A Perfect Example of Anti Logic

I'll do you one better.

Second Hand Smoke
It's a shame when ideology dictates policy, and evidence is ignored and misrepresented.

Because pipe smoking has a relatively small demographic, I don't think there have been a great many

studies on its health effects. Remember, a few studies don't conclude anything. It takes quite a few,

and replication, to constitute some kind of evidence that would/should influence health policy.

Moderation in pipe smoking is probably good advice. Not exposing kids and others to a lot of second

hand smoke is probably good advice. But so far as I know, there isn't conclusive scientific evidence on

the health effects of pipe smoking. It's been swept in with smoking policy in general, and both the

science and prejudices that go with it.

+1 mso489, the reality of enrolling pipe smokers into a large, double blind, peer-reviewed study is unlikely, due to the small numbers who do so. Its easy as all get out for cigarette smoking.

Oh please, I've been hearing about 3rd hand smoke for years. Shoddy science has never detered anyone from making absurd claims.

A case in point, my Dad died last year and the death certificate had smoking as contributing to his death. Dad was 86 when he died and gave up smoking in 1980. He had bladder cancer in 1979 and beat it. I grabbed the family doctor and read him the riot act over the C.O.D.. My father worked in a battery factory for 43 years. Lead, cadmium, asbestos and a host of other things were part of his daily exposure. I was pissed and the doc knew it but it was too late to change the paperwork.

Blaming smoking is always the easy way out.

Remember, "A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on." - James Watt
Alternately, " A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants." - Mark Twain

Just one of many examples of the politicization of science...which is a very serious problem, imo. It’s amazing how the rate of every form of cancer has continued to rise, including and especially pediatric cancer, and about the only thing that is ever claimed to be a cause is smoking.
A long time friend of my parents recently died of lung cancer and she never smoked in her life...neither did her husband or anyone else in their family. And, IMO, it was not really the cancer that killed her, but the chemo “therapy”.

I recently saw an article in Time magazine about second-smoke. I didn't save the link nor do I really want to expose other members here to the hazardous effects of second-hand editorialization added in by the author but the main thrust of the article states that the majority of second-hand smoke 'statistics' are unprovable bunk that may actually harm the anti-smoking policy arguments. We can only hope that one day we adults may be allowed to make choices for ourselves in peace.

Pipe smoking is healthy.

"Death rates for current pipe smokers were little if at all higher than for non-smokers, even with men smoking 10 or more pipefuls per day and with men who had smoked pipes for more than 30 years." [Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, Public Health Service Publication 1103, 1964, page 39]. A pdf of a scan of this document is available on-line at profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/NNBBMQ
This is an old report, but I think this was the report that was kind of the foundation of the anti-smoking push. Perhaps there is more recent data that reveals more about pipe smoking? I don't know, I'm not an expert on this by any means. Yet, it seems clear that cigarette smoking is a health risk, but not so much for pipe and cigar smoking. Yet, all forms of smoking have been lumped together and it's all bad and you are evil for smoking and ...
My recollection is that there is an article by Kevin about pipe smoking and health risks and how distinctions between cigarettes and other forms of tobacco use have been blurred, but I don't recall the title. Maybe someone else will remember more about this?
Components of tobacco smoke are carcinogens. There is not much debate about that. Yet, many things are, particularly in high enough doses. Pretty much, if you inject obscenely high doses of any chemical, synthetic or natural, into small mammals they grow tumors. Each of us needs to strike a balance in our lives. I like my pipes and cigars and, without making a lifetime study of the subject, I think the risk is low. If you want to lower your risks in life, stop playing with your phone while you are driving.

Before I took up pipe smoking, I did some homework on cancer risks - since at the time my mother-in-law was in hospice with metastasized cancer that started as a lung spot, it seemed the prudent thing to do. She had been a long-time cigarette smoker, but quit in her late 60's after breaking a hip and going cold turkey in the hospital.
The first thing I noticed as I started reading websites and articles about smoking, cancer, second-hand smoke, etc. was the lack of hard numbers. There are a lot of big, round, scary numbers being bandied about, but very few numbers that indicate actual risk levels - it's all "X% increased risk" or "Billllyuns and Billllyuns of deaths related to X" (and the first thing I learned in statistics class was "Correlation does not equal causation"). A percentage risk increase sounds bad - but if the actual risk number is small, even a thousandfold increase is still insignificant.
And that was the second thing I noticed. A lot of those numbers looked really, really familiar after a while. It seems that a lot of informational sites simply parrot each other, making the 'citations' look good - the American Cancer Society quotes the World Health Organization, the grassroots groups quote the ACS, the local papers quote the grassroots groups, and pretty soon it looks like everyone agrees with each other - with nobody asking about the initial studies and their actual conclusions.
Wilson - you're quite correct about that Surgeon General's report. It's the one that really started the ball rolling regarding the dangers of cigarette smoking, and turned a spotlight on the junk science put out by cigarette manufacturers that downplayed the risks. Now it's time to do the same thing to the junk science being put out by the other side...

Perhaps Native Americans can show us the "proper path" against the "anti's" ??
Data's Calabash here - as a nearly four-decades of experience pipe AND occasional cigar guy, always whenever possible strictly sticking to ONLY natural pipe mixtures (best source for those yet found is Cornell & Diehl) and hand-rolled cigars (really large Dominican cigars, with 100% Olor filler leaf are the BEST I've ever tried) I'm surprised why no one has ever asked what the Native Americans around us might think of all the "anti's nonsense", and the anti's insistence in mistakenly melding together the pipe/cigar crowd we represent, and those among us who sadly still choose to — and I very advisedly use the terms I do use, strictly in reference to what's been ADDED to their "leaf" from what comes out of oil wells — "pollute themselves" with butts, something which I've never done myself, and cannot be made to do for any reason whatsoever.
There is a HUGE gulf societally speaking, and in many other ways, between the pipe/cigar community and the fans of the "polluted leaf" that cigarettes represent from my own experiences. One time when I was listening to a popular Boston radio talk show, hosted by a personality that used to run a "date club" for couples as late as the 1990s on a Boston area radio station, a caller who was very much a pipe and cigar guy like ourselves gave his own observations on his fellow pipe/cigar guys and (my terms again!) the sad "self-polluters", and he always remembered that anytime the pipe/cigar guys were smoking, they looked either content, pleased or even happy. On the other hand, the "self-polluters" (as I've termed them) never looked as if they had any outward signs of any form of positive emotion while a lit "butt" was being "smoked" (?!?), and that "other bunch" (that us pipe/cigar guys usually aren't part of, either) never seemed to look like they'd want anyone around them while they had their "butts" going.
I've observed just about exactly the same thing between "us" and "them" for almost the entire time I've enjoyed my daily pipe habit, and even a few times when I was enjoying a cigar in public in the past (nowadays my occasional cigar time is strictly at home) I found the same to be true as well.
The reason I've mentioned Native Americans (and this means just about every ethnic tribal group of North America, Mesoamerica and the Caribbean) is that many of them (but NOT "all of them"), and particularly east of the Rockies, have some sort of tobacco-related feature to their historic culture. This could most often be recalled by many of us with the sizable number of US Native American ethnicities and Canadian First Nations that still enjoy tobacco as part of their cultural tradition — something that the native ethnicity closest to where I live, the nations of the Wampanoag, are likely to also observe to this very day. Even native peoples of Mexico and Mesoamerica, especially the descendents of the Maya, have used and continue to enjoy cigars as part of their culture. Just do a Google on the terms "hero twins cigar", and you'll start to uncover something of what cigars have meant, and STILL mean, to some Mexican/Mesoamerican natives in their own cultural traditions.
I've always surmised that with all the mistaken actions (and the resulting tragedies, repeated over and over again from the 1500s onwards through the 20th century)) taken against Native Americans for centuries, if the "anti's" ever tried to confront those Native American tribal groups that do observe them, about their "tobacco traditions" and forcing them to "give them up" for any reason, no matter now trivial...I'd certainly would NOT want to be among the "anti's number" if that were ever to happen.
So far, I haven't heard of any instance whatsoever of such a horrid thing happening as yet...so, in addition to legally confronting the "anti's" as has been ongoing for some 30-40 years in the USA and Canada, could some intelligently-minded "consultation" with indigenous American people knowledgeable on these sorts of issues, by us who love pipes and cigars who are not largely of Native American ethnicity to begin with, as to more effective ways and strategies in "confronting the anti's", be perhaps a more effective way to start reversing the downwards slopes into the "anti's dreadful dreams", and start to get things that concern pipe and cigar fans to make a bit more sense once again?
I'm not against "smoke-free" workplaces myself (at least then the "sad self-polluters" cannot bother me) as I've enjoyed my pipes in my cars while at work since the mid-1980s, during breaktimes and lunchtimes, as well as before work. What I don't tolerate are firms that try to micro-manage every single thing their employees do even AWAY from their workplaces, in a 24/7/365 intrusive manner. While I've been out of work myself since the recession's outbreak in September 2008, and HAVE been constantly striving in every possible way to get a full-time job once again ever since the recession's outbreak way back then, the ugly thought of ever possibly having my life micro-managed by a potential employer in such a 24/7/365 manner is something I'd never tolerate, even to simply have a job, and that's even if I was not engaged in enjoying C&D's great natural pipe mixtures in my briars at any time in my life, past or present.
Please think about what I've said here a small bit, when one's time permits...I've never read of any sort of "liaison" occurring as yet, between people like us who enjoy pipes & cigars in 21st century America, and the individuals from the very native ethnicities in our American nation, that still have tobacco-based traditions active and alive in their many cultures...perhaps something like that needs to be considered, if the "anti's" go any farther, to start making "them" retreat even a bit?
Thanks and Yours Sincerely,

Data's Calabash

I'm surprised why no one has ever asked what the Native Americans around us might think of all the "anti's nonsense"

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“Using policies perfected in the colonization of my people, the government is now trying to turn the whole country into one huge Indian reservation. Land policies mirroring those developed by the BIA have been applied to family farmers and ranchers to squeeze them out. With people no longer needed on the land, food production has been taken over by corporate agribusiness, the beneficiary of enormous government subsidies that place them among America's biggest welfare recipients...Just as the BIA did with reservation Indians, government policies polarize communities and races across America -- a way of controlling nearly every aspect of people's lives.” – Russell Means

As many people smoked in the 60s and 70s everyone 40 and up would have lung cancer from either smoking or second hand smoke if that were true. The fact is that yes some people have cancer and that sucks. I wish cancer didnt exist.

With fewer smokers than ever before why do more young people than ever before have cancer?

Brian, funny you posted that quote. I was going to jump in to add that most cancers are caused by the poisons people eat.

As a scientist, it is the politicization of science that gets my ire up. . Groups like the antis start with the result they want, use carefully selected statistical data that promotes that outcome, and uses scientific lingo to present their "findings" to the public. This misuse of science seems to be designed to promote unquestioning acceptance by the public at large. . Real science is based on empirical data and seeks to understand without a preordained agenda.

Lets not forget, in our enthusiasm for pipesmoking, that it is not all that good for some people's physical health. I believe it to be good for mental health, but it does put nicotine in the body, which raises blood pressure. Many people have low blood pressure, and for them it may actually be healthful, raising their pressure to acceptable levels and preventing fainting. For those of us, including the body assigned to me, that have high blood pressure, nicotine is not the best idea, enjoy it as I might. It may also contribute to an irregular heartbeat. I am not an MD. These conclusions come from observations made by observing my own body. Of course pipesmoking is far less harmful than alcohol, weed or cigarettes.

Brian, funny you posted that quote. I was going to jump in to add that most cancers are caused by the poisons people eat.

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Agreed...and, imo, not only the toxic ingredients, but also the extremely poor nutritional content. It’s a double whammy that’s virtually guaranteed to eventually result in some type of illness.
@profpar: Well said. I only wish it were limited to the smoking issue. Unfortunately, you can find examples of it across the board, imo.