Clearing The Air

Dr. Siegel sums up the smoking ban movement "It's getting to the point where we're trying to protect people from something that's not a health hazard"

Bravo Dr.....it's about time somebody admitted it. Especially since American Cancer Society testing proves that secondhand smoke concentrations are up to 25,000 time safer than OSHA regulations.

This article out of San Francisco starts out:

"IN THE early 1990s, Dr. Michael Siegel began leading pioneering efforts to ban smoking in workplaces to protect the health of nonsmokers. Siegel, who got his start in the anti-smoking cause while earning his master's degree at University of California, Berkeley, has written dozens of scientific articles on the dangers of secondhand smoke. His testimony in court and at countless city council meetings also helped push public policy toward tighter restrictions on smoking.

But now Siegel is speaking out against the movement he helped create. Why? Today's anti-smoking crusaders, he says, have lost their moorings in science by advocating smoking bans in the last refuge for smokers ..............I never understood that the goal was to get rid of smoking so that no one even gets a whiff of smoke.' 'It's a grass-roots social movement that's been so successful that it doesn't know where to stop,' Siegel continued. 'It's getting to the point where we're trying to protect people from something that's not a public health hazard.'

Now don't read too much into the good doctor's statement, I'm sure he is still basically pro-smoking ban..........but at least he's beginning to see the error of his ways.

posted by marcus aurelius @ 7:12 PM