I’m an anti anti-smoker
MIKE DANELEK
mdanelek@mscd.edu

   I have never had a cigarette in my entire life and I don’t plan to start smoking, either. I have no agenda. I simply see a government intent on trivializing our freedoms and hurting businesses statewide.

   Antismoking activists are some of the most ruthless people you’ll ever meet. They want to continue to increase government power and dissolve the freedoms this country was founded upon. They do not hesitate to make up so-called “facts” to advance their oppressive agenda. Now, Gov. Bill Owens, who is turning more liberal every day, has signed a bill banning smoking in most public places in Colorado.
   To set the record straight, I am not a smoker. I have never had a cigarette in my entire life and I don’t plan to start smoking, either. I have no agenda. I simply see a government intent on trivializing our freedoms and hurting businesses statewide.
   This is another one of those issues that have to do with the leftist idea that the government knows what’s better for us than we do. The antismoking brigade believes nonsmokers should not have to be around smoke, based upon the alleged horrors of Second Hand Smoke, or SHS, so they create restrictive laws punishing smokers and businesses, which will certainly suffer because of this. They fail to comprehend the fact that nonsmokers can choose whether or not to go into establishments that allow smoking.
   Realistically speaking, there aren’t many places in this country where we have to worry about smoking. It is prohibited at shopping venues, stadiums, churches, schools, fast-food joints and most restaurants, just to name a few. And the restaurants, if I recall correctly, have the option of “smoking or non.” The idea that people can’t find a place to eat or shop that isn’t filled with hazardous smoke is ridiculous.
   I also question just how hazardous Second Hand Smoke is. For example, one of the most widely cited studies regarding SHS was the Environmental Protection Agency Report from 1992 stating that SHS killed 3,000 Americans per year. When looking at the facts, the EPA study was not actually a study by the EPA; it was a meta-analysis—the analysis of a group of studies done by other people. This is the easiest type of study to manipulate because it can leave out important data with the rejection of any individual study that would alter the results.
   A 1995 Congressional Research Service review of the EPA report stated, “The studies relied primarily on questionnaires to the case and control members, or their surrogates, to determine (Environmental
Tobacco Smoke) exposure and other information pertinent to the studies.”
Surrogates?
   People who were not even involved in the study provided information, which is highly unreliable. These facts about the antismoking studies are just the tip of the iceberg. There is not enough good evidence to back the dangers of SHS.
   What’s more, the antismoker has done a fantastic job at vilifying the tobacco companies over the years. Smoking advertisements have been reduced mostly to magazines, and the only time Philip Morris appears on television is to state how smoking is unhealthy. But the antismoker is still on the attack, as their “Truth” campaign continues on television, telling us how the tobacco companies are still out to get us. I’d really like to meet the person who gets recruited to the “dark side” in this day and age because of Big Tobacco influences.