Louisiana’s Newest Dumb Idea

This doesn’t have a thing to do with the realistic risks or consequences, health and safety.

It is only about political manuevering, and wielding the unlimited power to make people live their lives however you want them to, at your own caprice no matter how petty the demands placed upon them are. In fact, the more petty and irrelevant the demand, the better.

thanks for your post ms shinghal. when are we the people going to wake up and realize that we are not free anymore? when are we louisianaians going to wake up and quit sending retards like rep gary smith to baton rouge?

Tobacco Expected to Kill 1 Billion This Century
Smoking accounts for 1 in 5 cancer deaths

Associated Press, 7/10/06

WASHINGTON – If current trends hold, tobacco will kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, public health officials said Monday.

Tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year, according to two new reference guides that chart global tobacco use and cancer. Lung cancer remains the major cancer among the 10.9 million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year, according to the Cancer Atlas.

Reducing tobacco use would have the greatest affect on global cancer rates, health officials said. Improving nutrition and reducing infection by cancer-causing viruses and bacteria could also cut rates dramatically, they said.

“We know with cancer, if we take action now, we can save 2 million lives a year by 2020 and 6.5 million by 2040.”

its always so amusing when these busy bodies who like to portray themselves as so concerned with humanity and in improving the human condition are ok with calling for death to those who dare disagree with them. whats up with that?

It’s actually not that stupid of an idea. Your right Louisiana does have a lot on it’s plate right now, so much in fact that the state is in severe debt. Norco is smart to be the one thinking that this is a surefire way to put a little extra money into the state’s pockets. So many parents do it, so while not doing wonders for the state’s financial problems, it sure does help a little bit. Maybe the police and firedepartments won’t get their budgets cut next year then.

— Blanco still sucks.

Marcia

I will probably disagree with some of the ways you are rearing your children and may even believe you are putting them in harms way sometimes. I have no right nor do you to tell someone how they are to act and what they are to do around their own family.

You are a busy body intruding on the rights of the family to live their lives as they see fit.

Make sure your darlings have their helmets on when they leave home. Maybe they don’t ever leave because the world is such a dangerous place and you must protect them and their every actions. Pity those poor youngsters.

I am 60 and grew up in a family of smokers, all of them. We smoked by the time we reached 10. My grandfather was a smoker, chewer and snuffer as well as my grandmother. They were tobacco farmers. I guess you would like to imprison them if they were still alive. Sorry, they died young, between 85 and 90 years old.

My ancestors fought and some died in wars for freedom, the very idea you so hate.

Parents SHOULD have the sense not to smoke in a closed area with a child. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be breeding anyway.

We don’t need law enforcement to tell us this.

Wikipedia – over one million people worldwide are killed in auto accidents each year. If the numbers stay constant, then one hundred million people will die this century. This does not include the injured and mained. That is well over one billion for the century.

The only rational action that can be taken is

BAN ALL VEHICLES WORLDWIDE TO SAVE LIVES. WHAT A CONCEPT.

I had a letter in the Times-Picayune (New Orleans paper) about this stupid law. Not specifically about this portion of the law (the full law also has provisions outlawing smoking in restaraunts and other “public” places, with some exclusions) but effectively stating that the idea that second-hand smoke is a “killer” is simply unproven. So in response to Marcia I’ll happily provide the links to show your “smoking” statements simply don’t apply to second-hand smoke.

Chase,
While this state may have some definitive issues financially, we’re apparently not so deeply in debt that our legislature can’t pass along $3 billion in pork to the public. In fact the state decided to go nuts in our current budget in large part because ther was such a large, oddly unexpectd, influx of cash into the state coffers (sales tax revenues from massive construction purchases and doing everything possible to get federal funding, among others.) Go figure.

Everybody just bite my ass, Blanko, all state politicians
(lazy thieving bastards) and you mud suckers in DC, just
kiss my ass. All that ever happens is yall get fatter,
the taxes keep going up and my space keeps getting smaller!
Fork tongue, double dealing devils.

I dont smoke, but if I did and had kids, then it would be MY decision to NOT smoke when the kids are around me. I dont need the government to tell me how to raise my kids, no matter what their intentions. If Bush and his you know what buddies are so concerned about kids and families, then why did they let 9-11 and its consequences happen? Things are way out of control here and especially in the Middle East, and now we need more laws to complicate things and continue to threaten our liberties? Bullshit….

Marcia

You got it right. It is OK to do what we want. That is personal freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. It even applies to rearing children the way we see fit, not the way YOU think is correct or any of your big government control freak politicians.

I guess you have already turned over your children to the state to be state educated, state protected, state indoctrinated, and by all means state protected from second hand smoke.

Better not take them camping. They may breathe the campfire smoke. By all means, don’t introduce them to hunting and fishing. They may destroy the environment. Leave me alone and I will leave you alone in your wild ass ideas about raising children.

I never read any books to my children but the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and works by our founding fathers. Oh, I forgot, I always read a good book to them on firearms and how to use them.

“Marcia, as long as you continue to eat the single source news hook line and sinker, you’re never going to get it. AP and Reuters, all hail. For every study you read that agrees with you, fifty others are published or didn’t get funded because they weren’t going to help some Nanny State crusader.”

Go back and read my thoughtful words again in post 25. That’s not AP or Reuters or CNN. Don’t you think Philip Morris has some slight idea about the effect of its own product on children? These are American kids that secondhand smoke is hurting. Why do you hate America??

Marcia

No one said they hated America. I love America so much that I am willing to die to make sure it is a nation of minimal government, laws, and regulations and a nation of maximum personal freedom. If that means challenging you and your in kind thinkers and control freaks that believe they know what is best for me and my family, then so be it. Am I deciding what is best for you? NO.

I read the Philip Morris site you linked. Nowhere did it say secondhand smoke was bad. It only stated “Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease…”.

Who are the public health officials? Are they food inspectors, cigarette police, etc.? What are their credentials?

All Philip Morris did was to regurgitate the official position of the regulators, i.e., bureaucrats (pawns of the politicians). I did not see where Philip Morris agreed with them. The operative word is “concluded”, based on what evidence?

Sorry ass? That’s when you were talking about drowning, and I said I’d save you anyway. It’s nothing. Super-touchy? Like Britney crying on tv because she was “accused” of carrying her baby on a steering wheel? There are safety regulations for children, including not poisoning them. The cost? Nothing. Just don’t smoke until you’re out of the car.

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/secondhandsmoke.pdf

The Bush administration surgeon general? …would be as anti-regulation as possible, except they now realize the science about secondhand smoke is overwhelming, and the tobacco industry throughout decades of litigation has continued to admit the effect on children. If tobacco thought the science was wrong they would announce it with bells and choirs.

Marcia

The tobacco industry are now the puppets of Federal and State regulators. They say and do exactly what the bureaucrats and politicians tell them to do. Don’t you remember when tobacco capitulated to the government so they could stay in business?

Everything said or written by tobacco companies is approved by big brother either directly or indirectly as part of the settlement. That is the only way they can stay in business.

If they were told to say cigarettes causes blindness, they would comply. It does not matter. What you fed us is exactly what the government wants us to believe. You have fallen into the black hole. Think for yourself and quit having someone else do your thinking and talking.

I suspect you are all for the government maintaining complete order in society. Correct me if I am wrong. How do you feel about the Second Amendment? I will bet the farm that is an Amendment that you believe should be repealed or at the least emasculated.

Julian, no. If there’s a color/political spectrum, I would be a slightly green libertarian. I think a gun is a perfect example. Keeping it for your own use and safety, fine. Letting your kid play with it, stupid and criminal.

Oops

The second link is

http://www.forces.org/evidence/evid/second.htm

Marcia’s responses have been blocked by the Spam Filter Of Truth. She pointed out that Fumento has been discredited, dropped from Scripps-Howard News Service because of an unreported $60,000 payoff from Monsanto. She went on to say something about Flat Earth Society etc. etc. (Note at bottom of Hammer page, “Spam Karma has eaten 111,397 evil comments”) It was compelling stuff though evil, and would have changed your minds in a flash. But firing up the old dialup computer is too time-consuming, so she reminds you that the “libertarian as victim of health and science” strategy, so far, has not won many if any elections. Whatever happened to the “libertarians as champions of enlightenment” strategy? It sounds much better.

LOUISIANA!!

If it makes sense……DON’T DO IT!!

I’m not about to use the little space here to go to three websites by people like the discredited Michael Fumento and try to write a treatise comparing and contrasting them. The libertarian movement has this idea that it needs to portray itself as representing the sad victims of government run amok. You know, like we’re the Lebanese or citizens on the streets of Baghdad. That will never win. The quickest way for prohibition to win is for those who favor freedom to ignore health and medicine and assume the pose of the Flat Earth Party. (Which, when you come to thing of it, at least has a certain niche value!!)

The freedom takers take little bites at a time: now the advance of the intruder state into our personal lives is gathering momentum. It must be opposed, reversed and terminated. Bureaucrats has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated in our Constitution. All those chemicals found in tobacco are also found in the foods that we eat everyday. I have noticed the pleasure police points their finger at me for smoking, but doesn’t mind spending those sin taxes on none smokers. They are also the one that turns their backs on God, because they don’t like the idea that hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. If smoking brings happiness to Americans, I’m all for it. God calls your number not you.
-=Nidalyte Out=-

great point mr bailey. its like senator ben nevers abortion ban bill which is designed to trick people into thinking that on the one hand he really gives a damn about abortion while on the other hand he is totally mixed up with rep francis thompson and the reservoir thugs.

“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy…”

Brown & Williamson tobacco, 1969

http://tobaccodocuments.org/bw/332506.html

Soon youll have to have a smoking room in your own house.

My mother smoked while pregnant with me and i was born on time, normal weight and perfectly healthy. Through my childhood both parents smoked in the house and in the car. I am now 25 years old and have had no medical issues, no asthma and i am in perfect health. I have also never tried a cigarette in my life, not a single drag. Maybe being around it so much is what actually kept me from doing it. I guess everyone is differnt but i would sure love to be in some of these studies because i would really throw off the results.

Michelle

Nice going. It seems a little digging will turn up dirt every time on politicians, the very ones that want to pass laws telling us how to live and chastise us for everything.

This discovery is better than the second hand smoke issue. I wonder if Gary Smith will take the challenge I offered to comment on this site? I’m sure he got the email I sent that you are aware of (dangling preposition, oh well).

I’m just thinking out load now. I wonder how much Gary Smith had to do with securing those no bid contracts? I will guess everything.

What a contract to secure as a little Podunk hole in the wall business, $100,000,000.00 no bid contract. Let’s see, they gross 10%, which is nothing in business, a nice piece of change just for being related to a small time politician. That would be a neat ten million dollars. Pretty good for a couple month’s work. I guess politics pays. It seems every one of them leave office much richer than they entered.

Julian

Have you given ANY THOUGHT to the fact that one of Marcia’s problems MAY BE…..that SHE WOULD LIKE someone to HOLD HER DOWN and force something into her??????

It’s impossible to have any dialogue when the Spam Hammer rejects my posts. I wrote yesterday about a way the market could be a positive force to help those of us who choose to remain smokefree. Maybe the post will show up. It’s all about force, and the smokers enjoy forcing others to share their addiction.

I have never in my life been asked, “Do you mind if I smoke.” Yet, libertarian philosophy clearly opposes harming others. You’d think we’d be on guard against harm. Unfortunately, the think tanks like Cato and Reason have been bought by the tobacco companies, and they are continuing the policy of sowing “doubt” about the harm of secondhand smoke (and even smoking itself). Believe the science, not those who put corporate profits and ideology above the truth.

And if you think, well we libertarians would be the last people in the world to want to force harm on others, just read Sharpsman, above.

(cont from #68)”Among smokers, by contrast, the risk of heart disease is between 100 and 300 percent higher, while the risk of lung cancer is about 900 percent higher.”

And if you want to start claiming the foks at Reason are in the pockets of Big Tobacco, I think you better see if you can back it up, first. You’re WAAAYY off base on that one.

The problem, as far as I’m concerned, is that science does NOT support some nebulous “public health” response to second-hand smoke. Instead it becomes a rights issue. You and I may not like smoke around us. That means a true marke-based response is to be responsive enough to let our local businesses know that we don’t like smoke and we don;t want to be around it and that by making sure smoke is limited within their business that they would increase their business overall. Instead of holding a gun to their head to make sure there is no smoke around you (because you just don’t like it) wouldn’t it be better to just ask them to accomodate you?