Fraud or Incompetence?-part 5

This will become the stated policy of the state of Illinois!


AN ACT concerning public health.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
represented in the General Assembly:

Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the Smoke
Free Illinois Act.

Section 5. Findings. The General Assembly finds that
tobacco smoke is a harmful and dangerous carcinogen to human
beings and a hazard to public health. Secondhand tobacco smoke
causes at least 65,000 deaths each year from heart disease and
lung cancer according to the National Cancer Institute.
Secondhand tobacco smoke causes heart disease, stroke, cancer,
sudden infant death syndrome, low-birth-weight in infants,
asthma and exacerbation of asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia in
children and adults. Secondhand tobacco smoke is the third
leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
Illinois workers exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke are at
increased risk of premature death. An estimated 2,900 Illinois
citizens die each year from exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke.

The General Assembly also finds that the United States
Surgeon General's 2006 report has determined that there is no safe level of exposure to SHS

and that scientific evidence that secondhand smoke causes
serious diseases, including lung cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses such as
bronchitis and asthma, is massive and conclusive.

These people are guilty of either willfull deceit and fraud or are
quilty of gross incompetence.

Either way; they should be removed from office,tarred and feathered
and kicked out if the state!!!!!

What is in your state's ban?

November 14, 1995

Congressional Research Service/The Library of Congress

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The Congressional Research Service works exclusively for the Congress, conducting research, analyzing legislation, and providing information at the request of committees, Members, and their staffs.
The Service makes such research available, without partisan bias, in many forms including studies, reports, compilations, digests, and background briefings. Upon request, CRS assists committees in analyzing legislative proposals and issues, and in assessing the possible effects of these proposals and their alternatives.
OVERVIEW
GENERAL ISSUES

INTRODUCTION
In testimony before a Senate subcommittee, CRS concluded that "the statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantial health effects of passive smoking."
In their report, Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform: An Economic Analysis (CRS Report 94-214 E, March 8, 1994), J.G. Gravelle and D. Zimmerman reviewed estimates of the economic costs that smokers impose on nonsmokers. The report reviewed the evidence of a passive smoking health risk because this is a potential component of the cost calculation. It concluded that (i) the evidence that passive smoking causes disease is far less certain than for active smoking, and (ii) the health costs of these potential passive smoking effects, if any, are likely to be quite small.
Asserting that ETS is a lung carcinogen leaves unanswered the question: How great a cancer risk does passive smoking pose? Researchers have used nicotine measurements to calculate ETS exposure in terms of cigarette equivalents, by estimating the number of cigarettes one would have to smoke to receive the same amount of nicotine as breathing ETS in a particular environment for a given period of time. For example, the amount of nicotine inhaled by a nonsmoker working in a relatively smoky restaurant for eight hours is equivalent to smoking one-eighth of a cigarette?

The cigarette equivalent approach can also be applied to cotinine data. If, as stated above, cotinine levels in ETS-exposed nonsmokers average 0.7 percent of the levels found in smokers, and if one assumes that the average smoker smokes 19 cigarettes a day, then the amount of nicotine to which the average ETS-exposed nonsmoker is exposed is roughly equivalent to smoking one-eighth of a cigarette a day.


Since smokers are exposed to SHS as well as inhaling tobacco smoke; if they are not at risk for Heart Disease, non-smokers exposed to roughly one-eighth of a cigarette a day are most certainly not at risk for Heart Disease.

What about heart disease, then? It's on the cigarette packet in capital letters: SMOKING CAUSES HEART DISEASE.



The most authoritative study on this is certainly the Framingham Heart Study, which is known as the Rolls Royce of studies. In this town in Massachusetts, 5,127 men and women have been studied since 1948. They have had the fullest details taken on their health and life-style, and have been checked every two years. Dr. Seltzer of Harvard University discusses this study at length in 'Framingham Study Data and "Established Wisdom" about Cigarette Smoking and Coronary Heart Disease', Journal of Critical Epidemiology 42, no. 8 (1989).

The results of the study show that there is no relationship between smoking and heart disease in women except a very slight favorable one (women who smoke have a very slightly lower rate of angina, not statistically significant).



For men, the relative risk starts at 1.3 in smokers of forty or more cigarettes a day. Remember, the risk ratio of 2 has been designated the lower boundary of a weak association, so this means in fact a non-significant association.

This risk went down to exactly one, that is,” NO RISK AT ALL”, as the subjects aged.

When information about certain of the other 300 risk factors for heart disease were taken into account, the relationship between smoking and heart disease was lost.



More recent results from the “Framingham Study”, this done by doctors at Northwestern Univ.’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. This was published in “Circulation” the journal of the American Heart Association.

First Lifetime Heart Disease Risk Assessment Developed
Monday , February 06, 2006

The first-ever comprehensive lifetime risk assessment for cardiovascular disease highlights the importance of reducing risk early in life to prevent heart and vascular disease later on. Cardiovascular disease events included heart attack, angina, coronary heart disease, stroke, and claudication (peripheral arterial disease).The researchers reviewed the medical records of 3,564 men and 4,362 women who did not have any record of cardiovascular disease at age 50.

The men and women were followed for several decades and all cases of heart attack, coronary heart disease, angina, stroke, claudication (pain in the legs caused by circulation problems), and death from cardiovascular disease were recorded.

When the researchers calculated the impact of modifiable risk factors such as body weight, smoking history, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure, they found that:

--SMOKERS AND NONSMOKERS HAD SIMILAR LIFETIME RISKS FOR CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE--

The study appears in the Feb. 14 issue of the American Heart Association journal’ Circulation.’SOURCES: Lloyd-Jones, D.M. Circulation, Feb. 14, 2006, vol. 113: online. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, ScM, department of preventive medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago.

So....if a nonsmoker "smokes" 1/8 of a cigarette per day, and a 75-year-old woman who has smoked 3 packs a day for 55 years has a 15% chance of developing lung cancer, then it would take 26,400 years for the nonsmoker to attain the same risk. And shs is deadly?

quote:

Originally posted by Pat:
So....if a nonsmoker "smokes" 1/8 of a cigarette per day, and a 75-year-old woman who has smoked 3 packs a day for 55 years has a 15% chance of developing lung cancer, then it would take 26,400 years for the nonsmoker to attain the same risk. And shs is deadly?

It gets better.

1992 SG's Report states that Lung Cancer is a rare disease that only causes the death of 1 non-smoker per 10,000 per year.

The Report also says that sposual exposure to tobacco smoke causes a 20% increased risk of death from LC. That is .2 deaths per 10,000 per year or 1 death per 50,000 per year.

Our non-smoker might have to wait for 50,000 years before they died!!

300 million(US pop.)x 75%(adults) x 75%(nonsmokers) divided by 50,000 = 3,400 LC deaths from exposure to SHS.

Population was less 15 years ago, so they got the 3,000 deaths they stated.

Another consideration, tax wise.

Here in Illinois,smokers contribute( ), taxes-sales,excise,msa money-to the tune of $1.2 billion to the state.

If a state ban causes 10% to quit, that is a loss of $120 million state revenue.

US Dept.of Labor numbers say that there are 100,000 bartenders,etc, working in full-service restaurants and bars.

75% nonsmokers = 75,000 workers.

40% of state already covered by bans leaves 45,000 workers.

1/50,000 LC deaths gives a state ban preventing 1(theoretical) LC death per year.

$120 million real money lost to prevent 1(make-believe) death per year, no wonder the state budget is in the crapper.

In Wisconsin, 1/2 the pop. of Ill.,it would take 2 years to prevent that 1(make-believe) death. There would still be that $120 million loss.

I have no problem believing that 3000 or 3400 nonsmokers can get LC, but the correlation between shs and the disease is completely hypothetical and pulled out of Anti-Tobacco's ass.

quote:

Originally posted by Pat:
I have no problem believing that 3000 or 3400 nonsmokers can get LC, but the correlation between shs and the disease is completely hypothetical and pulled out of Anti-Tobacco's ass.

The problem is not where it comes from; but, where is being shoved-up!

And they do not even ask please!!

quote:

Originally posted by gkayser30:
In Wisconsin, 1/2 the pop. of Ill.,it would take 2 years to prevent that 1(make-believe) death. There would still be that $120 million loss.

We may be half that size, but we probably make up for it with the number of drinkers in our state. LOL

We have 15-20,000 places to drink in our state. The reason I'm not exact is because when I looked nobody had a real number. Seeing how a license is required to sell beer/booze you'd think at least the government would know.

BTW, here's something I learned a couple of years ago. Employees at gas stations that sell beer are required to have a bartender's license. At least in my city.

quote:

It gets better.

1992 SG's Report states that Lung Cancer is a rare disease that only causes the death of 1 non-smoker per 10,000 per year.

The Report also says that sposual exposure to tobacco smoke causes a 20% increased risk of death from LC. That is .2 deaths per 10,000 per year or 1 death per 50,000 per year.

Our non-smoker might have to wait for 50,000 years before they died!!

300 million(US pop.)x 75%(adults) x 75%(nonsmokers) divided by 50,000 = 3,400 LC deaths from exposure to SHS.

It gets more and more better.

With all of the bans in this country, most exposure to SHS is spousal in the home.

There are about 56 milliion smokers in the USA; so, that is the biggest number of non-smokers that could be exposed to spousal SHS.

According to the census bureau, about 51% of adults are married.

56 million x 51% = 29 million married smoking adults.

Some of those smokers are married to other smokers; say, 15%(a guess).

29 million x 85% = 25 million smokers married to non-smokers.
25 million divided by 50,000 = 500 non-smoker deaths from LC due to spousal exposure.

That is about 1/100th of the deaths from auto accidents.

Perhaps, we must ban cars and trucks.