Clearing The Air: RWJF (Nicoderm) spends $1+ million to deceive restaurant owners "smoking bans don't harm your business"

Sunday, July 05, 2009

RWJF (Nicoderm) spends $1+ million to deceive restaurant owners "smoking bans don't harm your business"

Recently CTA exposed a "study" by a U of M / OSU student which tried to claim smoking bans didn't harm hospitality businesses.

Now however, we've discovered that Nicoderm beneficiary, RWJF, funded a study claiming that financial harm to bars & restaurants from smoking bans wasn't real, rather the financial ruin was simply an exaggeration funded by the tobacco industry. (in case RWJF removes the grant hyperlink in this paragraph above, as they commonly do, copy can be found here)

Apparently then, according to RWJF and their puppet Stanton Glantz, these thousands of establishments which closed after smoking bans were enacted weren't really losing money.....they were fooled into closing by big tobacco. Perhaps RWJF should inform the owners and employees of the thousands of closed bars & restaurants where "big tobacco" hid their customers and subsequently their revenues.

http://www.smokersclub.com/banloss3.htm

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/01/100-bars-and-restaurants-put-out-of.html

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-uk-during-past-two-years-3382-pubs.html

http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=36173

The $1 million (Nicoderm) RWJF grant also sought to discredit ventilation options to solve the secondhand smoke debate, but we've exposed that claim as fraudulent here:

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2005/12/ventilation-not-legislation.html

Excerpt:

Testimony was given by one individual who claimed to be a mechanical ventilation expert, hired incidentally by the smoking ban proponents. After his testimony claiming there was no way to ventilate secondhand smoke, Commissioner Penny Steele asked a great question:

"Isn't indoor charcoal and wood-fired grilling a popular trend in bars & restaurants these days?....and isn't inhaling those fumes indoors potentially deadly? " (note how similar charcoal, wood, and tobacco smoke are as far as hazards....in fact wood and charcoal contain far more hazardous chemicals)

Expert reply: "....um, yeah"

Commissioner Steele: "Well, why isn't anybody dying in the restaurants from the cooking smoke?"

Expert: "Because they have special ventilation....."

Steele: "Couldn't establishment owners use a similar type of ventilation to also render secondhand smoke harmless?"

Expert: "uh, well, I suppose they could......."

And thus the above exchange killed this "expert's" testimony, along with the rationale for smoking bans altogether.

Why would pharmaceutical nicotine (Nicoderm) interests fund anti-tobacco initiatives:

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/02/smoking-bans-good-public-policy-or.html

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/12/minnesota-smoking-ban-triples-demand-of.html