Crichton On “Second-Hand Smoke”

Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible
for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking
adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of
thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven
studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and
that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of
1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action
by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine,
for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association
at the 95% coinfidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They
then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans
on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned
public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the
Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the
nation’s third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer
Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand
smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had
"committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had
"disregarded information and made findings on selective information."
The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our
science….there’s wide agreement. The American people certainly
recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of
health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps
science. In this case, it isn’t even a consensus of scientists that
Browner evokes! It’s the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A
large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have
well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read,
for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At
this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand
smoke.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

12 thoughts on “Crichton On “Second-Hand Smoke””

  1. i once read that living with a smoker for one year has the same effects on lungs as directly smoking 6 cigaretts a year. not too bad, actually, that’s more like living in a poluted city.

  2. This is one I’ve had a hard time understanding. It relates to one of my lingering doubts that I had as Baptist: Smoking and drinking (as opposed to drunkness) are never really condemned in the Bible, and yet both these seem to be evidences of lack of conversion. Compare to Divorce.
    Societally, I can’t understand the reaction to smoking EVEN if the claims had been true. I remember having a woman from New York in my cab (back when I was doing that), and I expected her to tell me to save the coroner the trouble and take her straight to the funeral home. All this because there was the smell of cigarette smoke in the cab. (As a courtesy I never smoked with passengers in the cab unless they lit up.)

  3. Well, that’s bovine end-product. Second-hand smoke activates asthma attacks in roughly 20% of the American population. That is in fact respiratory health we are talking about. Because of the ban on smoking in restaurants in this county, I am able to go out to eat now, and in far more places that I could before. And the restaurants are full, rather than having many empty tables, usually in the smoking section.
    Love your neighbor.

  4. Yeah, to me it’s not so much a question of second-hand smoke giving me cancer. I’m not worried by the relatively small amounts I inhale if I walk by someone who’s smoking outside.
    What does bother me is that I have allergic reactions to just about everything, and cigarette smoke really sets me off, with coughing, watery eyes, etc. Also, it smells about as attractive to me as bovine end-product. If I were a restaurant manager, I wouldn’t allow people to cart in bovine end-product just because they like it, when most of the rest of my patrons don’t.

  5. Magically we have a couple people with allergic reactions here. Psychosomatic comes to mind. Proportionality comes to mind as well. We are to coexist in this world. Rather than convince a proprietor to not allow smoking in his establishmet, people like yourselves want to ban me from smoking in any establishment even if I OWN it. This has never had anything to do with public health, and everything to do with an imposition of a belief system. People want to ensure that I can’t smoke in public, but that my daughter has access to abortion. Pathetic.

  6. I’m sorry my allergic reactions offend you so.
    I actually don’t care if there are restaurants, bowling allies, whatever, that allow smoking. I just never go to them. Something I do mind is when I’m leaving a building on my college campus and am treated to a cloud of cigarette smoke from the folks who have gone just outside the door.

  7. Jimmy,
    Do you think one could argue that cigars and cigarettes are immoral? The Catechism states that Tobacco, used in moderation, is morally licit. However, cigarettes and cigars aren’t just tobacco, but tobacco laced with poison (literally).

  10. The U.S. Surgeon General came out in June 2006 to report that there is no risk-free level of exposure to second hand smoke and that it causes immediate adverse reactions in the cardiovascular system. A case in point, when Helena MT instituted a smoking ban in restaurants, the amount of hospital admissions due to sudden cardiac events dropped by 40%. When the smoking ban was lifted due to a referendum, the admissions rate due to cardica events rose back to the levels it had been at before. This is significant because it was a closed hospital systems and nothing else happened in Helena during that time period that could have contributed to the sudden decrease.
    I don’t know about you, but who are we to refute the leading health authorities on this just because we want to smoke? The evidence is clear, it does have an effect on others around you. Think bigger than just yourself. Think about the good of others around you, people.

  11. “The evidence is *clear*”? Did you actually READ Jimmy’s post? Or do you just ignore anything that doesn’t fit your template?

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