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Stanton Glantz is a one, isn’t he?

There is strong and consistent evidence that exposure to secondhand smoke causes heart attacks and that smokefree workplace and public place laws cut heart attacks (and other diseases). The most recent evidence comes from a large study in Sao Paolo, Brazil, where heart attack deaths dropped by 12 percent following implementation of its smokefree law.

Even so, we still hear people challenging the science. For example, a recent article by a onetime employee of the tobacco industry-supported Cato Institute and bartender, tries to use the natural variability in results in different studies to argue against this fact.

He’s a bartender! Was! Ignore him!

And fancy that, he looks at many studies to see what the average effect is rather than concentrating only upon those that show the effect he seeks.

Damn, he’ll be doing science next, eh Stanton?

42 thoughts on “Stanton Glantz is a one, isn’t he?”

  1. So Much For Subtlety

    Even the vile hive of scum and villany Slate has published an article admitting that passive smoking is a myth:

    Secondhand Smoke Is Not Nearly As Dangerous As We Thought

    No doubt they were paid by the evil Koch brothers too.

  2. Stanton Glantz – the onetime infant unable to feed himself, who was not even fluent in the language of his native country?

    THAT Stanton Glantz?

  3. I don’t really care too much about the health effects of second hand smoke. I do care that I and the majority of peipke in enclosed public spaces would not have that unpleasant smell and stinging smoke imposed upon us by those who care only for themselves. So now we have a law that prevents those people imposing their personal wishes at the expense of every body ekese’s enjoyment.

    Rather like the Brexit vote, being in the majority can be very pleasant

  4. Age-corrected, heart attack rates are plummeting for reasons nobody knows (not that that stops medics claiming the credit). Quite possibly it’s just a pandemic coming to an end as population resistance builds up.

    Consequently almost any policy measure will apparently result in declining heart attack rates. The decline probably correlates quite well with the growth of government debt, for example, or the growth of the ice in Antarctica..

  5. Yes, smoke can be annoying. Banning it in public spaces can be reasonable. The problem is who gets to define “public spaces.” Defining earth as public space is the problem.

  6. Cough, cough, shouldn’t we be concerned with the mean rather than the average?

    Bit smoky where you are?

  7. Christopher Snowdon over at Velvet Glove, Iron Fist is constantly exposing this man’s tricks.

    You could teach logical fallacies on his articles alone.

  8. He’s a bartender! Was! Ignore him!

    Glantz himself seems no better qualified, as his Wikipedia page mentions engineering degrees but no medical degree or training. It does say he is “Professor of Medicine” at the University of California but you would think it would list his medical qualifications and experience.

    Seems anyone can become a Professor these days.

  9. Iron/Theo

    I’d rather have smokers smoke in enclosed private spaces instead of at the door to every building I want to enter.

    One day I will create an Tumblr page titled “Smokers smoking next to no-smoking signs”

  10. I don’t smoke but prohibiting pubs and other private businesses from making their own choice – or even having one smoking room out of however many rooms they have – is deeply illiberal. No one is forcing ironman to go into any pub, and I dare say the ambience in them would be improved by his absence, since he is the archetypal Thick.Gobshite.Pub bore. For that reason alone I would choose a smoking pub, if they were allowed to exist by our betters.

  11. James +1

    Ironman and Theo, what is it you do not understand in the meaning of “private space”?

    Fvcking illiberal twats.

  12. monoi

    “private space”

    I wouldn’t want to second guess Ironman, but actually the words used were “enclosed public space”?

    Personally, I’m with the barman – his gaff, and I can lump it or leave it. The market will prevail.

  13. James

    Rest easy; you will never find me on the sort of place where guys like you think it ‘liberal’ to shout aloud about thick gobshite; life is too short for that

    Illiberal? Maybe. But then by the same token it could be regarded as illiberal not to allow the barman to refuse to serve a man because he is black or Irish or emfeminate.

  14. “But then by the same token it could be regarded as illiberal not to allow the barman to refuse to serve a man because he is black or Irish or emfeminate(sic).”
    It is.
    You are.

  15. Smokers are deeply illiberal in that they regard the world as their ashtray.

    For me, it is a huge relief to know that my hotel room will not stink of stale tabacco smoke and that I can enter a bar without my eyes watering.

    That said, I’ve nothing against smoking as such. If smokers want to form private clubs where they can drink and smoke convivially, then legislation should permit this.

  16. Sorry. To avoid confusion.
    You are illiberal.
    Not the other thing.
    “Iron” has a particular meaning, where I come from.

  17. The Meissen Bison

    …he is black or Irish or emfeminate

    Goodness but it’s hard to keep up – is emfeminate a new variant on the seemingly endless array of sexual proclivities and gender preferences that people insist make them different from everybody else?

  18. “If smokers want to form private clubs where they can drink and smoke convivially, then legislation should permit this.”

    Does legislation prevent forming private clubs where smoking is not allowed? WTF should others have to form clubs instead of you? GFY.

  19. Surely libel is libel whether it is communicated via Twitter or a newspaper article. I can’t see why it makes any difference.

  20. Bloke in Spain

    Yes, as you’ve frequently said, this country has gone to the dogs. What sort of decent country prevents decent people from refusing to serve black people because they’re black?

    Illiberally yours
    Ironman

  21. “But then by the same token it could be regarded as illiberal not to allow the barman to refuse to serve a man because he is black or Irish or emfeminate.”

    True. Barmen should have that freedom.

    So long as someone else is free to set up a bar across the street that won’t serve racists, sexists, homophobes, and smokerphobes, so that the black Irish women can go have a drink and a cigarette without having to suffer the intellectual stench of other people’s ugly illiberal opinions. (No offence.)

    Offer a choice, and let the market decide.

  22. ‘choice’ in the UK!
    and what will the police , informers and the diverse say?
    And what will you do now you are unemployed?
    Free speech and thought died ages ago.

  23. Bloke in North Dorset

    The anti smoking laws are arse about face.

    As I walk down the street I don’t have any choice if someone lights up in front of me and I get a lung full of their smoke. It is my choice whether or not I go in to a bar that allows smoking.

    If landlords don’t want my custom so be it,but I don’t see why my right to a smoke free zone overrides someone else’s right to allow a legal activity when I have to put up with it running through the park.

    Anyway, we’ve got to the point where there’s so few smokers I can’t see it making much difference if landlords get to decide about smoking. Recently I commented on seeing a cigarette butt on the golf course and commented how the course would have been littered with them 20 years ago.

  24. If the state was going to insist on “playing the Nazi” at this level, I was curious as to why, at the very least, it didn’t allow pubs to have “a smoking room”, as long as the pub could demonstrate that it didn’t impact at all on the non smoking remainder of the pub. Even enforce restrictions on the serving area of the smoking room / combined say with suitably placed extractor fans, air con, whatever.

    But that’s the issue. The ban wasn’t about that. It was (and is) about increasing control / shutting down behaviour that the fascists disapprove of. Step by step.

    For those of you that were happy with the complete ban (simply because it suited you this time), perhaps consider that you might be the target next time round in this ongoing process? Whether it be alcohol, driving or a whole number of other behaviours that the fascists increasingly want to curtail?

    And no, I’m not a smoker and I hate the smell. I personally benefited hugely from the ban (except that certain friends increasingly stopped going down the pub for a drink). It doesn’t change my view that – to start with – it’s the landlord’s gaff, not mine (and then take it from there).

  25. PF said:
    “The ban … was (and is) about increasing control / shutting down behaviour that the fascists disapprove of.”

    I suspect it was worse than that; I fear it was about killing off pubs as bulwarks of that very conservative British liberty.

  26. iirc

    Scottish NHS Public ‘Elfs claimed a 25% reduction in heart attacks in the year after the smoking ban – but refused to provide figures….

    Stanton’s expertise knows no limits – he’s also an expert on climate change and hobnobs ‘pon occasion with the odious Naomi Oreskes – apparently

    Glantz is an Oxygen larcenist

  27. The effects of 2nd hand tobacco smoke have been shown to be zero for short term exposure and probably minimal or zero even over the long term. What really gets people up about 2nd hand smoke is smell. It lingers and for most non-smokers is vile. It offends their sensibility much like perfume overdose.

    I am a smoker but wish that I had never started. It’s a nasty habit. And it’s bad for your health in many ways. None the less, I’m for honest science and it just isn’t there for 2nd hand smoke. Allegations of health effects is just political science.

  28. Rob

    Surely libel is libel whether it is communicated via Twitter or a newspaper article. I can’t see why it makes any difference.

    Sure. I was more interested in the libel versus offence angle.

    Unfortunately, that’s a further precedent set in this continued battle over free speech. Hopkins did no more than ask one or two offensive questions, to which any non snowflake on the internet might simply have batted it back with a bit of interest & told Hopkins she was a bit thick (which Hopkins was being on this occasion – mistaken identity: “Guardian writers – they all look the same”).

    As a high profile provocateur (#), Hopkins needs a lawyer to watch her back – and to get her to back track whenever necessary (which she didn’t adequately do in this case?), even if only to say “Sorry, dearie, I meant someone else. If that really did offend you / make you cry, have a candy bar / up vote” or whatever.

    Delingpole wrote a good piece on this recently. He equated people such as himself / Hopkins etc as icebreakers, the objective being to keep the shipping lanes open. The ice clearly being modern PC / censorship and the shipping lanes being free speech that the rest of us enjoy. it means that people like himself and Hopkins need to continually push limits (to keep the ice at bay). But it also crucially means “don’t let your ice breaker break down in enemy territory”.

  29. @Chester Draws
    You’re one of the last people I’d expect to be going all Roman law on us. You can only do what’s allowed, rather than you can do anything unless it’s explicitly forbidden. Let me metaphorically stub out my fag on your post.

    The bad science on second hand smoking opened the doors for all the other junk that followed, including the Climate change bollocks. The bill for which must now be in the trillions.

  30. “WTF should others have to form clubs instead of you? GFY.”

    Because the polluter must pay, and smokers cannot treat the world as their ashtray and so pollute it.

    If landlords want to designate their pubs smoking zones, that’s fine by me. I’ll go elsewhere. Funny, though, that for decades smokers never accorded non-smokers similar consideration….

  31. Amazingly, the Best Pub In The World, The Old Green Tree in Bath, had a non-smoking room when I were a lad working there 34 years ago.

  32. “Because the polluter must pay, and smokers cannot treat the world as their ashtray and so pollute it.”

    Whah, whah, whah.

  33. “Whah, whah, whah.”

    I am not sure what would we do around here without your incisive commentary and penetrating intellect.

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