Capital Region Indoor Smoking Ban

Victoria, B.C.

Still beating that dead horse - secondhand smoke is DANGEROUS!

(at least they know better than to mention radon this time)

How interesting. Just weeks before an appeal of the bar smoking ban in California is to be heard, a 'new study' from the University of California reveals that bar workers have benefited from the current smoking ban in place there. Public Health officials here have been quick to pick this up and wave it jubilantly in the face of the Region's 'Age of Majority Coalition' (bars, pubs, casinos, long-term care homes) who are lobbying to get the bylaw delayed, and amended.

Public Health has previously had their pronouncements accepted without question. This 'study' begs some. In view of the court decision in July 1998 discrediting the 1993 EPA (Environment Protection Agency) Report on secondhand smoke, on which these anti-smoking bylaws are based, and the World Health Organization's (WHO) own recently published study of this issue, the insistence of perpetuating the secondhand smoke myth is ludicrous - especially when all we have is Public Health's 'credibility' to rely on. The following comment from Steven Milloy's Junk Science website neatly sums up this 'study':

"A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (12/9) reports that smoking bans in bars improve the respiratory health of bartenders. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, it was tested in a small population (53) of bartenders, 45 percent of whom were current smokers. Can you say "confounding factor"? Also, the study is based on self-reported health data, the unverified and inaccurate nature of which hardly qualifies as "science." The penultimate paragraph of this study says: "Finally, confounding by personal smoking and URIs (upper respiratory tract infections) could potentially explain the observed improvement in respiratory health."

For the 'study' abstracts see: Journal American Medical Assoc. (JAMA)

Better - visit: Junk Science

(Betchya Public Health doesn't want you to know that!)

Also in the health authorities' arsenal is an Angus Reid poll indicating that 65% of the area residents support the bylaw. Oh?

1. How informed are the people polled on the FACTS surrounding the issue? Have they swallowed down unquestioningly what the anti-smoking faction has fed them? Propaganda will form public opinion if repeated over and over again, and the last 5 years of unremitted brainwashing on the dangers of secondhand smoke has done its job well. Now, when 'the horse' has been legally and scientifically declared dead, they still keep on beating it. It suits the agenda.

2. Who commissioned the poll?

3. What was the question(s) asked?

4. Of the entire Capital Regional District population, what percentage was polled?

Public Health needs to be brought into accountability. Past statements made on this issue have been proven patently false, and the idea that the public accepts unchallenged whatever they're told by these people is undergoing a change. The public trust has been broken by the promotion of false science - but evidently to those with an agenda, that's just incidental.

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