Stogie News: Anti-Tobacco Lies of 2010 Exposed
5 Jan 2011
Cigar smokers interested in the politicized (and often outright phony) “science” that anti-tobacco activists use to fuel their push for expanded smoking bans, higher tobacco taxes, and more burdensome regulation of tobacco products should make Dr. Michael Siegel’s Tobacco Analysis blog a daily read.
Dr. Siegel is a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health with over 25 years of experience in the field of tobacco control, much of it advocating workplace smoking bans. However, in recent years, Dr. Siegel has spent his time debunking exaggerated claims put forth by anti-tobacco zealots.
As part of his work, Dr. Siegel documented the ten worst lies of 2010. The entire list is well worth a read. Especially noteworthy is the top “lie of the year” by the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office:
The Lie: (1) “Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause cardiovascular disease and could trigger acute cardiac events, such as heart attack.”; (2) “Inhaling even the smallest amount of tobacco smoke can also damage your DNA, which can lead to cancer.”
The Rest of the Story: It is simply not true that even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause cardiovascular disease. Luckily, it takes many years of exposure before the process of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) can occur. Fortunately as well, inhaling the smallest amount of tobacco smoke does not lead to cancer. While the Surgeon General is correct in asserting that the tiniest amount of tobacco smoke can damage your DNA, it simply is not true that someone who inhales the tiniest amount of tobacco smoke may well develop cancer because of it. There is certainly no evidence to support such a statement.
The United States Surgeon General’s Office (part of the U.S. Public Health Service) is funded entirely by taxpayers and is the most prominent advocate for public health in the country. It was this that lead Siegel to conclude that the Surgeon General’s lie was the most egregious: “Given the influence of the Surgeon General’s statements on anti-smoking groups and the prominence of the Surgeon General’s statements in the media, the assertion that even a brief tobacco smoke exposure can cause heart disease and lung cancer is likely to be used successfully by anti-smoking groups to support an ever-increasingly aggressive agenda of banning smoking just about everywhere.”
photo credit: Wikipedia
Patrick Ashby
Co-Founder & Editor in Chief
Patrick Semmens
Co-Founder & Publisher
George Edmonson
Tampa Bureau Chief
These lies don't even surprise me anymore. What bothers nd most is that my tax dollars pay for it all.
What bothers me most is how the Anti-Smoking Society (A.S.S.) find every opportunity to get in bed with the media, too!
The anti-smokers are guilty of flagrant scientific fraud for ignoring more than 50 studies, which show that human papillomaviruses cause at least a quarter of non-small cell lung cancers. Smokers and passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus, for socioeconomic reasons. And the anti-smokers' studies are all based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires, so they're cynically DESIGNED to blame tobacco for all those extra lung cancers that are really caused by HPV. And those criminals commit the same type of fraud with every disease they blame on tobacco.
http://www.smokershistory.com/hpvlungc.htm http://www.smokershistory.com/etsheart.html
For the government to commit fraud to deprive us of our liberties is automatically a violation of our Constitutional rights to the equal protection of the laws, just as much as if the government purposely threw innocent people in prison. And for the government to spread lies about phony smoking dangers is terrorism, no different from calling in phony bomb threats.