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Smoking in the subways I think it is sad to see mothers smoking right next to their children, in the parks, outside the schools, etc. But the worst are the people who smoke in the subway, even though there are clear signs stating smoking is not allowed. They know they are not supposed to smoke, but they don't give a damn. It's ridiculous. Everytime I ride the subway, I see these people, or smell them when they take their last whiff, enter the subway train, and release that whiff in the train. I give these people a piece of my mind every single time, and will continue doing so, until they learn to respect other people. It's really ridiculous that they cannot follow their own rules, and have no regards for children being in the subway train, and subjected to that smoke. No wonder I see kids 10 years old smoking outside my son's school, which is in the 16th arrondisement, and is considered a nice area. I'm not so sure that the French are healthier than Americans. Sure they are skinnier, but that could also be the fact that they have to walk everywhere to get around, and when you have a car, like in America, you tend to not walk (or at least that was in my case).

irony of ironies Have you noticed that by forcing all the smokers outside and onto the streets smoking bans make it seem like there's even more smoking than when smokers could just stay limited to bars and smoking rooms? And then the antismoking people complain even more about all the smoke and butts lying around?

NO- It's not a French phenomenon! I tried to post this comment a few day ago but I see it has not appeared. Is this my fault for not posting correctly or yours for not wanting your readers to know the truth?

**
As someone who has clearly bought into the propaganda of the ‘harm’ caused by smoking and SHS Karen, you continue to live in a world where you probably honestly believe statements of wonderment like;

“It’s as if people aren’t even trying. Fewer people are buying stop-smoking nicotine patches and gum to try to diminish the need to light up.”
“… we’re surrounded by others who can’t kick the habit?”

You have missed the point and laboring under a misconception that everyone believes the fixed anti-smoker polls etc that claim everyone wants to quit! The typical smoker and more and more non-smokers are now far more informed and recognize the wide range of anti-smoker misinformation that is causing so much damage to economies and social cohesion. In particular the lie that passive smoking harms non-smokers and increasingly those lies relating to primary smoking. Most are aware that the anti-smoker campaign is much more about increasing sales of nicotine patches and gum to improve the bottom line profit of the pharmaceutical industry, rather than public health. (well it is only to be expected that they should demand a return on their not insubstantial investment in the medical, scientific community and anti-smoker groups)

It is a sad fact that so called ‘professionals’ or ‘experts’ can no longer be trusted to divulge untainted information if they are involved in the anti-smoker campaign. Michael McFadden earlier points out the need to look at primary evidence rather than listen to some ‘expert’ who will interpret that evidence with bias. The anti-tobacco spokesman, Rollo Tomasi, I see has not accepted Michael’s challenge and I doubt that he will. Attempting to deal with specifics is frowned upon in anti-tobacco circles - it shows up their weaknesses. Generalisations and ‘appeals to authority’ are anti-smoker stock replies along with a few references to ‘smell’ and ‘addiction’ to divert attention away from the important evidential detail.

It is only the weak willed nowadays who will buckle under and comply with the demands of anti smoker bigots and bullies. It is not ‘as if smokers aren’t trying‘, they are straightforwardly NOT trying. It is not that smokers ‘can’t kick the habit’, it is that they do not wish to ‘kick the habit’ and will not give in to the bigots! It takes far more will power to resist anti-smoker brainwashing, that to quit smoking as demanded by those faceless zealots. A quitter today is just that, a weak willed, gullible quitter.

In short, you are correct in thinking that smoker defiance isn’t just a French phenomenon, smokers are growing stronger and are now actively and widely resisting the insidious campaign to demonize them across the world in any way they can - wherever anti-smoker cancer has metastasized. The anti-tobacco gravy train is now riding on unstable tracks, the righteous campaign is being exposed and it is only a matter of time before the whole charade collapses.

http://fightingback.homestead.com/

Kin_Free

i'm surprised ...that no one on here has referred to an article that appeared in "Le Parisien" 31 May of this year. In an interview, Dr. Philippe Even, a noted pulmonologist and retired head of Research Institute Neckar stated that there are about 100 studies on seconhand smoke. Of those, 40% show no harm to nonsmokers at all. The other 60% show effects so negligible as to be non-existent.
And doesn't France already have lower cancer rates than the US or UK? As do other heavy-smoking countries like Japan, Greece and Germany?

vive la france! Glad to hear the French are resisting. Ms Fawcett seems unaware of the
Forbidden Fruit" dynamic of human psychology, which makes things that are banned--especially by the puritanical and intolerant--much more attractive.
Joanna Barouch, in her gloating over the Irish smoking ban, nelgects to mention how many pubs--especially rural pubs--have had to close their doors because of the ban. No traditional music there, just the sounds of silence. Not to even mention that Ireland now has a smoking rate of 33%, up ten percentage points from what is was before the ban. This gives the lie to those like Richard Timms who claim bans benefit the public health.
I'm curious to know if it's possible to comfortably enjoy a cigarette with one's drink in the Parisian winter. If so, I'd love to visit.

And this surprises you why?? New York City passed an inside smoking ban 1/1/90 and since then every door way to ever building is surrounded by smoking morons smoking and discarding their filth everywhere. Why would Paris be different? And a pack is more like $10 here. People cry about debt and prices and the economy but there seems to be lots of money to buy Smokes. Perhaps its best called "The Smoker's Paradox". The solution is to strongly enforce anti-littering laws already in effect worldwide for I do not know one smoker who doesn't treat the world as his/her own ashtray....

A Response... Well hello again yourself Rollo! And as usual you both mischaracterize what I do and ignore the points that I have made. I most certainly do *not* cherry pick studies. As I have asked you before, I will now ask you again: Name three studies that you are prepared to defend and where the data is publicly accessible for verification in some form where any level of significant risk of harm to health from the levels of smoke that would commonly be encountered in bars and restaurants today has been shown to be harmful to the general public. I'm quite happy to let YOU do the "cherry picking" from the mountain of studies you believe support your position and then defend them.


Remember though: we're talking about actual scientific studies: not reports, statements, opinions, fact-sheets, suppositions, reviews, etc etc. No one can mount a reasonable argument against a report that summarizes hundreds of studies except by showing that the individual studies themselves are made out of sand. In my Stiletto at:

http://encyclopedia.smokersclub.com/257.html

I examine close to a dozen of the more "popular" studies used at hearings to push these bans through, at least here in the States. Anyone who wants is welcome to go there, read my analyses, and decide for themselves if my analysis is worthwhile.


Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

thanks for the reminder Since leaving Paris in 1988, I have lived near San Francisco. And I have sorely missed Paris. But after reading this reminder of what I did not like about Paris, I'm really torn. I loved Paris, but I couldn't breathe there. Having been in an almost smoke-free environment for 20+ years, I had forgotten what it is like to be assaulted by air that chokes your lungs and leaves you dizzy and gasping. I believe in personal rights, but I simply cannot believe that smokers have the right to make it impossible for people like me to go to restaurants and other public places. Perhaps air filtration systems could be installed, but regardless, restaurants have an obligation to provide both indoor and outdoor seating without polluted air.
When non-smoking sections were introduced in the states, they found that even smokers preferred to eat in smoke-free zones, and they had to expand the non-smoking sections. Maybe they should license a certain number of indoor smoking establishments, and require all others to be 100% smoke free. Let the money talk.
In the meantime, enforcement needs to be clear and consistent. People do, however, need time to grasp the reality that it will not change. When I first arrived in California, conflict about smoking was high, but now fewer people smoke and smokers understand the limits. It took many years, but it was worth it.

Your Freedom Ends... There's the famous French dictum (though no one seems to be able to agree on who said it first), "Your freedom ends where mine begins." I'm not interested in trying to politicize the arguments for and against the Smoking Ban, but, as an on and off again smoker, I don't necessarily disagree with the law. Still, if I agree that I'm not allowed to smoke in a café or restaurant, I should be allowed to smoke outside, on the terrace. If a patron doesn't want to be affected, there's the inside of the bistro, where no cigarette smoke is allowed to go. But to say I'm not allowed to smoke inside OR outside...what's next? No smoking in the street? No smoking at home? And after that?

blogger Karen,
The USA has shown that anti smoking efforts can work although they are slow and take great perseverance. In the 1940s-50s adult smoking in the USA reached 45% and was consistently in the 40-45% range until the 1970s. The USA surgeon general's (Dr. Luther Terry) report on smoking first occurred in the early 1960s. Through a host of regulations, taxes and educational efforts, adult smoking has been gradually reduced to the 20-22% range, a major public health advance. Perhaps further reductions will be more difficult. New regulations have greatly reduced the public's exposure to secondary smoke. Although occurring many years after the original ban in restaurants, there are now bans occurring in select USA cities that include all public areas even outdoor areas. The basis of these bans is that a smoker does not have the right to expose others to toxic inhalants.
Staying the course against public exposure to smoke is one key issue. The human cost of smoking to a nation or culture is another. These are worth the effort. It can be discouraging to witness the opposition and the unnecessary damage to our clean air. I thank you for your small part in bringing attention to this important health issue.
Richard

Great article.. I wish people here in U.S. and there would take the smoking ban seriously and stop smoking. I know what secondhand smoke can do to a person. My mother was living with a friend who chained smoked. He lived in trailer. I went to spend a night in that trailer, and now I'm allergic to cigarette smoke. Here in the U.S. prisons have a smoking ban. Now my mother is smoke-free.

smoking ban? Until the powers-that-be in France put some teeth into the laws AND find ways to enforce them, there will be little chance of permanent success. I was in Dublin in 2007. The smoking ban had been introduced only a few months before and there was much moaning and groaning about it from smokers. However...there was no messing around with it. A 3000 euro fine ensured quality air inside a pub or restaurant. My understanding was that no proprietor wanted to get caught and then have to pony up that kind of money. Since no one knew when the enforcers would come around, the ban was taken seriously. I was able to enjoy 3 hours in a pub while listening to and playing traditional Irish music. With my predisposition to asthma I wouldn't have lasted a minute had the ban not been in place.
Even if those studies mentioned above were fraudulent, the fact is that smokers have disgusting breath, ugly teeth and smelly clothes. It is highly unpleasant to be in close proximity to a heavy smoker even when there's no cigarette to be seen. Everyone knows what nicotine does to hotel rooms. The stench is a "gift" that keeps on giving.
I've never understood how a culture that places such a high premium on food and wine can at the same time wallow in something that destroys tastebuds!
This is yet another French paradox.

Thank you for this article! Thank you for this article! I was worried I was the only person in the world noticing the ever increasing amount of smokers and the impossibility of enjoying a terrasse without smoke all around. One of the only things I consistantly hate about Paris.. and actually the same epidemic continues in Budapest, Vienna, all over Spain..

Making money The French government's efforts to stop us from smoking are usually pointless of just laughable. Printing "Fumer tue" on cigarette boxes does not seem to discourage anyone. But the most preposterous is the offer to help you stop smoking with a phone number for counseling--and the call costs 15 centimes per minute. I wonder what happens to the money. If you are curious, here is the number: 08 25 30 93 10.

Rollo Oh hello again Michael. I see you’re at it again. Trying to paint a picture about the science by referring a couple of completely cherry-picked, unrepresentative and irrelevant anecdotes.

The facts are these. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Helena trial, it is in itself irrelevant to this debate unless you can show that most or all scientific studies into secondhand smoke are equally flawed. And you have never been able to do that.

Smoking laws in the EU are built on evidence about the long-term risks of lung cancer and heart disease from passive smoking. Funnily enough you don’t mention that. You don’t mention the fact that the Helena study did not look into either of these risks. Instead, it investigated something totally different (short-term risks to health from exposure to secondhand smoke).

And you also don’t mention how you just cherry-pick one or two studies in order each your distorted conclusion. If you read reports which analyse most or all available studies, as for instance the French-based International Agency for Research on Cancer and the US Surgeon General did, they concluded that long-term exposure to secondhand smoke is a clear risk to health.

Statistics and Lies... The NSR statistic about the air in smoking terraces being 3x as "toxic" as that in nonsmoking restaurants is simple nonsense and meant to be deceptive. What they do is pick a particular element of tobacco smoke, usually something like FPM 2.5, that is basically another term for "smoke." They then find higher levels of smoke where smoking is occurring than where it is not.

Simple, eh? But then they take this bone-simple fact and try to explain it in a way that makes it sound threatening. In reality it's like an anti-car activist saying "People who sit near the front of restaurants are 100x more likely to be hit by an out of control car plunging through the storefront than people sitting in the back of the restaurant." People who worry about such things would be better off institutionalized where they could get some professional care.

To see more about the lies they use to promote smoking bans, read my "Stiletto" (The Lies Behind The Smoking Bans) at

http://encyclopedia.smokersclub.com/257.html

It's short and one-sided, but its facts are accurate and their presentation is honest. If there are any questions or criticisms of it please feel free to share them here as it addresses precisely what is behind this article. I am open about who I am, what my "competing interest" might be claimed to be, and I stand firmly behind every word that I write.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

retired The Great Helena Heart Fraud



If They Had the Truth... Why Would They Lie?




In April of 2003 two local doctors from a relatively small town in the Midwestern United States unveiled the preliminary results of a study that made a truly astounding claim: A smoking ban in that town based upon the “protection of people from second hand smoke,” lasting for only 6 months, had reduced the heart attack rate by 60%. Just as incredible, it was claimed that as soon as the ban was overturned by a judge and proprietors were again allowed “to continue poisoning people” with secondary smoke, the heart attack rate immediately rebounded to pre-ban levels.

These claims were far beyond anything that had ever before been laid at the doorstep of secondary smoke exposure and activists and media outlets around the globe jumped on it and proclaimed it to be proof of the immediate and urgent need to protect nonsmokers from tobacco smoke.

The one big problem with this (among many other problems explored below) is that the study itself did not specifically examine the effects of the ban on nonsmokers!

Of course that information didn’t come out until a year later when the details of the study were actually made public for all to see, but by that time the incredible claimed findings had been used as the basis for hundreds of debates and laws throughout the country in the drive to eliminate public smoking. Note, the study itself was honest in not making such a claim, but the presentation of the study to the public by the authors, by activists in respected and high profile positions, and by a sympathetic media, all asserted that “The Great Helena Heart Miracle” study had proven beyond all doubt that secondary smoke was felling tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Is it fair to title this Appendix “The Great Helena Heart Fraud” when the study itself is not being accused of being fraudulent? Yes. The reason for this is explored below in two unpublished “Commentaries” that I submitted to the British Medical Journal. The first was rejected after four weeks without explanation. The second (which had been submitted as “fast track” for urgent consideration) was rejected after seven weeks with the explanation that two of the four selected reviewers had finally read it and recommended it be rejected. Follow up emails to the Journal were ignored.

I would also strongly suggest that any reader with online access visit the website of the BMJ itself to read the relatively short study and examine the Rapid Response comments made to it. It’s worth noting that although over a dozen significant questions and criticisms were made of the study within two weeks of its publication, it was not until two months later that the authors finally chose to respond. It’s also worth noting that that response ignored over 90% of the questions and criticisms that had been raised while taking an Ad Hominem slap at the most recent pair of questioners, accusing them of "following a well-established tobacco industry strategy..."

Reproduced below are the two rejected Commentary submissions, followed by an online Rapid Response submitted 100 days after the study’s initial online publication. Readers of the printed Journal of course never got to see any of this material and unless they make a special trip to the web site will never know the severity of the questions and criticisms that greeted this “peer-reviewed” study. To the best of my knowledge none of these criticisms have ever appeared in the print or broadcast media outside of a letters to the editor page.



Commentary 1:

On April 5th, 2004, the BMJ published the "Helena Heart Miracle" study in its online version. Quite aside from several minor questions and quibbles (e.g. why the strict limitation of comparator periods, why similar changes have not been noted in prison populations with smoking bans; and why funding from organizations that openly push for bans is not considered a conflicting interest) there is one major and glaring problem with this study and the way it has been presented.

The problem is the lack of differentiation between those patients who smoked and those who did not and a presentation that clearly claimed the opposite. The terms "secondhand" smoke or smoking appear twelve times in the study while the overall tone of the paper itself, press statements by at least two of the authors, and further press statements by nationally prominent Antismoking figures all combine to give the strong impression that the study clearly found that exposure to secondary smoke caused heart attacks among Helena's nonsmoking population.

In reality, in an obscure paragraph near the end, the authors admit that the study did not examine nonsmokers as a separate group, noting that small sample size would have made such differentiation totally meaningless.

Am I exaggerating the extent of the deliberate misinterpretation to the public? Not at all:

On April 2nd the American Heart Association paid for a press release headlined in big bold print: "NEW STUDY LINKS SECONDHAND SMOKE TO HEART ATTACKS," where the AHA's CEO, M. Cass Wheeler, stated: "Banning smoking is the only logical response to the scientific evidence concerning the dangers of secondhand smoke."

On April 4th, Stanton Glantz, co-author and study guarantor, stated in another press release that: "This is not the first study to find a link between long term exposure to secondhand smoke and heart attacks." His associate, the Director of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, followed with: "The bottom line is simple. Secondhand smoke kills."

Even Vivian Nathanson, head of research and ethics right here at the BMA, was quoted in an April 5th article on the study as saying "We estimate that second-hand smoke kills at least 1,000 people in the UK every year."

Dr. Sargent himself, the lead author of the study, asserted in a CBS TV interview about Helena that business owners wanted "to be allowed to continue poisoning people even when we have demonstrated the immediate effect of it."

All of this shows quite clearly the intended message of the study. And that message is not the likely truth: that when a smoking ban is introduced in a small community smokers smoke less and spend more of their potential heart attack time outside of that community while eating, drinking, gambling and smoking.

A final note of interest: A deliberately omitted data chart used in the initial presentation of the study clearly shows a drop in AMIs only during the first three months of the ban when it is most likely that angry Helena smokers deliberately went out of town for their fun during the warm weather months. However the chart also showed that for the last three months of the ban, when the cold Montana winter was approaching and angry smokers tired of boycotting local businesses or moved their drinking and smoking to their homes, the heart attack rate bounced back up to roughly normal levels. Not a bounce back after the ban ended as is usually claimed.

I offer apologies to Drs. Sargent and Shepard for being so harsh in my criticism, but I feel the harshness is deserved when one considers the enormous damage this study has done to people's lives and livelihoods in communities where the "Helena Heart Miracle" has been held up as proof of the harm of secondary smoke in order to frighten nonsmokers and get extremist smoking bans rammed through legislatures.

Advancing a falsehood designed to implement social engineering goals amongst free people is never something to be taken lightly.

Ochi zhguchiye I don't know about smoking in public sans contrôle being "simply [for which I read 'exclusively'] French", but I do know that, on my recent sojourn (too short even at six weeks) in Provence and the Côte d'Azur, I for sure knew I would have known I was in France as soon as my feet, accompanied by my smaller than my feet, but still not insignificant, nose hit the pavement at the Nice airport. The air was redolent of Turkish tobacco aromas. You smell it, unceasingly, eating anywhere in the Cours Saleya (where most of the dining is al fresco, if for no other reason than it's too damn hot... getting to smoke legally, voluntarily or involuntarily as a bystander, is a bonus). Walking through the pseudo-souk of the back streets of the Old Town, it continues. It seems every other person has a butt in his face or in her fist. Escaping to the hinterlands of the Haut Var, where the crowds thin considerably except on the day of marché, does not escape at least the smell of tobacco smoke, which permeates everything, never mind the highly localized haze surrounding every other neighboring table at one's favorite café or bar-tabac. The bar-tabac and the maison presse do a brisk trade in cigarettes and cigarillos (which, apparently, are the carcinogen of choice of the more iron-lunged). I imagine to futile to think that one is escaping exposure. And so the temptation (to this ex-smoker; 40 years+ now) amplifies with every visit to LBF. To me this is an index of the differences between France, and the U.S., at least. I do live, when not in France, in Cambridge, MA, near Harvard Square—an enclave of abstinence of every salubrious sort concocted by the higher IQs that are native to these precincts. So there's a sort of skewed perception of the difference. But something tells me that, indeed, the difference (and the higher levels of tobacco use) are indigenous to Europe, at least, if not to France per se. I suspect some countries (Italy for one) far outstrip even the French in consumption of tobacco products. In winter, incidentally, the heady and aromatic atmosphere of the Haut Var inspired (quite literally) by the burning of dung-cured tobacco, is replaced by the equally intoxicating aromas of other organic products in combustion... as every household has a hearth, and every hearth burns good seasoned oak, which abounds. And there's no greater welcome (unless it's that cigarette reek of summer) to Nice in Winter than the acrid sweetness of wood smoke that seems part of the very firmament. [for the less-well informed, the title I put on this comment, incidentally, is a transliteration of the Russian lyric from the great song Ochi chorniye ("Dark eyes"), and it means "burning eyes," but I'm sure the original lyric connoted something else.