Incite -- (v) 1: give an incentive; 2: provoke or stir up; "incite a riot"; 3: urge on; cause to act |
Friday, May 07, 2004
Written by: BeckTech Central Station has a new article out by Sydney Smith that caught my attention. The purpose of the article is to attack a new study showing that second-hand smoke has a major impact on non-smokers. The basis of this latest second-hand smoke hysteria is a study in the same issue of the British Medical Journal which purported to find a forty-percent decrease in heart attacks in Helena, Montana, during the six months that the city banned smoking in public places. The data come from St. Peter's Hospital, the one hospital that serves the Helena area, population 68,000. Most of the time, between the months of June and November, St. Peter's gets anywhere from thirty-four to fifty patients with heart attacks. During the six months of the smoking ban, they had only twenty-four. Obviously, the drop in heart attacks must be due to the smoking ban.Which is of course enlightening, but the part that caught my eye was the strikingly sympathetic light in which he casts smokers. And yet, as loathsome as smoking is, it's hard not to feel sorry for smokers. Every morning I pass small clusters of them in front of the hospital, just around the corner from the "No Smoking" sign, like high school hoodlums who smoke just a step away from school property. Some of them are hospital employees, puffing off job stress during their breaks. Others are patients, with nothing but flimsy hospital gowns and robes to protect them against the elements while they seek solace in tobacco. It seems cruel to make them smoke outside. The hospital has a special room for prayer. Couldn't they have a special room for smoking?Anyway, it's only a matter of time before the entire Western world has outlawed smoking in bars. That's what the entire debate is about anyway, no reason to pretend it's about the safety of employees at such places. Naturally, it's heresy to speak in such terms, but I am nothing if not a heretic.
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