Second-Hand Smoke Claim Is Nonsense

To the Editor:

The statement made by Dr Peter Glassman in “Expert Warns About That Other Addictive Substance: Tobacco” in the March 18 issue that “It is documented that second-hand smoke possesses lung-damaging consequences nearly as severe as that of direct smoke inhalation” is pure nonsense, hysteria, and propaganda.

In 2002, professor James Enstrom of the School of Public Health, UCLA and professor Geoffrey Kabat of the Department of Public Medicine at SUNY Stonybrook reported in the British Journal of Medicine that their 39-year study of 118,094 Californians (the largest and longest such study conducted to date) showed “no causal relationship between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and tobacco-related mortality.” In the New England Journal of Medicine, April 17, 1975, W.C. Hinds and M.W. First reported that even back then, when public smoking was ubiquitous, the concentration was equal to smoking approximately 0.004 cigarettes per hour. That is a very small number. The 1993 EPA study, which launched the myriad unfair and un-American smoking bans, has been found to be severely flawed by scores of scientists around the world. The EPA changed its own statistical rules and thresholds in order to get the results it sought. In 1998 a federal judge ruled that the agency’s report ignored accepted scientific and statistical practices in making its risk assessment.

I support the rights of nonsmokers to patronize nonsmoking bars and restaurants, and/or nonsmoking sections of bars and restaurants. I support the rights of workers to choose a profession that suits their own tolerance for occupational risk. I also support the rights of bar and restaurant owners to choose whether or not to permit smoking in their establishments. It’s called The American Way, also known as freedom of choice. Let’s stop the hysteria and unwelcome government intrusion into our personal lives.

Julia D. Truchsess

123 Edgelake Drive, Sandy Hook                             March 21, 2005