The chairman of The International Coalition Against Prohibition (TICAP), Bill Gibson, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act regarding deaths from smoking and second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure.The requested information was:
a) All information on the actual number of adult smokers in Scotland for the years 2005 -2009 and the source of the information, each years total to be shown.
b) All information on the smoking cessation rates in Scotland for the years 2005-2009 and the source of the information, each years total to be shown.
c) All information on how the smoking cessation rates were calculated.
d) All information on actual deaths in Scotland attributable to Second Hand Smoke otherwise known as “Passive Smoking” , “Sidestream Smoke” or “Environmental Tobacco Smoke” from the years 2000 – 2009
e) All information held on “Third Hand Smoke”.
(For those unfamiliar with the term, third hand smoke is the smell left on a smoker or in a room that has had smoking occur in it. More information can be found here).
For years it has been asserted by those in the pro-choice movement that the deaths attributed to smoking are essentially fabricated – there are no real bodies that have been counted, but rather the estimated figures are created through a certain set of paradigms, from computer programs to dubious classifications – such as lumping any death of a smoker as a ‘smoking-related death’.
The FOI response went a long way in officially validating this, by saying that “We hold no information about actual deaths due to passive smoking. It is not possible to give precise figures on deaths resulting from tobacco use. However, it is estimated that each year more than 13,000 people in Scotland die from smoking-related diseases”.
And of course, by defining certain illnesses as smoking-related ones, there is a lot of room for manouevere to classify any of those deaths as a result of smoking. The FOI response further explained that “The numbers of deaths attributed to passive smoking are primarily estimated from studies comparing the rates of deaths due to smoking attributable diseases among similar people who have not had such exposure.” Or, in other words, using the wholly unscientific method of turning statistics and mathematical figures into real-life dead bodies. Which, of course, is not the way the world works.
This also leads to the questions: Is a full-scale war against smokers warranted when the only supporting evidence is hypothetical numbers generated from even more estimated numbers? If policy-makers are confident enough that smoking kills enough people to all but prohibit it, where are all the bodies?
“Second hand smoke may be an irritant and an annoyance, but it’s not a cause of death. There are no body bags filled with those who have developed tumors or heart disease as a result of second-hand smoke. The body bags are filled, however, with scientists and physicians who dare go against the anti-smoking lobby and state the obvious—the science isn’t there. As much as they want to ban all smoking in all places, the health risk is grossly overstated. Whenever someone dies of lung cancer, such as Diane Reeves, the late wife of Christopher Reeves, the anti-smoking lobby uses the news as a media circus. They want to relate the unfortunate death to something… even if such a relationship has no basis in solid scientific research.”
Dr Terry Simpson MD, Scientist, Surgeon.
The case of Dana Reeve is a good one for Free Choice folks to examine. Antismokers almost universally refer to her death as being caused by “years of working in smoke-filled night clubs.” But here’s her work bio from Wiki:
===
Her many singing and acting credits included appearances on television, where she had guest roles on Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, soap operas All My Children as Eva Stroupe and Loving, among others. She performed at theatres on Broadway, off-Broadway, and at numerous regional theatres. Reeve also did a long-running commercial for Tide laundry detergent that aired during the 1990s. In 2000, she co-hosted a live daily talk show for women on the Lifetime Network with Deborah Roberts called Lifetime Live and also wrote a brief column for the defunct AccessLife.com …. ”
===
Do you see anything about “years of singing in smoky nightclubs” in there? And yet Pat McKone, senior director of the American Lung Association’s Tobacco Control division came out THE DAY AFTER SHE DIED and said, “Dana Reeve was not a smoker, but she did spend many years of her singing career in smoke filled nightclubs.” and the propaganda myth was born amid headlines like “Reeve Death Highlights Smoke Risk.”
Even if she HAD spent “years of singing in smoky nightclubs” the claim would be false: According to the EPA Report that is usually used here in the States as the “Bible” of the Antismokers for such claims, spending a lifetime living or working with smokers only results in raising one’s risk of lung cancer from about four in a thousand to about five in a thousand … the famous “19% increase.”
Antismokers love to use emotive imagery playing upon our love for our heroes and our love for our children to manipulate our feelings and attitudes toward smoking. And the Dana Reeve case is a perfect example.
– MJM