We Used Terrible Science to Justify Smoking Bans | Hacker News Reader

We Used Terrible Science to Justify Smoking Bans

slate.com

27 pointsgwern30 comments

I thought this was an April Fools joke, but it's a month early...

The author seems to only focus on smoking's alleged role in heart attack's. I thought the science is pretty well established that smoking increases cancers rates significantly. The author mentions cancer 5 times in the article and heart attacks 32 times!

And finally he brings up the "stigma" against smokers. Guilty as charged here. I personally look at smoking like a simple IQ test. Stupid people smoke. If you're under the age of 40 and you smoke you failed the test. You were raised knowing the dangers and yet you still did it. Why?

I do not miss going to bars and coming home smelling like an ash tray. Sorry dude - smoke in your own home.

I suspect those who smoke could not care less about your "simple IQ test."

Stupid people don't like being told they're stupid. Shocker.

People do all kinds of dangerous things. They ride motorcycles, go skydiving, some even climb into rockets and fly into space. Are they all stupid? Or did you just pick this one activity out arbitrarily?

There are benefits of doing all those things, and there are safe(r) ways of doing them. There is no benefit to smoking, and no safe way to do it. You can rationalize all you want, but the reality is that anyone who took up smoking within the past 30 years is a fool.

How about those living near a fault line?

Everyone knew the dangers of smoking. Smoking bans were mostly based on the dangers of second hand smoke, which are basically non-existent. So all these bans were pushed through on the power of "fake news".

Huh, Wikipedia shows evidence that dangers are existent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking#Controversy_ov...

It also shows some rebuttals by tobacco sponsored research.

Let's refrain from using that term as hyperbole. It wasn't fake news as much as it was unknown or mistaken news.

Also, second-hand smoke does have negative health consequences AND in an enclosed, unventilated area like a bar or restaurant, it is impossible to avoid having the smell cling to your clothes and hair. I smoke occasionally, but it's a disgusting and filthy habit and I don't want to assault someone else's senses, similar to reheating fish in the office microwave.

Clubs and bars used to be full of smoke.

It's way easier to breath as an asthmatic, though I'm sure it was affecting others.

It's good to not come back home smelling like an ashtray.

One good thing, is that was a way of breaking the ice to talk to people.

Not entirely sure why you'd consider it fake news. My grandfather has suffered from bladder cancer twice, though he has never smoked. He did, however, work in kitchens of restaurants/bars that allowed smoking. Once he left those kitchens, he went into remission and has remained so.

Thirty-odd years ago, an acquaintance said that he liked going to runners' parties: an hour after they started, you could still see across the room. I remember going to an art gallery opening and finding myself one of two non-smokers, huddled near a slightly cracked window.

It is astonishing the effect of the cultural shift between routine indoor smoking and it being frowned on.

I've heard similar stories. Before the hazard of smoking was known as common knowledge runners used to smoke for their training. They thought that it would increase their lung capacity. It was their idea of a performance enhancing drug. Some drank rat poison as well.

Governments really want people to stop smoking. They're going to make it as difficult and expensive as they possibly can. It's hard to nail down whether it costs the economy more to support smokers than we get back in tax [1], but it's a good political argument. It's also an occupational hazard if you work in an enclosed space where people are allowed to smoke (e.g. pubs and restaurants).

This article would be better if it wasn't biased to the point of inaccuracy [2]. It also contains sweeping generalisations like:

> Most nonsmokers find smoking inconvenient and have little regard for the smoking minority’s preferences.

Lest we forget that Big Tobacco has an extensive history of dodgy scientific study. As someone posted on Reddit today, it's a similar attitude to climate change denial:

1) Cigarettes aren't bad for you.

2) Cigarettes might be bad for you but the science isn't in yet. We need to study the issue more.

3) Cigarettes do have some negative health effects, but they aren't that bad.

4) Okay cigarettes are terrible for you, but people have a right to smoke if they want.

[1] https://fullfact.org/economy/does-smoking-cost-much-it-makes...

[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=h...

(I'm amazed with the quality of the translation, if that's automatic)

>Governments really want people to stop smoking.

Are you sure that's true? Governments earn an awful lot of money from smokers.

Given the upcoming pension crisis so many US cities and states are facing, it might make sense to encourage smoking.

Things might be different in the UK.

Here's a nice smoking picture: http://pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com/wp-content/uploads...

What Government earns from tobacco taxation [1] is eclipsed by the cost of healthcare and economic impact from smoking [2].

[1] - http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-13-taxation/13-...

[2] - http://www.health.gov.au/tobacco

Neither of those links gives any data about the costs of smoking, what do you propose the costs are? I thought smokers cost governments less then the average person.

> However, smokers die some 10 years earlier than nonsmokers, according to the CDC, and those premature deaths provide a savings to Medicare, Social Security, private pensions and other programs.

> Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-08-fda-to...

There's an overview with data and sources in another section of the website [1].

I think the key difference in Australia and USA is that the Australian government, due to our extensive Medicare coverage [2], bears most of healthcare burden for smokers. Thus, for Australians, paying for smokers' medical costs nearing their end of life is more expensive than keeping them healthy.

[1] - http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/17...

[2] - http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/02/20/how-does-austr...

That page notes

>Some researchers have estimated that the lifetime health care costs for smokers are lower than for non-smokers. In the models these researchers used, the health care cost savings attributed to smokers' premature death from smoking-associated illnesses more than offset their higher annual medical costs.39,40 Other analysts have found the reverse—that although smokers do, on average, die earlier than people who have never smoked, this 'saving' in terms of medical expenditures does not fully offset their higher medical costs—the lifetime medical costs for smokers are higher than for non-smokers.

Whether it's for economic gain or for political gain, yes. The UK government is pushing through aggressive legislation to try and get people away from smoking, e.g. the recent ban on branded packaging, smoking in a car with kids is illegal, etc.

See my reference [1]. You can make the economic argument either way, however there is one thing that's almost certain: revenue from smokers is at an upper bound now. Increasing the cost of cigarettes is probably not going to improve tax revenue.

On the pro side for smoking, aside from taxation on cigarettes, manufacture of tobacco products pays salaries which gets fed back into the economy. It's also possible that healthy people actually cost the health service more because instead of dropping dead of emphysema, people live longer and rack up more routine costs over time.

I thought smokers cost governments less then the average person because they tend to die quickly right before retirement age. So governments get all the productivity without having to pay for a long retirement and possibly very long and drawn out end of life medical care that healthy people usually require.

From personal experience I can say a smoky bar feels really bad. I feel it in stomache and throat (and it smelled so aweful I couldn't even keep the dirty clothes in my room).

No science needed, please let me have a beer without smelling like an ashtray and needing medicin to calm my stomache.

Surely we banned it because it is highly irritating to people who don't smoke? The medical aspect was used to win the argument with selfish smokers who don't give a crap about the well being of other people.

Before you issue your fatwa, for the record, I don't smoke tobacco. Nor do I have a problem with places banning smoking -- I just believe it should never have been a law.

> Surely we banned it because it is highly irritating to people who don't smoke?

That part is correct.

> The medical aspect was used to win the argument with selfish smokers who don't give a crap about the well being of other people.

Stated another way, the second-hand smoke research was glommed onto by puritanicals who enjoy bossing people around - because the irration argument would never stand up in a legislative committee or a court of law - it would have rightfully been called a blue-nose law.

Maybe the term "bossing people around" is a bit loaded but without the second-hand smoke studies, no one would have felt the need to ban smoking everywhere. Another system might have emerged where some places ban smoking and others don't. There's a restaurant in my town that banned minors instead of smokers to comply with our state law (actually not a bad trade, imo.)

But that wasn't good enough for some -- smoking had to be banned everywhere -- because certain people felt entitled to walk into an arbitrary venue and not have to smell cigarette smoke -- hence the use of the terms "puritanical" and "bossing people around."

The author self identifies as a libertarian strongly opposed to any kind of government regulation. That can explain why this article looks so biased: because it is …

I guess one of the questions is about second-hand smoke. Interestingly, Sir Richard Doll [1], one of the scientists who first proved the link between smoking and lung cancer, was not convinced that second-hand smoke was harmful [2] - it seems that on this, Sir Doll was wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Doll

[2] http://www.bcmj.org/articles/commonplace-condemned-discovery...

> it seems that on this, Sir Doll was wrong.

Ummm, did you read the article? Its whole point was that the dangers of second-hand smoke had been greatly exaggerated. So Sir Doll was right.

Despite the mounting evidence that transient exposure to secondhand smoke is more an annoyance than a mortal threat, smoking bans have become widespread and politically entrenched.

Oh, I read the article.

I'd rather believe the scientific studies which showed a 17 percent drop in heart attacks.

When a topic continues to be studied, and the trend for the magnitude of the effects keeps dropping the better and larger the study is designed, coupled with just-so-story physiological explanations that don't real stand up to analysis, it's probably a sign that there is no effect at all...

So believe what you wish, but I don't think it's correct.

At the time the dramatic drop in heart attack rates was reported, I was quite surprised, to the point of incredulity.

Although I've never been a smoker, both of my parents smoked a couple packs of Kool cigarettes every day from the age of 20 until their mid 70s. The fact that it took more than 50 years for them to kill my mother (small cell lung cancer) and my father (massive stroke) leads to suspect that the dramatic reduction in heart attacks was faulty statistics, otherwise few smokers would live as long as they do.

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