Winnipeg Free Press
02 December 1999
No connection to second-hand smoke
I would like to respond for a moment to Tracy Taylor's (letter writer) latest in a long line of ridiculous diatribes (Smoke real concern to many people, Nov. 20). I was a childhood asthmatic repeatedly hospitalized in the 1960s for asthma. I grew up in a house with four heavy smokers. My three siblings also grew up in the same smoking environment, but never developed any respiratory problems, despite being subjected to the same amount of second-hand smoke.
I was poked with needle after needle to discover that the cause of my asthma was dust, pollen and pet fur. Despite living in a house with many smokers, second-hand smoke was specifically ruled out as a cause. But those were less politically correct times. Assuming the Children's Hospital can actually locate my records and samples of allergy tests, I would have no objection to an out-of-province analysis to determine if second-hand smoke played any role in causing or exacerbating my asthma.
Pierre Ernst and others in the departments of epidemiology and bio-statistics, and sociology at McGill University wrote in a study entitled Socioeconomic Status And Indicators of Asthma in Children:
"The child's exposure to environmental smoke both in utero (maternal smoking during pregnancy) and post natally were also assessed, and an attempt made to quantify current smoking exposure by inquiring about the number of smokers in the home and the average number of cigarettes smoked per day at home (household ETS).
"Several studies have now described an association between ETS and BHR including a recent report on EIB. We were unable to demonstrate this relationship in our population. . . .
"We found the presence of a cat in the home to be associated with increased EIB and respiratory symptoms. This is in line with the findings in a New Zealand cohort where an allergic skin sensitivity to cats was an important risk factor for asthma."
With absolutely no evidence Tracy Taylor wrote, "I can't pinpoint the cause, but I can certainly see the direct results." Perhaps she would like to join me in submitting her "little canaries" medical records for an epidemiological analysis to determine whether their asthma was triggered by exposure to second-hand smoke or more likely to dust, pollen pet hair, perfume, etc.
In her letter Ms Taylor confessed she did not understand the concept of "moral fascism." In his excellent recent book, The Nazi War On Cancer, Penn State historian Robert Procter defines it as "a political disease, requiring political solutions. The Nazi campaigns against tobacco are in some sense as fascist as the yellow stars and the death camps. The Nazis tried to create a 'secure and sanitary utopia'."
The parallels go well beyond mere hyperbole. It was a vicious propaganda campaign, draconian taxation and restrictions on indoor smoking that ultimately succeeded in increasing German smoking rates by some 50 per cent between 1932-1939. Proctor writes:
"Smoking was banned in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals and rest homes. The NSDAP (National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeitierpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty. The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Herman Goering's decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches and on brief off-duty periods. Sixty of Germany's largest cities banned smoking on streetcars cars in 1941. Smoking was banned in air raid shelters, though some shelters reserved separate rooms for smokers. During the war years tobacco rationing coupons were denied to pregnant women (and to all women below the age of 25) while restaurants and cafes were barred from selling cigarettes to female customers.
From July 1943 it was illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public. Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944, the initiative coming from Hitler himself, who worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke. Nazi policies were heralded as marking "the beginning of the end of tobacco use in Germany."
WARREN KLASS
Winnipeg