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Secondhand Facts Drive Smoke Bans

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JOSEPH H. BROWN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 18, 2008

You may have seen the public service commercial. A woman brings her young daughter out to the car and straps her into a car seat. The announcer reminds us that 37,000 Americans are killed every year in automobile accidents, which made me think it was sponsored by the National Safety Council or a seat-belt advocacy group.

Then the mother gets in the driver's seat and lights a cigarette. We are then told that 38,000 Americans die every year from secondhand tobacco smoke, and that the commercial was sponsored by a group called Tobacco Free Florida.

Thirty-eight thousand people a year die from secondhand smoke? I found that hard to believe, so I called and talked to a spokesperson for the group who then sent me a link to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report which read:

"Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 438,000 deaths, or about 1 of every 5 deaths, each year. This estimate includes approximately 38,000 deaths from secondhand smoke exposure."

Wouldn't Hold Up In Court

The CDC is not the first group to make such claims about breathing - not inhaling - the smoke from cigarettes. In 2006, U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona released a report that said "secondhand smoke is a major cause of disease, including lung cancer and coronary heart disease, in healthy nonsmokers."

Here's the problem with such claims: None of them would pass muster in a court of law. Most of the research cited in the surgeon general's report was thrown out by a federal judge in 1993 when the Environmental Protection Agency tried to classify secondhand smoke as a carcinogen. The same would likely happen with the CDC's data if it had to stand up to legal and scientific scrutiny.

The judge in the 1993 case said the EPA cherry-picked studies to support its claims and failed to honor scientific standards. They probably wouldn't use, for instance, a 2003 study done on spouses of smokers that appeared in the British Medical Journal which found that "the results do not support a causal relationship between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality. The association between tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed."

Smoking Bans Getting Out Of Hand

Nevertheless, bogus claims of the effects of secondhand smoke are the drive behind the numerous public and workplace smoking bans passed by city councils and state legislatures over the last decade, and the long arm of government is intruding ever farther. Since the beginning of the year in California, motorists can be hit with fines up to $100 for smoking in a vehicle containing a child.

Ironically, many Republicans who talk the "smaller government, more freedom" talk stand on the sidelines and allow these intrusive bans to become law, saying in effect, "I don't smoke, so it won't affect me."

But these laws do affect the rights of bar and restaurant owners to allow a legal, highly taxed activity in their privately owned businesses. I've never smoked and never will, but I'm bothered by these assaults on property rights based on faulty science.

So, I asked the Tobacco Free Florida spokesperson, will we soon have a law in Florida that makes smoking with children in the car a crime?

She couldn't say, but don't say you didn't see it coming.

Joseph H. Brown is a Tribune editorial writer.

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