No smoking in Chile? No way.
Chileans are still the heaviest smokers in the region despite a strict anti-tobacco law.
SANTIAGO, Chile — When a strict anti-tobacco law came into effect three years ago, Maria Eugenia Avila scoffed. She had no intention of quitting the two packs a day she was delightfully smoking. She just stopped going to malls.
“I flee from places where I can’t smoke and I cover the horrible warnings on the packs. I love smoking and I suffer with this law and all its prohibitions. But no law is going to make me quit,” the 47-year-old kindergarten teacher said, while puffing away on a habit that costs her nearly $150 a month.
Three years into the tobacco-control legislation, Chileans are far from kicking the habit. Smoking among Chileans has remained fairly stable, dropping slightly from 42.6 percent in 2006, to 41.2 percent in 2008, with a perilous upward trend among women (currently 37.4 percent) and teenagers (35.4 percent, particularly females), according to the latest government survey on tobacco consumption.
This makes Chileans the heaviest smokers in the region. Another “smoker” country is Argentina, but it lags behind with smokers making up 30 percent of its population, according to the World Health Organization. Slightly more than 16 percent of Brazilians and about 19 percent of Mexicans smoke, while in the United States, 23 percent of the overall population are smokers.
After ratifying the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control, in August 2006, Chile enacted new legislation that set strict regulations on cigarette consumption, advertising and sales. Among other things, the new law banned tobacco advertising in the media, on .cl dominion websites and near schools. It also prohibited selling cigarettes to minors or within a 100-meter radius of schools.
The legislation also established mandatory smoking and non-smoking areas in restaurants and bars and prohibited all smoking in transportation services, schools, gas stations, elevators, health clinics, airports, theaters, gyms, supermarkets, malls and government offices. And lastly, it mandated that all cigarette packs should carry warnings that take up half of both sides.
But the law had several fundamental flaws. It didn't raise taxes on cigarette consumption, it did little in terms of prevention other than put warnings on cigarette packs, it failed to impose 100 percent smoke-free policies on all closed precincts and lacked treatment programs for quitters, said Maria Teresa Valenzuela, a tobacco expert at the University of Chile’s School of Medicine.
“The law didn’t include these things because of the enormous pressure from the tobacco industry, which was tremendously aggressive during the discussion of the bill. Its strategy was without a doubt to block any measures that could hinder tobacco consumption, especially raising taxes,” she said.
Chiletabacos, owned by British American Tobacco (BAT), virtually monopolizes the industry, controlling 96 percent of the market. It pays $600 million in tax revenues every year and several former cabinet ministers sit on its board of directors.
SECOND HAND SMOKE IS A JOKE. Ask the anti-tobacco folks to tell you what truly is in second hand smoke...when it burns from the coal its oxygenated and everything is burned and turned into water vapor..................thats right water..........you ever burned leaves in the fall...know how the heavy smoke bellows off.......thats the organic material releasing the moisture in the leaves the greener the leaves/organic material the more smoke thats made......thats why second hand smoke is classified as a class 3 irritant by osha and epa as of 2006........after that time EPA decided to change the listing of shs as a carcinogen for political reasons.......because it contained a trace amount of 6 chemicals so small even sophisticated scientific equipment can hardly detect it ........they didnt however use the normal dose makes the poison computation when they made this political decision. However osha still maintains shs/ets as an irritant only and maintains the dose makes the poison position.......as osha is in charge of indoor air quality its decisions are based on science not political agendas as epa's is. We can see this is true after a federal judge threw out the epa's study on shs as junk science......... Wednesday, March 12, 2008 British Medical Journal & WHO conclude secondhand smoke "health hazard" claims are greatly exaggerated The BMJ published report at:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057
concludes that "The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer are considerably weaker than generally believed." What makes this study so significant is that it took place over a 39 year period, and studied the results of non-smokers who lived with smokers.....
meaning these non-smokers were exposed to secondhand smoke up to 24 hours per day; 365 days per year for 39 years. And there was still no relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality. In light of the damage to business, jobs, and the economy from smoking bans the BMJ report should be revisited by lawmakers as a reference tool and justification to repeal the now unnecessary and very damaging smoking ban laws. Also significant is the World Health Organization (WHO) study:
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer-official By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent " The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The Telegraph, also states: 'There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood.' " And if lawmakers need additional real world data to further highlight the need to eliminate these onerous and arbitrary laws, air quality testing by Johns Hopkins University proves that secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations.
The Chemistry of Secondary Smoke About 94% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a slight excess of carbon dioxide. Another 3 % is carbon monoxide. The last 3 % contains the rest of the 4,000 or so chemicals supposedly to be found in smoke… but found, obviously, in very small quantities if at all.This is because most of the assumed chemicals have never actually been found in secondhand smoke. (1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80). Most of these chemicals can only be found in quantities measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms. Many cannot even be detected in these amounts: their presence is simply theorized rather than measured. To bring those quantities into a real world perspective, take a saltshaker and shake out a few grains of salt. A single grain of that salt will weigh in the ballpark of 100 million picograms! (Allen Blackman. Chemistry Magazine 10/08/01). - (Excerpted from "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains" with permission of the author.)
The Myth of the Smoking Ban ‘Miracle’ Restrictions on smoking around the world are claimed to have had a dramatic effect on heart attack rates. It's not true. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/
As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that: "Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded." -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997
-harleyrider1978
As with all drugs, prohibition, IE, the US prohibition against alcohol consumption in the 30's, doesn't work. Taxes, health campaigns and even enforcement (the US DEA's "war" on drugs)do little to stem the tide when supply and demand are the potent currents that drive the market for legal or illegal substances. Education may be the best response to the cigarette smoking health crisis. Even then one's personal choice, the decision to smoke, can't be regulated.
The US spammer "harleyrider" strikes again. Google him. The same misleading boilerplate is all over the internet.
Tobacco funded news stories, tobacco funded studies, all his junk is misleading garbage--which is why you will never find him at any legislative hearing. Too embarrassing to be found out!
No I'll take my health advice from normal, open scientists who have names and educations and reputations--and dare to show their faces in public--rather than anonymous Internet spammers like harleyrider.
Worse, once Holocaust Deniers and Birthers, etc. start following hareleyrider's despicable methods-- spamming the world willy-nilly in the name of their wingnut "enlightenments"--message boards like the globalpost's will be rendered useless.
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