Clearing The Air

Smoking bans....The Right Thing To Do?....Or an insidious pestilence in our midst?

Minnesota Representative Doug Meslow recently wrote an editorial in the Pioneer Press attempting to defend anti-business smoking bans by stating:

"...the majority of us have concluded that removing dangerous airborne toxins from public gathering spots is the right thing to do...."

Actually a bar or restaurant is a private business (gathering spot), and the "right thing to do" is what public officials do regarding welding smoke in the workplace at factories -allow OSHA regulations to dictate health and safety standards. Why would you treat tobacco smoke differently than welding smoke? Unless you have a special agenda, and if your funding for that special agenda comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation , an off shoot of the Johnson & Johnson Company which manufactures Nicoderm & Nicoderm CQ.

Welding smoke is far, far, more hazardous, concentrated, and dangerous, it contains airborne heavy metals which are known class A carcinogens. Yet, if a factory keeps the exposure levels below OSHA regulations, typically by using filtration methods, then the employees are safe.

Further to note, OSHA also has regulations for each and every airborne component of secondhand smoke and the published testing by the American Cancer Society proves secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times safer than OSHA regulations.

So it would seem that the "right thing to do" (in the mind of Meslow and other activists) is not as dependent upon whether secondhand smoke is truthfully harmful......as much as the fact that "the majority of us have concluded" we want everyone to be forced to conform to our demands. Meanwhile the funding for lobbying efforts comes from the pharmaceutical nicotine industry.....like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by extension the Johnson & Johnson Company (manufacturer of Nicoderm), thus demonstrating that smoking bans and all their participants are a particularly insidious pestilence in our midst.

(Ventilation equipment is allowed in the industrial workplace to improve air quality, why not in the commercial workplace?)

posted by marcus aurelius @ 9:28 AM