Press Release
For
Immediate Release: December 5 ,
2005
Do
Smoking Bans cause a 27 to 40% drop in admissions for myocardial infarction in
hospitals?
December
5, 2005
Antismokers claim that studies have shown
that bans bring about an immediate and drastic decrease in heart
attacks among nonsmokers exposed to smoke at work.
This claim was never true to begin with - the cited studies never
separated and analyzed nonsmokers as a separate group - and it has now
been pointed out in the pages of the BMJ that even the claim of saving
lives among the combined population of smokers and nonsmokers might
be worthless.
While many making that claim may have believed their information to
be accurate, it is now obvious that its basis has been thrown
strongly into question. As Jacob Sullum noted in a December 1st reaction
to the announcement, "An effect this dramatic (i.e. an immediate and
pronounced drop of hospital admissions for heart attacks) should have
been noticed all over the country..."
Just a week before the Chicago Aldermen were due to vote on a citywide
smoking ban, two independent researchers working together, David W. Kuneman
and Michael J. McFadden, unveiled a new study covering a population base
roughly 1,000 times as large as the previous town-based studies. The new
study indicates strongly that rather than a 30% decrease in heart
attacks, statewide smoking bans seem to have literally NO EFFECT AT ALL
on heart attack rates. Incredibly the data even indicates that California's
statewide heart attack rate went UP by 6% in the first full year of their
total smoking ban!
The data for the study and the basis of its design have been backed up
and expanded by well-known antismoking researcher Michael Siegel who has come
out in support of the researchers' approach as providing "compelling evidence
that brings into question the conclusion that smoking bans have an immediate
and drastic effect on heart attack incidence." His observation is echoed
by researcher Kuneman who asks, "Ever wonder why you didn't hear about post
ban heart attack declines in New York City? Or in Minneapolis or Los
Angeles? Now you know!"
On December 4th the British Medical Journal entered the fray with
the online publication of a Rapid Response by Mr. McFadden outlining the new
research and posing sharp criticisms of the earlier studies and of the refusal
of the authors of those studies to respond to previous criticisms and
questions. McFadden points out that the data in the Kuneman/McFadden
study are fully open for public examination and far less selective than
the data in the earlier studies and notes with pride that he and his
co-researcher have been quick to respond to all queries posted about their
methodology on Dr. Siegel's web blog.
He also poses the wider ranging question of whether studies commissioned
by the "Antismoking Industry" should begin to receive the same cautious
reception accorded those commissioned by "Big Tobacco." The current
study, as well as an earlier one by the duo, were unfunded and neither
researcher receives grants for their work from either interest group.
Kuneman sharply asks the question, "Why the difference between the
studies? For one thing we weren't dependent on antismoking-targeted
grants!"
At this point there appears to be very little, if any, real scientific
support for the claim that protecting nonsmokers from normal levels of
exposure to secondary smoke prevents any heart attacks. And it is this
claim that has always provided the impressive numbers upon which ban advocates
have pressed legislators to pass smoking bans.
Without those numbers proponents of extreme bans are left with little
other than the widely discredited EPA figures relating ETS to lung cancer and
a few isolated instances of hospitality workers who have come to believe that
their own cancers were caused by working in smoking establishments.
Samantha Phillipe, editor of the longstanding smokersclubinc.com
newsletter, notes that while it's always a cause for sadness when someone
becomes ill that it's even more sad when they are misguidedly advised to blame
family and friends for their illness.
Without a compelling body of scientific evidence backing them up, smoking
bans are an unnecessary and overbearing intrusion of government into the
spheres of free choice, private property and free enterprise. And the
Kuneman/McFadden study points up just how uncompelling even some of the
strongest and most publicised evidence actually is.
References:
Article:
http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/hospitaladmissions.html
3) BMJ Response:
4) Jacob Sullum's REASON column:
###
Press Release Approved by Samantha
Phillipe
President
The Smoker’s Club, Inc.
PO Box 814
Center
Conway, NH 03813
info@smokersclub.com
http://www.smokersclub.com
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