the sniff test

Rosie is 52, works in a bar that's recently banned patrons and staff like herself who smoke from indulging their habit inside the building, and argues that the resultant increase in pneumonia from smoking outside may far outweigh the incidence of disease from so-called passive smoking.

"We've noticed a lot of our regular smoking patrons are not dropping by any more -- they're angry," says Rosie. "And those who still drop by will drop off one by one when the winter chills come. Either that or they'll catch pneumonia!"

"It's not so bad going out for a smoke in warm weather," says Rosie, "but I may be forced to change my smoking habits when it gets too cold to hang around outside."

"My boss complains about loss of income," says Rosie, "but he's hoping that as the new laws set in a host of non-smoking customers will replace the smokers."

"I hope so, otherwise I won't have a job!"

"Yes, it's pleasant working in a non-smoking atmosphere -- fifty smoking patrons make a hell of a stink even with the best ventilation," laughs Rosie, "but working here is not as jolly as it once was."

"One of our regular patrons is an old woman whose husband once worked here and she swears he died of passive smoking rather than a heart attack," sighs Rosie. "She's really happy about the new anti-smoking laws and believes had they existed fifty years ago her husband would still be alive."

"According to her, the fifty years Joe passively smoked while working in bars was the real cause of his death," says Rosie. "Like us, she had never even heard of passive smoking until the so-called disease was recently created by the anti-smoking lobby so she's grasping at straws!"

"When you're dealing with someone like that you have to make allowances," says Rosie, "but old Joe was 75, drank like a fish and would have died of a heart attack or a cirrhotic liver whether he passively smoked or not."

"Joe never smoked but he never complained of passive smoking," laughs Rosie. "On the contrary, he loved the smokey bar atmosphere and even when he retired he preferred to drink here rather than at home -- and so did his non-smoking wife."

"In fact, none of the bar workers I know complain about passive smoking," says Rosie, "and we laugh about the amazing number of bar workers the government tell us die every year from passive smoking. Who are these bar workers? Why aren't their grieving families taking legal action? Why isn't Joe's wife suing my boss?"

"The fact is that the government figures are pure speculation," laughs Rosie, "The death toll does not refer to real people or real corpses or death certificates that pronounce the cause of death as passive smoking."

"Do people like Joe's wife -- fired by anti-smoking propaganda -- tell the government that their loved one died of passive smoking? asks Rosie. "Is that where the government gets its imaginary death toll from?"

"Either that, or the government derives its toll by guessing the number of drinking smokers in the country and dividing that guess by the number of bar workers in the country," sighs Rosie. "The resultant magic number is then put forward as smoking related deaths."

"The death toll of bar workers might just as well be plucked from thin air -- it's pure speculation or anecdotal," says Rosie, "and in the hands of the anti-smoking crusaders these imaginary figures become indisputable facts which have been used to enact the new laws."

"I'm serious about the pneumonia threat," says Rosie. "It's a risk to go from a warm place to a cold place and then back again, especially when I'll have to breathe in the pollution from passing vehicles when I'm outside having a smoke."

"I can't understand why the government and the anti-smoking crusaders see more harm in passive smoking than in passive pollution inhalation," sighs Rosie. "I'd rather be locked up in an unventilated room with fifty smokers than with one SUV belching out its toxic fumes, wouldn't you?"

"With fifty smokers puffing away I might be crying out for fresh air after five minutes, but with one SUV belching out its toxic fumes I'd be dead in the same time."

"Don't they get it? Or are they using all this passive smoking nonsense to deliberately draw attention away from the real health risks of increased vehicle pollution?"

"Even the greenies don't get it," laughs Rosie. "Forget about global warming, what about our health?"

"Sure, smoking is a dirty drug habit in comparison with drinking and snorting and shooting up," says Rosie, ''but take away cigarette butt litter, ashtrays and the smell of smoke and you've got a pretty benign drug and I'm scared that all this passive smoking nonsense and anti-smoking propaganda is going to drive more kids towards hard drugs."

"I'm all for imposing fines on smoking litterbugs and parents who smoke in confined spaces with little children," says Rosie, "but to impose fines on the owners of private businesses for allowing smoking on their premises is Big Brother gone mad."

"I don't know how many gas guzzling SUVs and vehicles in general are on our roads," says Rosie, "but it's sure going to be a figure vastly greater than the number of smokers in our community."

"If passively inhaling cigarette smoke is harmful, then what is passively inhaling vehicle pollution -- harmless?" asks Rosie. "We can move away from smokers, but how far do we have to move to get away from vehicle pollution -- the North Pole?"

"As far as I'm concerned the government has a right to ban smoking in government workplaces and public buildings and to warn smokers and all drug takers of the risks of their habit," says Rosie. "If it is going to butt it's big nose into private workplaces and personal habits on the basis of trumped up statistics about passive smoking -- without doing anything about increasing vehicle pollution -- then we should all query its motives."

"I challenge any politician or anti-smoking crusader to take the sniff test," laughs Rosie. "Close your eyes, smell the fumes of a belching SUV, then the fumes of a person smoking, judge for yourself which type of smoke makes you feel sicker, then examine your conscience -- and your Swiss bank balance -- and tell me honestly why you're going after smokers and ignoring Big Oil and the motor trade industry."

everything is killing us!

Cerise is an ordinary woman, with an ordinary education and job and she shouldn't have to worry herself sick about everything out there that is killing us, but when the people our taxpayer dollars are paying to do their jobs aren't doing them properly, ordinary people like Cerise must necessarily get involved.

“Because so many things are killing us, and nothing ever gets done about ensuring the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe is non-toxic, I have lost faith in the whole health system,” says Cerise. “I wonder every day how these hopeless people ever wormed themselves into health professional jobs they are obviously unfit to hold."

"Now that HPV has been found to be related to so many cancers I wonder if the sexual antics of patients are going to be proscribed just like smokers have been forced or shamed into quitting?" asks Cerise. "Will every guy need to have a warning label stuck on his appendage?”

“Will throat, cervix and colorectal cancer patients be similarly refused lifesaving drugs because of their 'dirty' disease? And if not, why not?"

"HPV is now known to be the prime if not the only cause of cervical cancer," says Cerise, "so what are they going to find next? Maybe cancer of all orifices is due to HPV and that would be a shock for all those with colorectal and bowel cancer, wouldn't it?"

"We already know that a simple bacteria (Helicobacter pylori) causes stomach ulcers -- not so long ago believed to be caused by too much acid -- so if medical researchers were taken out of their straight jackets concerning cigarette smoking being the prime if not the only cause of lung cancer maybe we would get somewhere."

"And then there’s asbestos – I remember my father building a garage with asbestos cement sheeting in the early 1970s," says Cerise, "and what's more he used the offcuts to build my brother and I a cubby house."

"Dad's in his 70s now and in good health -- despite asbestos exposure and a lifetime spent smoking," says Cerise, "but my brother and I, also smokers, worry about whether asbestos exposure so early in our lives may one day affect us and, if so, whether we will be denied lifesaving drugs for lung cancer -- caused by asbestos -- because we smoke."

Read more by Cerise on this subject:

denial of life-saving drugs

health bureaucrats play God

denial of life-saving drugs

Anti-smoking health authorities the world over have indelibly linked lung cancer with smoking -- ignoring all other causes -- and now Cerise has read a recent report showing that the spiraling death rates from lung cancer are not due to increased smoking but to deliberate health policy measures denying lung cancer patients expensive lifesaving drugs (Tarceva and Alimta).

"This new report by Professor Bengt Jonsson, of the Centre for Health Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics, and Dr Nils Wilking, clinical oncologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden -- google their names if you want more details -- puts the blame fairly and squarely where we all know it belongs," says Cerise, "and I hope the fat cat bureaucrats responsible for denying lifesaving drugs to lung cancer patients -- and causing their premature death -- are suitably punished."

"In relation to treatment and survival, the Swedish report showed that the UK, New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic and South Africa have the worst records for denial of lifesaving drugs for lung cancer and the lowest five-year survival rates," says Cerise. "Apparently the USA, Austria, France and Switzerland are the best places to be if you have lung disease -- they routinely use the new cancer drugs in treatment and, because they do, they have the highest five-year survival rates."

"Interestingly, the Swedish report came out about the same time as another report linking throat cancer to HPV (a virus causing genital warts) and advising against oral sex," laughs Cerise. "This interests me because throat cancer was also supposed to be another disease caused by cigarette smoking."

"Also, I always thought that asbestos lung disease was different to lung cancer but apparently not," says Cerise. "If it is being included in lung cancer incidences and mortalities then no wonder the rates are spiraling."

"Asbestos cement sheeting was the main building material until recent decades and everybody breathed in its deadly fibers whether they were working with it or not," explains Cerise. "Like the heath hazards from smoking, asbestos disease takes years to manifest itself and some of us are susceptible to it, and some of us aren't."

"Basically, to withhold lifesaving drugs on the grounds of cost or moral judgments is abominable," says Cerise. "The health policy advisors may believe that it is hardly worth giving expensive drugs like Tarceva and Alimta to lung cancer patients because they caused their disease by smoking and should sue the tobacco or asbestos industry to get the money they need for treatment -- but what if it was caused by something else?"

Read more by Cerise on this subject:

everything is killing us!

health bureaucrats play God