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February 10, 2004

Smoking Ban Election

Today's the official election on the proposed city-wide smoking ban, and the clerk's office is predicting a record turnout. There's already been 2,550 early votes cast, which is unheard of for a special election.

The anti-smoking group ran commercials on all the local cable stations yesterday. I didn't see them, I was buried in homework, but Mike was livid about one in particular. It said that there had been x number (I don't remember what number they quoted) of restaurant workers that had died in Fayetteville last year from the effects of second-hand smoke. Mike wanted to know where they had gotten that figure. Pulled it out of their ass was my guess.

And I just now saw a jogger pass by wearing a pro-smoking ban sandwich board. It's 21 degrees outside.

There's a fine line between dedication and outright stupidity.

Posted by Rita at February 10, 2004 08:21 AM

Comments

Not to mention, addiction......

Posted by: Bill at February 10, 2004 09:18 AM

They did the smoking ban in our state capital, and a couple of the doctors came out with a highly quoted study that claimed the smoking ban had reduced heart-related deaths by a striking margin...

...in less than a year!

I'm no doctor, but I would sure think that you would see the effects of something like that over time, rather than immediately.

I'm surprised they didn't trot out that study down there, unless it's been pretty well discredited be now.

Posted by: mtpolitics at February 10, 2004 10:30 AM

Link.

Posted by: mtpolitics at February 10, 2004 03:07 PM

Oops. I forgot that you strip HTML:

http://webcenter.health.webmd.netscape.com/content/Article/63/71871.htm?printing=true

Posted by: mtpolitics at February 10, 2004 03:08 PM

Sorry, I keep meaning to put a reminder on the comment box that I no longer allow html.

I've heard about that study, though I thought it had been discredited due to the small sample size or no showing of a causal link or something. The reason escapes me at the moment. (I've been doing database mgt., HTML and VB.Net coding for the last 6 hrs. so my brain is on temporary hiatus.)

Posted by: Rita at February 10, 2004 03:18 PM