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Magical Science?

By Michael J. McFadden

Paul Kiser of Seven County Services, Inc. recently wrote the City Council urging a total, government-mandated smoking ban.  As part of his argument he quoted the statement below:

 "A reduction of the harmful constituents of secondhand smoke does not protect against the disease and death caused by exposure to secondhand smoke. "

 This statement is quite similar to one made by the Americans for Nonsmokers Rights:

"Changes in ventilation rates during smoking do not have a significant influence on the air concentrations of tobacco components."

What is similar about these statements?  Simple: they both presume that tobacco smoke is somehow a "magical" substance, a substance that is immune to the normal laws of science and physics.  It is an assumption similar to that made by leading Antismoking activist James Repace (I hesitate to call someone who gets well over $100,000 a year for his efforts an activist, but he's certainly more of an activist than a researcher.) when he states that even 300 mile per hour winds would be insufficient to protect nonsmokers sitting in the nonsmoking section of a restaurant.

 (Think about that statement for a moment: it means that if you were sitting in a restaurant with wide open windows in the middle of Hurricane Ivan and someone lit a cigarette 30 feet downwind from you that you should be worrying about the SMOKE!) 

 Magical science...  this is what the Antismoking movement has led us to.  They claim that increased ventilation does not influence what is in the air.  Smoking 100 cigarettes in an airtight chamber is the same as smoking them in the middle of a hurricane. They claim that reducing harmful constituents, even by a factor of a hundred or a thousand times makes no difference in the threat that they represent. 

 This is not science, it's not even science fiction... this is MAGIC.  According to the extremist Antismokers, tobacco smoke is a magical substance that defies all the laws of partcicle physics!  And yet these ideas are pushed by someone (Mr. Repace) who identifies himself as a "Health Physicist" and an "International Expert on Secondhand Smoke" !

Cigarette smoke is somehow magical: it does not get pushed by the breeze or even by the hurricane.  It seeks out and destroys nonsmokers no matter where they hide.  Its deadliness and virulence seems to be drastically increasing over time as well:  Children have had their exposure to smoke cut down by over 70% in the last 20 years... but somehow their asthma rates have gone up by over 200% and the Antismokers blame it on tobacco smoke!

Perhaps it's not magic though.... perhaps it's just plain and simple craziness.  Craziness, as in neurosis, psychosis, mass hysteria on an unprecedented scale.

Evidence of this can be seen clearly simply by looking to New York City, where an extremist smoking ban was implemented in just the past year.  New York City is a city with a long and proud tradition of supporting the stage.  "Playing on Broadway" has become synonymous with success in our society.  And quite aside from "Broadway" there are hundreds of small theatrical productions every year in the small side-street theaters scattered throughout the city.

New York itself draws on a long tradition of the thespian arts stretching back beyond Shakespeare into Greek and Roman times. 

In all those years and decades, even in all those centuries, there was never a case noted among the tens or hundreds of millions of attendees to these plays of an audience member requiring urgent medical attention because of the smoke produced by the numerous torches, fireplaces, bonfires, or cigarettes, that were burned on stages during such productions.

Never that is, until now.   In the past year there have been letters to editors in NY papers decrying the wretched experiences of audience members so exposed, and even a case or two of audience members needing urgent medical attention or hospitalization after a cast member lit a tobacco product dozens or hundreds of feet away!

What is particularly notable, and yes, MAGICAL, about this kind of reaction is the fact that (as anyone who's ever had any connection with the theater can attest) the atmosphere on stage in most theaters is HOT.  The stage lights are bright and unmerciful.  Cast members sweat and try not to sweat as they broil in the bright lights of production.

The air on the stage is HOT... it rises... it does NOT go shooting out toward the audience carrying deadly fumes to seek out and attack innocent members of that audience.  The air and any normal airborne substance heated by those lights is going to rise right up and out the ventilator shafts while it is displaced by the cool air from the audience area or other venting. 

But Antismokers will claim that tobacco smoke in all its paranormal power is somehow MAGICAL: it ignores the laws of physics, and pushes the onrushing cool air aside as it reaches out and attacks people in the audience.

So take your pick:  Is tobacco smoke REALLY a "magical" substance that has somehow snuck into the world of the muggles while really being controlled by a devious and smoky Harry Potter?   Are the Illuminati behind it all somehow?  Or maybe the Freemasons or Jesuits?  Has tobacco smoke somehow become smarter than human beings, since we, poor souls that we are, must still bow to the laws of physics?

Or are we in the midst of a true instance of nationwide mass-hysteria brought on and fueled by the hundreds of millions of dollars of tax money that have poured extremist Antismoking messages through the media and into our jello-like minds over the past decade or so.

We have become a society of the mentally ill in our paranoia about tobacco smoke... so much so that even the god of science has been perverted to the new religion.

Sincerely,

Michael J. McFadden

Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

http://www.Antibrains.com

Competing Interests: I have absolutely NO financial connections with Big Tobacco, Big Hospitality, Big Pharma, or any other player in this arena other than as a customer and as the author of a book titled "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains."

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