are giving them all power.  And we will not only lose the right to be crazy, we'll lose the right to be sane. A few weeks ago when, for a few days, some level of government, it isn't completely clear, decided no one should be allowed to live in New Orleans after the flood, law-enforcement officers went to the home of a man who had a dry house, a month's supply of food and water, and a gun to protect himself. The police demanded that he leave. Why? He was fine. He had everything he needed. The man was enraged: It was his decision, he said, and he was staying.  It is the government's job to warn and inform. That's what we have the National Weather Service for. It is not government's job to command and control and make microdecisions about the lives of people who want to do it their own way.  This sort of thing of course has been going on for a long time. In Katrina and Rita it just became more dramatically obvious as each incident played out on TV.  Governments always start out saying they're going to help, and always wind up pushing you around. They cannot help it. They say they want to help us live healthily and they mean it, but it ends with a guy in Queens getting arrested for trying to have a Marlboro Light with his Bud at the neighborhood bar. We're hauling the parents of obese children into court. The government has increasing authority over our health, and these children are not healthy. Smokers, the fat, drinkers of more than two drinks per night, insane swimmers in high seas . . . We are losing the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs and demands of the state. Again, this is not new. It's a long slide that's been going on for a long time. But Katrina and Rita seemed to make the slide deeper.  It is hard for governments to be responsible, and take responsibility. It takes real talent, and guts. But authority? That's easier. Pass the law and get the cuffs.  I want to mention the media's part in this... ...TV is there to be watched. Each network and channel succeeds if you watch. They try--they're in business after all--to do everything they can to make you watch. They give you pretty reporters and bright human-interest stories. But they also try, when they get the chance, to terrify you. They try to terrify you into watching. Rita is on a flight path into the very heart of Galveston. The storm may drown Houston. If Port Arthur is submerged it will cause massive loss of life. All humans have been ordered by all levels of government to evacuate. Flee, I tell you! Run for your lives! We will probably find out more people died of media-induced heart attacks than of Hurricane Rita itself.  If government cannot distinguish between authority and responsibility, media have trouble distinguishing between the helpful reporting of facts and the whipping up of fear. The latter not only does not help, it hurts. Here's one way: when you endlessly pound America with the idea that Armageddon is imminent, you're pushing Americans to conclude that only something big can save them, something huge, something omnipotent--like government.  Which is only too happy to take authority. And only too likely to dodge responsibility. TV people like to say they only report the story, they aren't the story. But with their constant alarms and agitation they are contributing to a bad story. It is a story of a people who are encouraged to demand that the government make them safe, when the government will not make them safe, and the people know it deep in their hearts. Still, they give the government more authority in the hope that it will take responsibility. The two cops who arrested the guy swimming in the waves before the hurricane hit Texas: they did it in front of cameras. They probably did it because of the cameras. Big media is watching. Big government has to act.

 

Smoking bans cloud free market's ability to thrive Bluegrass Institute - Aaron L. Morris - September 27, 2005

While government health officials previously focused their efforts on informing and educating smokers on the dangerous effects that smoking may have on their own health, the debate has now shifted. Nonsmokers are now portrayed as helpless victims of their neighbors’ bad habits. As a result, government officials have leapt into action to protect the rights of one group – often at the expense of the liberties of another.  Cities, states and even some countries have responded by instituting smoking bans of varying degrees in numerous public places. Some laws expressly prohibit smoking in any business, workplace or public gathering. Others specify exemptions for bars, bingo halls, smoke shops, large restaurants and other locales when their owners show up at council meetings and complain.  What all bans have in common is the emerging practice of government workers who don’t own businesses dictating how owners should conduct their operations. Publicly-employed health officials are effectively persuading an increasing number of lawmakers that business owners are acting irresponsibly by simply responding to the desire of their customers who want to smoke.  Groups involved in lobbying policymakers to enact smoking bans vary widely, but certain patterns are emerging.  Health officials on a government payroll at some level frequently lead the effort to convince politicians to enact smoking bans in privately owned establishments. Local and state health departments acknowledge no barriers in subverting their historical role of informing and educating to a new one that mandates legislative action and harsh enforcement.  Blacksmiths, smokers and the market  Business owners almost always oppose government-imposed smoking bans since their primary focus rests upon what is best for their customers. Such heavy-handed policies are invoked in spite of the fact that consumers in a market economy have the right to vote with their feet. More and more, businesses are voluntarily bowing to the will of their customers by enacting their own smoking bans.  Any business subject to a market economy must always react to the tastes, preferences and trends of its customer base. Business owners that fail to adapt their policies to the changing tastes of customers often end up broke. Customers stop buying, employees are laid off and buildings are sold to more adaptable firms willing to listen to the market.  More and more business owners are deciding to prohibit smoking in some form, without government intrusion. This movement also reflects what is happening in the marketplace – more Americans give up smoking every day, a trend likely to continue.  The market is clearly deciding that smoking is a negative habit, and its practitioners will eventually be relegated to a small niche of the population. Just as there are very few blacksmiths and buggy-whip makers, there will soon be few establishments catering to smokers.  Smoking-ban devotees languish on government payrolls  However, this market process is not happening fast enough to suit some health officials, lobbying groups and other public-health advocates. Neither is the continued existence of a few businesses that still cater to this diminishing audience. What bureaucrats demand today will naturally evolve in the coming years.  While anti-market, pro-smoking ban forces occasionally meet with some success, local policymakers who can see though their chicanery rebuke their campaigns. But unlike other advocacy groups who gracefully accept defeat, smoking-ban activists rarely accept the decisions of policymakers that don’t go their way.  When a proposal for a smoking ban is rejected, proponents will either redouble their efforts or endeavor to elect different policymakers who are more agreeable to their position. When a relatively weak ban is enacted, these advocates use the new policy as a wedge to enact ones that are even more coercive. If business owners don’t maintain their vigil, exemptions are eliminated and establishments that have dodged regulation in the past are forced to endure under the umbrella of a smoking policy established and enforced by government.  Why are advocates of smoking bans so fervent while other policy groups are more likely to accept the decisions of local policymakers? It has to do with who they are and how they are funded.  Supporters of greater government regulation and enforcement often work in government themselves. They are frequently on the payroll of state health boards, local health departments and advisory committees. Often subsidized by taxpayer funding, they have no customers to please, no donors to satisfy and little fear of losing their livelihoods. Even when there are donors to satisfy, many policy advocacy groups can actually benefit from losing a smoking-ban battle. They can show their donors and supporters how close they came and how – with just a little more help next time – they can succeed in limiting the rights of business owners and customers in the future.  Economic impact of smoking bans The actual effects of smoking bans are even more inconclusive than the science regarding secondhand smoke. Pro-ban advocates claim no negative effect on business and often go as far as claiming an economic benefit.  These allegations are spurious to say the least. Such economic studies purporting to show no effect of an enacted smoking ban have multiple and often fatal flaws in their research. For one thing, smoking bans rarely appear the same in different localities. As no two communities are exactly alike, policymakers must carefully evaluate the economic comparisons of smoking bans between them.  Before-and-after comparisons have attempted to show that business activity does not decline in establishments that prohibit smoking following the enactment of a smoking ban. However, very few of the studies attempting to make such comparisons follow the standard rigor and precision required for this type of research. Usually, the time frames are too short to be measured, few external variables are taken into consideration or economic modeling is not utilized or is simply wrong. For example, a study by University of Kentucky nursing professor Ellen Hahn attempted to demonstrate an absence of negative effects on business activity after Lexington’s smoking ban took effect in 2004. While the report is widely quoted in the media, it has been soundly discredited by researchers across the state. Dr. Paul Coomes, a leading University of Louisville economist, said the Hahn report “is less an econometric study than a short running narrative surrounding a few charts.”  Hahn’s paper contains no rigorous economic model, uses a very short time span and fails to account for many variables such as longer operating hours for bars. After warning of the dangers of making before-and-after comparisons, Hahn proceeds to do just that, claiming the results are instead conclusive. Thus, her conclusions are anything but incontrovertible.  Conversely, a study by University of Louisville economist Richard Thalheimer does contain a rigorous economic model while also accounting for many variables in play. Thalheimer’s study finds a 9 percent to 13 percent drop in demand for alcohol in bars and restaurants after Lexington’s smoking ban was enacted.  Thalheimer was unable to release specific details about the information he reviewed because it contains propriety sales data. Also, he was unable to account for 100 percent of alcohol sales. However, his study does contain analysis on a majority of alcohol sales in Lexington.  So while Thalheimer’s report showing a significant drop in demand is not perfect, it’s the most rigorous and competent analysis of Lexington’s smoking ban. While his study may have a crack in the windshield, Hahn’s paper is missing the entire front half of the car. Entrepreneurs seek ways to bypass bans  What none of these studies can take into account is the natural adaptability and flexibility of business owners and entrepreneurs. In a market economy, business owners naturally assume risks. Deciding what products to offer, who to hire and how to advertise are risky ventures to entrepreneurs. When faced with excessively burdensome regulations, it is foolish to think they will simply accept it, roll over and do as they are told.  In hundreds of U.S. cities, we have seen restaurants and bars take similar steps to circumvent smoking bans.  For example, some declare themselves “public clubs,” which often are exempt from smoking bans and charge a “membership fee” that is really nothing more than a “cover charge.” They build large decks and patios that provide open-air areas to cater to customers who still wish to smoke. Some businesses simply flaunt the law openly, paying fines or hoping no enforcer comes snooping around to check on them.  These measures are the result of enforcing policies the market has already rejected. As Americans learned during the ill-fated prohibition movement of the early 1900s, trying to regulate and enforce the desires and demands of the market is like trying to hold back the wind. Markets and the entrepreneurs who power them are flexible, adaptable and reactive. The wind always finds a way around you.  Best practices for better smoking policies  What are the best options for businesses, policymakers and advocates who oppose oppressive regulation and government intervention in the marketplace? Identify win-win solutions that inform and educate employees and consumers while still allowing business owners the flexibility to operate as they see fit. Also, public health officials need to return to the traditional role in which they have excelled – providing the best information to the public regardless of influence and advocacy.  Maybe the best way to allow consumers to migrate toward an equilibrium that balances smoking and nonsmoking establishments is to allow them to make the best, most educated choices. This can be done by finding alternatives to outright smoking bans that fully inform consumers, employees and prospective employees of a business’s policy.  One such policy is Great Britain’s “Public Places Charter,” which requires the posting of clear and obvious signage that informs employees and consumers about an establishment’s smoking status. This transparent system identifies the establishments that prohibit smoking, those that offer no protection to nonsmokers and those that have separate areas or ventilation systems. This type of informative and educating policy returns public-health officials to the role that has made them effective at reducing smoking rates in the U.S. for 30 years.  While public health officials may monitor restaurants’ kitchens for safety, their main goal is to help owners comply with safety guidelines. The difference between this type of informative regulation and a prohibitive smoking ban is clear. Customers do not have the pertinent information on the sanitary conditions of kitchens to make informed choices about where to eat. But anyone can tell if there is a smoker at the next table and make their own decision. No external intervention is necessary.  Conclusion  When public-health officials re-focus on the effective role of informing and educating as opposed to legislating and regulating, the market will again be allowed to operate freely. Trends in America clearly point away from smoking and toward cleaner and safer businesses. Unfortunately, as we learned in the era of prohibition, there is no way to legislate market forces completely out of existence and attempts to do so often result in numerous unintended consequences.  While the intentions of smoking-ban advocates are certainly noble, their methods and procedures are simply misinformed and fall prey to the myth that regulations can remedy society’s ills and fix a market that knows it is not broken.

 

The Ultimate 'Public Health' Shield Tech Central Station - Radley Balko - September 14, 2005

A PETITION from the public health movement, including the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American Public Health Association, the American Cancer Society, and of every organization generally connected to negating risk and choice at the expense of individual freedom and personal responsibility*   To the Honorable Leaders of the G8: Gentlemen: We are on the right track. We have persuaded a large portion of this Earth's governing bodies to reject sensible risk assessment, freedom of choice, and any semblance of personal responsibility when it comes to issues of the "public health." Toward that end, we have expanded "public health" to include not only threats to which no reasonable person would subject himself -- communicable diseases, for example -- but also risky behaviors we find distasteful, even when those who engage in them know full well the risks. We've done this by citing the costs of said behaviors to society, mostly in terms of health care costs. At the same time, we have succeeded in socializing health care in most of the developed world. In so doing, we've created a system where everyone has a stake in everyone else's well-being. This makes our end goal of controlling and manipulating personal behavior much easier to implement. When naysayers question what business the government has in regulating alcohol consumption, weight, or caffeine consumption, for example, we can merely point to how much public money a state effort to modify personal behavior will save in public health care costs. Thanks to socialized medicine, we've managed to make even the most private of behaviors subject to government regulation! Our triumphs are considerable: We have banned all public smoking in Ireland, New Zealand, Italy, Australia, Iran, Montenegro, Malta, Norway, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey, and Uganda. Even in America, once a bastion of so-called "personal freedom," we've secured bans in eight states and hundreds of counties and cities, effectively canceling out America's anachronistic, unhealthy addiction to principles like the "freedom of association," or "property rights." Even New York City -- icon of American ingenuity and self-reliance -- has not only banned smoking, but sends dedicated public health soldiers into private offices to issue citations for illegal possession of ashtrays. New York is currently considering a proposal to ban trans-fats from all of the city's restaurants! Which brings us to obesity. In a world where about a billion people are still at risk of starvation, we have successfully persuaded policymakers in developed nations to show great concern and consternation over obesity -- a testament to our considerable success at framing public debate. We've managed to get public officials to declare that what people eat and how often they exercise not only a "disease," but a disease that's now a "global epidemic." In America, we've convinced public officials of this looming catastrophe even as life expectancy has reached all-time highs, and deaths from the country's three biggest killers have dropped dramatically in recent years. Our zealous application of the precautionary principle and generous definition of "public good" has persuaded governments to pass laws regulating a wide range of personal behavior, including seat belt use, helmet use, alcohol consumption, food advertising and marketing, consumption of high-fat or high-sugar foods, gun ownership, indoor and outdoor smoking, use of dietary supplements, use of narcotics, use of marijuana, use of some medications, production and consumption of genetically modified foods, and, on more local levels, a panoply of other risky behaviors, bad habits, and unhealthy choices. We estimate our tireless, costly, and invasive efforts to curb undesirable behavior will in the end add weeks, perhaps months, to the tail-end of hundreds of thousands of lives.  While hammering away at "the number of lives this will save" has brought us great success in enacting restrictive public policy, we've also actually persuaded Important Officials to sacrifice lives when doing so benefits the overall public health -- even if said benefit is merely symbolic. For example, our constant haranguing of genetically modified foods convinced the Zambian government to reject 15,000 tons of GM emergency food aid despite the fact that 3 million people there were at risk of starvation! Clearly, a high-point in the influence of our movement. All of that said, there's one rival to public health we've yet to stymie. The entire world is subject to the ruinous effects of this demon, whose devastation can affect single individuals, entire communities, or, perhaps one day, every living being on Earth. It causes 3 million cases of skin cancer each year, 132,000 of them melanoma. It can be blamed for drought, famine, global warming, and thousands of incidents of heat-related mortality. According to the World Health Organization, a 10 percent decrease in ozone protection could affect an additional 4,500 annual melanoma cases. The heat this devil generates causes the wasteful use of fossil fuels to generate electricity to power air conditioning. Those same fossil fuels then work with the demon's rays to contribute to global warming! This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on public health so mercilessly, we suspect he is being stirred against it by perfidious industry, perhaps the coal and oil industries who benefit from copious use of electricity-powered air conditioning and refrigeration, the sunblock industry, or the tourism industry, which crassly sells his radiant poison for crude profit, sometimes going so far as to imply that "rest and relaxation" beneath his crushing stare would effect benefits to health! So great is his threat, scientists say it one day may bring the end to all of humanity! The only question, then, is why has government waited this long to act? It's time we did something about the sun. And while we would of course support the usual public health roadmap to eradicating such a threat -- demonizing the tropical tourism, tanning bed, and tanning oil industries as "melanoma peddlers," passing laws holding parents criminally liable for childhood sunburn, and so on -- we have something grander in mind.  We ask you to be so good as to pass a binding treaty among G8 members calling for unprecedented international cooperation to construct an extra-terrestrial shade-casting contrivance of ample size to shield all of Earth of this nuisance's warmth-wrapped, light-disguised cancer rays. That is, we'd like to block out the sun. Be good enough, honorable World Leaders, to take our request seriously, and do not reject it without at least hearing the reasons that we have to advance in its support. First, the public refuses to sensibly heed our warnings to shield themselves from ultraviolet radiation. Recent studies show that though the public is fully aware of the risks of skin cancer that accompany exposure to the sun, high percentages of the populace still insist on frequenting beaches, parks, and partaking in other dangerous outdoor activities. What's worse, some even choose to imbibe of the sun's temptuous but lethal product in "tanning beds," which replicate the sun's intoxicating effects when actual sunlight is nowhere to be found. It's clear, in fact, that many of these poor souls are addicted to suntanning. Dependence of course is indicative of an individual no longer exercising so-called "free choice," he is wholly at the will of those supplying his "fix." As is the case with marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, and junk food, in these cases, government is obligated to choose for those individuals who show they can no longer choose for themselves -- not just to save them from themselves, but to save society from the health costs associated with their poor choices. Those who continue to choose "sun n' fun" despite clear evidence that such choices lead to cancer aren't acting rationally. They're a drain on public resources. A serious approach to public health suggests the only remedy is to remove the "sun n' fun" option entirely. Second, incidence of skin cancer is on the rise. Naysayers suggest this is because technology has enabled better screening and detection. We prefer to think of it differently: Incidence is on the rise despite technology that has enabled us to identify what causes skin cancer, and our urgent pleas to avoid it.  Third, children are disproportionately affected by exposure to the sun. This project should be undertaken for the children. We feel no further argument on this point is necessary. We anticipate your objections, gentlemen: but there is not a single one of them you have not picked up from the musty old books of the Big Business or libertarian advocates of "personal responsibility." We defy you to utter a word against us that will not instantly rebound against yourselves and the principles behind policies you've already enacted in your respective countries. Will you tell us that this is too expensive, or impractical to implement? You've all engaged in a costly, impractical War on Drugs that has attempted to eradicate the use of abundant mind-altering substances, some of which man has been consuming with regularity from the time he first discovered their properties. You throw tens of billions of dollars at this "war" each year. All told between you, you've likely spent more than $1 trillion. That you fail to make any progress year after year only inspires you to spend more. Our proposal is no less practical nor less frugal than your enduring drug prohibition (which of course we support). "But," you may still say, "unlike recreational drugs, sunlight is necessary for life. Agriculture would wither in its absence. Humans produce Vitamin D from its rays, and can scarcely survive without it." Of course, the same necessity argument could be made of food. Yet many of your lawmakers are considering or have already passed a "fat tax" on people who consume it to excess, or on foods you've determined are unnecessary, due, you say, to the public health costs associated with obesity (we agree, by the way). We'll offer the same bargain: The device will be equipped to allow some sunlight to pass, but only to targeted areas of the planet. Farmers, sunbathers, and other solar consumers would pay a "sun tax" for access to these areas, the proceeds of which would be earmarked for the treatment of victims of melanoma and anti-tanning education programs, to offset the public health costs associated with harmful exposure to sunlight. Finally, you might argue that banning sunlight to stave off melanoma could have considerable unintended consequences. The energy cycle would almost certainly be inalterably disrupted, causing possible mass famine, starvation, and death. "Why should we condemn millions to death," you might say, "in an effort to save a few thousand melanoma cases, or to prevent future draughts, heat waves, or global warming that may or may not ever actually happen?" But you take similar precautions all the time. In the interests of safety, you routinely hold up progress that could benefit millions because you worry about the effects new ideas might have on dozens. Your government regulatory agencies overseeing medicine and new medical technology, for example, routinely prevent or delay access to drugs and treatments that could save hundreds of thousands of lives out of concern for the effects they may have on hundreds, or fewer. You refuse to let your citizens take their own risks when it comes to medicine, why should we let them take their own risk when it comes to sun exposure?  To the esteemed G8 leaders from Europe, you oppose (correctly, we believe) the development of genetically modified foods that almost certainly would save millions of lives the world over because of the remote possibility that such crops may, in theory, someday wreak some sort of environmental catastrophe, despite assertions from nearly every reputable scientific agency that the odds of such a catastrophe are near infinitesimal. Our proposal to shield the Earth from the rays of the sun is in truth no significant departure from public policies you already undertake: your zealous application of the precautionary principle, your usurpation of individual rights for the public good, and/or your previous efforts to eradicate bad habits and unhealthy choices in the interests of socialized medicine. In sum, we see no reason you shouldn't adopt our proposal forthwith, and begin construction on a device that will shield the Earth from the cancerous rays of the sun.   (*Petition made possible by a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation…. With apologies to Frederic Bastiat.)

 

Flick asches: do movies cause smoking? Townhall.com - Jacob Sullum - August 19, 2005

In the 2005 movie "The Jacket," Kelly Lynch plays a drunk who burns to death after falling asleep while smoking. According to the research cited by activists who object to cinematic portrayals of smoking, Lynch's character is part of an insidious plot to lure children into the habit by making it seem cool and glamorous.  Studies in this area typically define pro-tobacco messages broadly enough to include all instances of smoking, actual or implied, along with discussions of tobacco and glimpses of cigarette logos, lighters, or ashtrays. A new study that takes a more discriminating approach, looking at the behavior of the leading characters in 447 popular films released since 1990, contradicts several claims made by critics who blame movies for encouraging kids to smoke.  Anti-smoking activists assert that smoking is more common in movies than it is in real life. The new study, reported in the August issue of the journal Chest, found that, overall, "contemporary American movies do not have a higher prevalence of smoking than the general U.S. population."  Activists complain that movies put cigarettes in the hands of attractive protagonists and link smoking to success and affluence. The Chest study found that "bad guys" were more likely to smoke than "good guys" and that, as in real life, smoking was associated with lower socioeconomic status.  "Most investigators have concluded that smoking is portrayed as glamorous and positive, but our study shows that the exact opposite is true," said lead author Karan Omidvari, a physician at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark. Likewise, there was no evidence to support the idea that movie studios conspire with tobacco companies to target women or minorities.   Having shown that the indictment of Hollywood for pushing cigarettes is based largely on weak studies and loose talk, Omidvari and his colleagues were quick to say they nevertheless object to smoking in movies. Robert McCaffree, president of the foundation that publishes  Chest said, "this study...emphasizes the need for change in this area, including increasing antitobacco messages in coming attractions and films."  Stanton Glantz, an anti-smoking activist who was involved in much of the research debunked by Omidvari's study, has a different solution in mind: a mandatory R rating for movies that include smoking. Last fall his Smoke Free Movies campaign took out full-page ads in The New York Times and other publications claiming that adopting this policy "would cut movie smoking's effect on kids in half, saving 50,000 lives a year in the U.S. alone."   It's hard to say how many teenagers would be deterred by greater use of the R rating -- especially if their parents knew that a single smoking scene was enough to qualify an otherwise unobjectionable movie for the not-without-a-parent-or-guardian category. But the weakest link in the chain of reasoning that charges the Motion Picture Association of America with killing 137 (middle-aged or elderly) "kids" a day by failing to make this simple change in its rating system is the assumption that half of the teenagers who start smoking do so because they saw it in the movies.  That assumption is based on a 2003 study that found 10-to-14-year-olds who had seen movies with many smoking scenes were more likely to try cigarettes than kids who had seen movies with fewer smoking scenes. The problem with attributing this association to the modeling effect of cinematic smoking is that it's impossible to control for all the differences in personality and environment that make kids more likely to see movies with a lot of smoking in them, which tend to be R-rated movies.  Methodological difficulties aside, the size of this alleged effect is implausibly large, to put it mildly. Glantz says cinematic smoking accounts for even more real-life smoking than advertising does: 52 percent vs. 34 percent. Is it even conceivable that exposure to movies and advertising causes 86 percent of smoking? That all other factors in life together contribute only 14 percent?  At least as offensive as such patently absurd claims is the premise that every filmmaker should make his work conform to the dictates of the health nannies. Omidvari and his colleagues found that smoking was especially common in independent films, a fact they said may be due to the "antiestablishment or free-spirited" character of such movies. If anyone is making smoking seem cool, it's self-righteous busybodies like Stanton Glantz.

 

When an Ounce of Prevention Is Not Worth a Pound of Cure Tech Central Station - John Luik - August 17, 2005

It appears to be all about science. After five days of WHO-think on health prevention at the Bangkok Global Conference on Health Promotion, it would be easy to conclude that science is the foundation for everything that the World Health Organization (WHO) does on health promotion. Wherever you look there are references to the scientific basis of health promotion and how everything that is done by WHO's health promoters meets the standards of modern medicine by being "evidence-based". But the scientific basis of WHO's health promotion is about as genuine and as sturdy as a Potemkin village. It makes impressive copy in all of WHO's conference press releases and it adds a veneer of respectability to the more controversial and dangerous of WHO's plans, but in reality it has little to do with real science or with medicine that is based on the evidence of best practices. That's because genuine science is fundamentally at odds with health promotion. Or to put it slightly differently, just as health promotion is a menace to the health of the developing world so it is a menace to real science. There are two reasons for this. The first of these is that health promotion accepts if not encourages the manipulation and misrepresentation of scientific findings about the connection between health and lifestyle. Health promotion claims that by massive interventions by the public health community and the government into the "lifestyles" of ordinary people, the major diseases of the old in affluent societies can be prevented. As Gina Kolata, writing in the NY Times (April 17, 2005) observed. "The promises are everywhere. Sure, you smoked. But you can erase all those years of abusing your lungs if you just throw away the cigarettes. Eating a lot of junk food? Change your diet, lose even 5 or 10 pounds and rid yourself of those extra risks of heart disease and diabetes." But is this in fact true? Is there a scientific basis for the basic claim of health promotion that, for example, the two leading causes of death -- cancer and heart disease -- are the products of unhealthy lifestyles and that changing these lifestyles can prevent these diseases? Or are the promises of lifestyle change based on nothing more than hype?  The answer, which many will find surprising, is that after over fifty years of international data there is not good scientific support for the claim that lifestyle changes prevent diseases or increase longevity. Take, for example, one of the most extensive and publicized efforts in health promotion of all time, the Mr Fit (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial) which was specifically designed to establish the truth of health promotion by showing that heart disease and cancer could be reduced through reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking. After sixteen years of study, the intervention groups, which had received extensive assistance with exercise, changing diet and smoking cessation, had results which were not significantly better than the group that had received none of these "health promotion" interventions. Indeed, the intervention group, despite lower rates of smoking, actually had higher rates of lung cancer. What MR Fit showed was precisely how lifestyle interventions failed to reduce mortality from multifactoral diseases like cancer and heart disease.  Nor was Mr Fit a scientific fluke. Consider the Framingham study. Begun in 1950 as a longitudinal investigation of the causes of cardiovascular disease, some 5,209 men and women aged 30-59 were followed for 30 years on the assumption that those who were thinnest would have significantly lower risks for heart disease. But in 1979 when three of the study's lead researchers published their data it was found that for men the highest risk -- that is the worst life expectancy -- was for the thinnest men; men who were 25-40% fatter than the ideal weight were living the longest. For women, mortality was elevated only for the very thin and the very fat. The recent Centers for Disease Control study on obesity and mortality produced similar results.  The reason for this lack of scientific support for lifestyle changes is to be found in the nature of the diseases about which we are speaking, and the fact that we know so little about them and how they might be connected with some particular aspect of how we live our lives. Both heart disease and cancer are multifactoral diseases, generally of old age, diseases that have multiple causes. For example, heart disease alone has over 300 risk factors that can be linked to lifestyle in thousands of possible combinations, while the etiology of cancer remains a mystery. To assume then that we can confidently tell people what life-style modifications can "prevent" cancer or heart disease is something much closer to propaganda than careful science. As Dr. Barnett Kramer of the National Institutes of Health told Kolata, people believe that if they change their lifestyle they can eliminate the damage and cheat disease because of the health promotion messages from the public health community and the government. "It is easy to overestimate based on the strength of the messages. But we're not as confident as the messages state."  At its very core, health promotion is a menace to legitimate science since it is prepared to fudge, force or fix whatever science says in order that it might serve the ends of promoting health. If you think this is too extreme a description of how health promotion views its relationship to science simply listen to Marc Lalonde, a former Canadian Minister of Health and founder of the health promotion movement, speaking about the relationship of health promotion and science. "…[T]he spirit of enquiry and scepticism, and particularly the Scientific Method… are a problem in health promotion." It's somewhat worrisome that the world's primary health organization, WHO, has embraced a health strategy for which science is a problem.  Health promotion is a menace to science in that it attempts fraudulently to use science to shut down debate about its demands for lifestyle change by claiming that its position is purely scientific and not open to any challenge on the basis of personal values or choice. Consider, for instance, the typical argument frequently advanced by WHO's health promoters against eating fast foods. The health promoter will claim that it is a scientific fact that if you stop eating fast foods you will live longer. (This is likely not true, but let's suppose it is.) Therefore you should stop eating fast foods. But this argument only works if another premise, a distinctly non-scientific premise is added, namely, IF you value living longer more than you value eating fast foods, then you should stop eating fast foods.  As soon as this premise is added the phony scientific character of health promotion is exposed for what it is -- a semantic trick that hides the value-laden and unscientific nature of the undertaking. Although it could be true that one could live longer if one eats less fast foods, it is not science that tells me that I ought to value living longer more than eating fast foods. In other words at its heart health promotion is completely unscientific: unscientific in the sense that its prescriptions are not backed by science and unscientific in the sense that they rest on the moral, not scientific premise that longevity is the prime moral virtue. This does not mean that the health promoter's injunctions about fast foods are unworthy of attention, though they probably are. It rather shows that they are not the pronouncements of science so much as someone's views about a particular way of living. This means that they must be justified like every other bit of moral philosophy about the good life through careful argument, not by spurious claims of scientific authority and the force of law. At best then, the scientific foundations of health promotion extend only to its claims about the connection of disease and lifestyles, and these foundations, as we have seen, are highly dubious. When those in favour of getting the State involved in the lifestyle intervention business begin to speak about what to do about these claims, they cease to speak as exalted scientists and become simply moralists. And this has enormous implications for public policy that is founded on health promotion. When, for example, the health promoters at Bangkok tell us that we must all be thin, even if this involves the coercive powers of the state to "promote health", they must tell us -- and this they never do -- why a life of, say, 70 years packed full of the self-chosen pleasures of fast foods and chocolate is in some sense inferior to a life of 72.5 years without these pleasures. This does not mean that 70 years crammed with fast foods and chocolate is necessarily better than 72.5 abstemious years. But it does suggest is that these are not scientifically mandated choices that the proponents of health promotion can make for the rest of us under the guise of "scientific decision-making" or "evidence-based medicine", so much as individual choices about the kinds of thing that we value and the sorts of life we want. Genuine science