Smoking not a killer

By Robert Clark

The Truth:

Les Hagen, an executive director of Action Smoking and Health stated on Jan. 23 in a letter to the Calgary Herald that 1,000 people a year die from second-hand smoke in Canada. The next day MP Dave Rodney (Calgary-Lougheed) reported in a letter to the Herald that the number is 350. “The truth” is that zero people die worldwide from SHS each year.

In 1998 the World Health Organization published the largest study on SHS and lung cancer. It concluded that there was no association between SHS and lung cancer. A SHS study by the German airline industry arrived at the same conclusion.

University of Chicago Hospital health studies chairman John Bailer dismissed any link between SHS and heart disease.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found no association between SHS and asthma among children ages 4-16. Don’t believe it? Then tell me where are all the childhood asthma cases from the ’50S, ’60s and ’70s, when smoking indoors was commonplace and enjoyed by many more people than today.

In places that have SHS bylaws bars and restaurants report a 35 to 100 per cent drop in business. Want proof? Call Pucks in Edmonton. Wait, you can’t because they’re closed with a loss of 18 jobs. Although you can still call The Moose Factory Restaurant, who has reported a 35 per cent decrease in sales since the bylaw went into effect. Edmonton bingo halls have reported a loss of 50 per cent in revenues and they are run to benefit charity.

In a debate over individual liberties, petitions, political correctness, fabricated and propagandized science should play no part, unless we live in a world ruled by Nazis. Who, by the way, was the first government to enact anti-smoking laws.

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