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News: Canada Anti-Smoking Stats-Scam
Posted on Wednesday, September 14 @ 07:58:27 EDT by samantha |
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Anti-Smoking Stats-Scam
Anti-Smoking Stats-Scam
by Karen Patrick
Don't You Just Hate It When People Lie to You?
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It is said that Rodrigo de Jerez, fellow explorer with Columbus in 1492, brought back the first tobacco to Europe. When he happily lit a cigar in the streets of his hometown, he was promptly arrested by the Spanish Inquisition and sentenced to seven years. Hence, the first anti-smoking demagogues were born.
Today, it is not robed priests at the head of a column of pitch-fork, torch bearing mobs who come for smokers, it is government zealots and healthcare fanatics. Just as the Inquisitors twisted fact and logic to justify their ends, so too do the health preachers of the new millennium.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Since 1987 the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has used the Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, and Economic Costs (SAMMEC) application to estimate the disease impact of smoking for the nation, states, and large populations. Health Canada uses a SAMMEC formula too. SAM refers to Smoking-Attributable Mortality.
| The anti-tobacco lobby has turned smoking into the "leading preventable cause of death." This is accomplished by estimating mortality from extrapolated data of whole classes of common illness (SAMMEC - see sidebar). Where the sum of deceased smokers and former smokers indicate any statistical percentage above calculated averages, that disease or illness is then considered caused by smoking.
No regard is given to other major factors in each death such as obesity, family history, workplace environment, lifestyle and complicating health issues.
This has allowed a dramatic expansion of the familiar list of lung cancer, bronchitis and emphysema to now include the likes of: hypertension, cervix uteri cancer, kidney cancer, pneumonia, influenza, and sudden infant death syndrome. In some reports, even deadly house fires accidentally set by a match or lighter (Smoking Related Materials) are added to the body count of Smoking-Attributable Mortality (SAM).
| Deaths |
SAM |
SAM % |
Year |
| 218,900 |
44,763 |
20.5 |
1996 |
| 223,500 |
44,944 |
20.1 |
1994 |
But even these wide-net statistics fail to produce a smokers death rate higher than 20%-22% when compared to the total mortality data (StatsCan). This despite an active smoking population (one or more cigarettes a day) of about 18%-21% (Health Canada). The average age of smokers who die is 72 years old. The bulk of deaths are above age 65. By any reasonable standard these are natural life spans.
Yet, even today Health Canada warns that more than 45,000 people will die in Canada due to smoking in 2005. Despite that seemingly large number, it still represents only 20% of all deaths -- which would be reasonably expected.
All told, about a third of smokers who die each year, succumb to lung cancer -- most at well above retirement age. The other two thirds die from causes that only anti-tobacco crusaders could possibly attribute to smoking, through their complex SAMMEC statistical correlations.
The Second-Hand Smoke Gambit
Study Shows No Association Between Passive Smoke and Health Risks; Others Criticize Research. The new study, to be published in the May 17 issue of the British Medical Journal, shows no measurable rates of heart disease or lung cancer among nonsmokers who ever lived with smokers, and reports only a slight increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. -- 2003.
| Health Canada projects 1,000 non-smoking Canadians will die in 2005 as a result of exposure to second-hand smoke. Of those, 300 will die from lung cancer. But, this represents barely over one tenth of one percent (0.13%) of the mortality rate. By comparison non-smokers with lung cancer, with no correlated exposure to second-hand smoke, comprise 1.3% of deaths. This is a whopping ten times higher than for cases said to be caused by second-hand smoke. By further comparison, heart disease generally represents over 26% of deaths annually and flu mortality is about 3.6%. The total 1,000 second-hand smoke fatalities comprise just under half a percent (0.4%) of all deaths.
Despite all the dire warnings, very few deaths are statistically linked to second-hand smoke even with the use of projections similar to SAMMEC and SAM.
Only a few major long-term studies with any real credibility have been conducted in the world. The results, which showed no correlation existed between health and second-hand smoke, were summarily suppressed.
A Big Score With their newly minted statistical correlations, much accelerated since 1980, governments across the United States and Canada have reaped billions of dollars in new revenues.
US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop calls for a smoke-free society by the year 2000. It is the beginning of the most fanatical anti-smoking onslaught in modern history -- 1984.
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Deals were struck to take huge portions of tobacco profits to funnel into state coffers, much of which went to non-healthcare related items.
Canadians in particular have faced extreme taxation on cigarettes in the name of health, only to find their money has been used for general government spending.
American lawyers have made obscene piles of money from large shares of successful settlements in litigation against tobacco companies. A few awards still in appeals total in the billions of dollars.
Smokers continue to face an unrelenting campaign to marginalize their lives and ban them from public places.
Pregnant mothers who smoke are accused of killing their unborn children, dubbed "Cigarette Babies" which will inevitably lead to calls for the criminalization of smoking mothers who experience a miscarriage.
Parents are chillingly told it is child abuse to smoke at anytime in their own home, car, or anywhere near children.
Clothes which smell of tobacco smoke are said by some to be toxic and should be handled as hazardous materials.
Smoking bans are being introduced in some outdoor public parks and beaches, despite often visible urban smog and automobile exhaust.
Seeking Tobacco Sanity
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
-- Albert Einstein
| Considering the statistical slight of hand created by the anti-smoking crusaders, it is time to move forward by undoing the considerable damage they have caused to real science and the credibility of government.
Simply put, it is time to repeal all anti-smoking bans, limitations and undue taxation imposed upon tobacco and its use, except where open flame poses an imminent fire or explosion hazard. This may not be a popular move today under the shadow of a constant onslaught of wild anti-smoking claims, but it would be an honest policy.
More importantly, it is the only reasonable response to protect the public from these modern day Inquisitors.
*Quoted percentages are based on direct Health Canada and Statistics Canada data. Where a direct data comparison is not available, calculations are based on an average of annual deaths and a population estimate of 32,300,000 Canadians in 2005. Read |
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Article Rating
Average Score: 5
Votes: 4
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