The Mother of all Tobacco Wars?
September 23, 2004 8:20 am by Gene BorioWhat many news outlets failed to note from yesterday’s session was the Defense’s intention to launch a full-bore offensive against the science of secondhand smoke, including the 1993 EPA report.
The Defense, in response to DOJ’s claim that the conspiracy continues today against the science of secondhand smoke, will come fully armed with:
– the controversial Enstrom/Kabat article and the two Smith editorials from the May, 2003 issue of the British Medical Journal (”one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, your honor”) (certainly the Smith editorial claiming “the controversy continues” will be a major blow to the DOJ’s case that the industry manufactured any appearance of controversy.)
–some aspect of one or both of the Congressional Research Service reports (at the very least economist Jane Gravelle’s testimony May 11, 1994),
–AND the 1998 Osteen Decision from the 4th Circuit. Yes, the Osteen decision was overturned (”on a jurisdictional technicality”), but Judge Kessler admitted the decision itself as evidence. The Defense argued it was being submitted not as a valid court decision, but as evidence of what one unbiased person (a fellow federal judge at that) concluded when faced with the evidence.
When Judge Kessler said Wednesday that she feared she would be reading complex, difficult material as the trial went on, she was on the money. The Judge’s absorption of the EPA report, 2 CRS reports, the Enstrom/Kabat article and other material will make her mind the battleground in the biggest challenge the science of secondhand smoke has ever seen.
The ramifications here are monumental.
If the industry wins this aspect of the case, smoking ban regulations may begin to fall, and certainly will have a much tougher time going forward around the world.
Even if the industry loses this aspect of the case, it still will have provided smoking ban opponents with expert argumentation for decades to come.
So in the trial as a whole, an industry win on the conspiracy case may well obviate most class and personal liability cases, and an industry win on secondhand smoke will change the landscape of America.
The industry is gambling their entire future on this trial. They apparently feel that it’s well worth the gamble to bring in their biggest guns. They only have to convince only one person of their case–Judge Gladys Kessler. And if successful, they could conceivably win not only a Get Out of Jail Free card, but at the same time deliver a killer blow to the smokefree air movement.
September 23rd, 2004 at 12:33 pm
So the industry argues that it has changed and doesn’t have a campaign of deception. Yet at the very same time, and right in the courtroom, it attempts to deceive the judge and the public on secondhand smoke. Using junk science it generated in a longstanding, active, and continuing campaign of deception on secondhand smoke.
September 23rd, 2004 at 2:44 pm
Ridiculous.
That entire field is a minefield of junk science, and tobacco happens to be correct here. As the referenced BMJ article points out, there is still no scientific consensus on the dangers of secondhand smoke.
Most of the studies in that area are intrinsically and fatally flawed, and even the ones that do find some effect of second hand smoke find the increased risks of ETS are minimal (and in many cases not statistically significant). Most of those show only about a 10% increase in lung cancer rate. . .if you have literally a lifelong exposure to ETS. Compare that to the well-documented 600%+ increase in lung cancer rates in people who actually smoke.
Even the widely publicized WHO meta-analysis on ETS (the one where the WHO accused tobacco of attacking them), couldn’t find a statistically significant effect of ETS using the scientific standard 95% confidence interval. In other words, if you take that widely publicized WHO study at face value, there is NO significant increase in cancer rates among those exposed to a lifetime of ETS.
Put differently, we can run a simple “common sense” analysis. If ETS is so dangerous, how come dozens and dozens of studies and meta-analyses have to be done to prove it? Why are the epidemiologists still designing bigger and badder trials to make their case? Its been more than 20 years with larger and larger studies. . .where is the definitive one?
This is entirely unlike the case with direct smoking exposure and cancer. The link there was proved undeniably multiple incontrovertible epidemiologic studies that showed unequivocal, statistically significant differences in cancer rates and mortality, and reinforced by primary observation in the 50s with Dr. Auerbach’s smoking beagles, who developed lung cancer.
September 23rd, 2004 at 3:30 pm
Thanks “tobacco observer” for demonstrating that not only is the industry campaign of deception on secondhand smoke continuing, it is also effective.
Consider: if this was radon, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Poor radon, it doesn’t have a well-financed campaign pushing “unproven”. It’s just another carcinogen. Like most carcinogens, it doesn’t have well-placed friends.
Secondhand smoke is a privileged carcinogen. It gets millions spent on its PR, including the funding of the “BMJ article” you cite. And this PR has been effective. “Tobacco observer” parrots it back.
Poor radon, there’s no “radon observer” for you. You’ll just have to be regarded as, well, a carcinogen.
September 24th, 2004 at 6:47 pm
Sir, insteading of making idle political comments, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the published scientific literature on ETS (and Radon). Sunlight is a carcinogen. Alcohol is a carcinogen. So are the tannins in tea and coffee. If there is any question, its a question of extent.
Oversimplifying for the purposes of this forum, if you assume that the widely publicized studies about the risks of Radon gas exposure and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) are correct then long-term exposure to low levels of Radon (4pCi/l, which is the EPA’s minimal “action” level) still increases ones risk of developing cancer by three-to-four times as much as long-term exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (RR of 1.4 vs 1.12). So even low levels of radon gas are substantially more dangerous than ETS.
Getting back to extent, even if you accept the validity of the publicized ETS studies (and there are good reasons not to. . .all of which I would imagine Tobacco will elaborate on at great length later during this trial), the amount of increased cancer risk from ETS is still pretty small.
The 12% published increase in relative risk of developing cancer from long-term ETS exposure is comparable to that observed in persons drinking one glass of milk per day, or to the published data on lung cancer and exposure to diesel fumes. The increased ETS-associated cancer mortality is less than that associated with living in the State of New Jersey. So it is fair to say that in terms of cancer risk you’re statistically better off sitting in a smoky bar in Chicago than in the woods in the Garden State!
Looking at absolute (rather than relative) risks is a better way of understanding the dangers. Doing that, non-smokers have approximately a 1 in 10,000 chance per year of developing lung cancer. Using the widely-publicized ETS figures, that risk only goes up to about 1.2 in 10,000 per year for those individuals with chronic exposure.
The bottom line here is that anyway you look at it, the risks of ETS have been way, way overblown as part of a highly charged, politicized argument.
September 24th, 2004 at 9:18 pm
Less dangerous than drinking a glass of milk, let’s see, where have I heard this before? Oh yeah — that was Philip Morris:
Passive smoking and health: should we believe Philip Morris’s “experts”?
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/archive/7062ed.htm
You’re welcome to believe Philip Morris on secondhand smoke if you like. After all, would they lie to you?
September 28th, 2004 at 1:12 pm
In this battle for the heavens, it’s easy to be blind to one of the true goals of tobacco - to sustain the idea that tobacco use is “reasonable”; and that the constitutional rights of smokers are stronger than those with forced exposure to ETS.
We live in a two story building, with our condo on the second floor. My wife and I have three children, ages three, five and fourteen. In affluent Brookline, MA - we weren’t that concerned when our downstairs neighbors sold their condo - but it resulted in a nightmare for the past three years, dealing with cigarette smoke coming into our apartment from indoor smoking downstairs.
It doesn’t matter that our new neighbor lied about smoking when he moved in; it doesn’t matter that he has threatened to hire ten people to smoke all day long in his apartment if we start any legal action; it doesn’t matter that we had an engineer come in to see if we could ventilate his place… a year long process that he shot down by requiring a 100% guarantee from the engineer (ha ha);
What really matters is that my fourteen year old began to have trouble breathing after hockey games. The first thing the doctor asked is, “is there any change in what he’s being exposed to at night?”. What matters is that my five year old girl has headaches at night when there is a pronounced smell of smoke; what about the simple fact that I might not survive an asthma attack. What matters is that there is so much money being poured into marginalizing the impact of second hand smoke that actually asking those who must endure it seems hokey and quaint.
All I want is to keep my neighbors cigarette smoke away from myself and my family - based on the our very real experience that ETS has an obvious and related negative impact on our health. Tobacco’s current goal is to keep my battle out of the courts, where any jury might actually hear my children’s pediatrician testify that ETS results in harm… and be able to decide the facts for themselves. Sorry, Tobacco observer, Sir - sometimes there are common sense observations to be honored about the consequences of ETS; consequences more relevant than statistics generated by my children’s mortality.
October 4th, 2004 at 8:35 am
The ceiling/floor in your apartment must be very flimsy!
February 25th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Many are wasting a lot of time and ink disussing “tobacco” WITHOUT addressing anything about Contamination of tobacco with some of the industrial world’s worst carcinogens and toxins.
Some write about how ridiculous it is to believe Phillip Morris etc without realizing that they themselves believe PM is a “tobacco company”. A typical cig is no more tobacco than the London Times is a PINE TREE, although it may be made from tree pulp.
When one speaks of the Harms Of Tobacco, unless they qualify what they say, they MEAN the harms of a Smoking Product that may or not be made of tobacco (at least in the USA) and that contains residues of all sorts of pesticides, that is wrapped in dioxin-emitting bleached paper, that has tobacco fertilized with, and contaminated by, radioactive phosphate fertilizers, that is replete with untested, often KNOWN toxic/carcinogenic additives…including kid-attracting sweet/soothing/flavorful stuff, and that includes burn accelerants that inevitably contribute to untold numbers of so-called “smoking related” fires every year.
To blame the tobacco plant for this is to blame God or Nature…anything but private industry and it’s allies in gov’t positions.
Easy to catch up on. Just Search (Google or…) terms like “dioxin tobacco”, “pesticides tobacco”,”GAO tobacco pesticides”, “radiation tobacco”, “cigarette ingredients”, “chlorine tobacco”, “DDT tobacco”, etc. Check the “concerned” Anti Smoke sites for ANYTHING about pesticides in cigs, or rads in cigs, or addiction enhancers or burn-accelerants.
Then, just TRY to find one study anywhere that shows that tobacco itself (without adulterants) harmed anyone. Since nothing on earth is 100% “safe”, there are of course inherent risks from tobacco smoke. Trouble is, no one’s shown this info yet. To do so would compare so badly with studies of typical contaminated cigs that the industries that were complicit in the contamination (incl. their friends in gov’t AND their insurers/investors) would be up the creek.
Better we blame an unpatented, public-domain plant for the negative efffects of Dioxin Dowels (or, if one prefers, Pesticide Pegs, or Radiation Rods).
It’s all Nature’s fault. Industry, once again, is innocent.
Well,we can also blame the victims, easy targets because they are said to be “rude”, “dirty”, “smelly” and disobedient to the orders of the corporate state.
Either address the whole picture, or it’s onward to the NEXT Prohibition of yet another public domain natural plant…and onward to continued influence on our gov’t by private industrial polluters of our water, air, food AND smoking products.