Although the proponents of banning smoking in bars and bingo halls
would have us believe otherwise, what they are proposing is absolutely
nothing other than expanded government dominance over individuals'
lives.
Eliminating individual choice is certainly nothing new, but
the claim that that's not what is being proposed now is simply not
true. Arguments put forth by the proponents are contradictory.
They
argue on the one hand that "studies have shown" that banning smoking in
bars will increase the number of patrons, but on the other hand argue
that all three local government entities have to ban smoking or none of
the ordinances will take effect so as to not "give a competitive
advantage" to some bars.
If the "studies" were right, that would be the last thing that would happen.
Also,
if the "studies" were correct, why does it fall to government to ban
smoking? Wouldn't an entrepreneurial bar owner realize that there was an
unsatisfied demand for a smoke-free bar and open one voluntarily? Can
anyone actually cite one of those "studies"?
Several articles and
letters to the editor have talked about the "studies" but I have yet to
see a citation. I'm beginning to wonder if the "studies" actually exist
or if proponents simply think if they repeat those statements often
enough people will just believe them.
Finally, much is being made
about "protecting" the employees. The last time I checked, no one is
forced to work anywhere. If someone didn't want to work in an
environment where there is smoking, they could quit. But wait! Why would
someone who was bothered by smoking apply for a job in a bar in the
first place?
I urge all three local governments to reject the proposal and allow individuals to live their lives the way they see fit.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Smoking fans flames of memories
The subject of smoking keeps coming up in conversations lately, and it’s funny how times have changed.
My mother and I were taking a tour of Clarksville, where our family lived for one year when I was a teenager.
When we drove by the high school where Mom taught, she pointed out where she had smoking-pit duty.
I asked Mom if she smoked with the students. She told me no; she smoked in the teachers’ lounge.
When another teacher complained, the principal (also a smoker), told the teacher he could work in his classroom, but Mom couldn’t smoke in hers, so tough, basically.
Wow. The outcry that would happen today if someone lit up in the lounge.
Once when my brother was a little boy, he asked Mom if one of his beloved elementary teachers, Mrs. Howard, smoked.
Mom said, “I don’t think so.”Glamour cigarettes.
Shane said: “I didn’t think she was that kind of woman.”
I’m not sure what that meant in his little mind, but his mother apparently was.
Last weekend, my brother recalled that he had bought cigarettes for Mom, and I remember running in the store to get them, too.
I also volunteered to buy them when having a bunking party with some friends, and we smoked the cigarettes under a bridge. We sprayed perfume and everything aerosol we could find when we got back to the girl’s house — it was a daring thing for me, a future goody-two-shoes.
Of course, there were cigarette vending machines, where anybody with some change could buy a pack. My kids were pretty incredulous that those ever existed.
I also remember Mom giving me a lighted cigarette to light fireworks, and I’d steal a puff.
(Mom quit cold turkey about 30 years ago, by the way. She has apologized for the trips with cracked windows and the ensuing allergy headaches my brother and I got from the smoke.)
My husband said that when he was in high school, his band director smoked like a chimney. When the high school band was selected as the Bicentennial Band of Arkansas and got to play at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (one of my husband’s proudest lifetime achievements), the students rode in three buses, with one designated for the students and chaperones who smoked.
When they made a pit stop, the doors to the one bus would open, and smoke would roll out like a five-alarm fire.
In college, I didn’t have many friends who smoked, but people could smoke in their dorm rooms, and just about anywhere except the classroom.
When I got my first newspaper job, smoking went with the stressful job. I didn’t smoke, except second hand.
The clouds of smoke hung above the short walls dividing the departments. My husband and I would go home reeking of smoke. I hated having my hair smell like smoke, and I developed an attractive habit of obsessively pulling my hair to my nose to smell it.
I also bought a battery-operated ash tray for the worst offender in the office, which helped, until the batteries died and she didn’t replace them.
One editor had a cigarette going nonstop, sometimes two, if he forgot, which was often.
My husband and I were thrilled with the prospect of working in a nonsmoking newsroom when we came to Conway. (My hair-sniffing habit died down, too.)
Nobody in my immediate family smokes now, but my mother does not deny how much she loved it back in the day.
When we toured the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville a few weekends ago, we saw a piece called Smoker #9, a woman’s hand holding a cigarette to giant red lips, exhaling smoke.
My mom posed and mimicked holding a cigarette to her lips.
I’ll bet Mrs. Howard never would have done that, but Shane, I hate to tell you. Mom was trying to protect your young innocence.
Mrs. Howard was a smoker.
My mother and I were taking a tour of Clarksville, where our family lived for one year when I was a teenager.
When we drove by the high school where Mom taught, she pointed out where she had smoking-pit duty.
I asked Mom if she smoked with the students. She told me no; she smoked in the teachers’ lounge.
When another teacher complained, the principal (also a smoker), told the teacher he could work in his classroom, but Mom couldn’t smoke in hers, so tough, basically.
Wow. The outcry that would happen today if someone lit up in the lounge.
Once when my brother was a little boy, he asked Mom if one of his beloved elementary teachers, Mrs. Howard, smoked.
Mom said, “I don’t think so.”Glamour cigarettes.
Shane said: “I didn’t think she was that kind of woman.”
I’m not sure what that meant in his little mind, but his mother apparently was.
Last weekend, my brother recalled that he had bought cigarettes for Mom, and I remember running in the store to get them, too.
I also volunteered to buy them when having a bunking party with some friends, and we smoked the cigarettes under a bridge. We sprayed perfume and everything aerosol we could find when we got back to the girl’s house — it was a daring thing for me, a future goody-two-shoes.
Of course, there were cigarette vending machines, where anybody with some change could buy a pack. My kids were pretty incredulous that those ever existed.
I also remember Mom giving me a lighted cigarette to light fireworks, and I’d steal a puff.
(Mom quit cold turkey about 30 years ago, by the way. She has apologized for the trips with cracked windows and the ensuing allergy headaches my brother and I got from the smoke.)
My husband said that when he was in high school, his band director smoked like a chimney. When the high school band was selected as the Bicentennial Band of Arkansas and got to play at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (one of my husband’s proudest lifetime achievements), the students rode in three buses, with one designated for the students and chaperones who smoked.
When they made a pit stop, the doors to the one bus would open, and smoke would roll out like a five-alarm fire.
In college, I didn’t have many friends who smoked, but people could smoke in their dorm rooms, and just about anywhere except the classroom.
When I got my first newspaper job, smoking went with the stressful job. I didn’t smoke, except second hand.
The clouds of smoke hung above the short walls dividing the departments. My husband and I would go home reeking of smoke. I hated having my hair smell like smoke, and I developed an attractive habit of obsessively pulling my hair to my nose to smell it.
I also bought a battery-operated ash tray for the worst offender in the office, which helped, until the batteries died and she didn’t replace them.
One editor had a cigarette going nonstop, sometimes two, if he forgot, which was often.
My husband and I were thrilled with the prospect of working in a nonsmoking newsroom when we came to Conway. (My hair-sniffing habit died down, too.)
Nobody in my immediate family smokes now, but my mother does not deny how much she loved it back in the day.
When we toured the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville a few weekends ago, we saw a piece called Smoker #9, a woman’s hand holding a cigarette to giant red lips, exhaling smoke.
My mom posed and mimicked holding a cigarette to her lips.
I’ll bet Mrs. Howard never would have done that, but Shane, I hate to tell you. Mom was trying to protect your young innocence.
Mrs. Howard was a smoker.
Domestic cigarette sales drop
BAT Zimbabwe’s cigarette sales volumes declined by 16% in the first
half of the year ended June 30 2013, compared to the same period last
year.
This was experienced across most of the company’s brands such as Dunhill, Newbury, Everest, Kingsgate and Berkeley.
Company chairman, Kennedy Mandevhani said BAT Zimbabwe’s prime brand, Madison, proved more resilient on the market.
“Successive increases in excise duty which impacted cigarette retail prices in 2011 and 2012 have been compounded by coinage constraints, resulting in consumers often paying higher prices than recommended by manufacturers simply due to the unavailability of coins,” he said. Classic cigarettes.
Mandevhani said industry cigarette volumes had reduced as a result of the slowdown in GDP growth, and the ongoing general affordability challenges that consumers in the country continue to face.
“Total revenues were US$23,1 million for the first six months of the year…mainly due to manufacturer increases net of excise on key brands in December 2012, which offset on part the impact of lower sales volumes,” he said.
Mandevhani said the economy showed signs of stagnation in the first half of this year. He said despite limited growth being achieved in the agricultural and mining sectors, investment in the economy has been constrained by domestic liquidity challenges and restricted availability of external credit lines.
One of the company’s highest expenses was the provision for a share-based payment expense of US$10 606 000 as part of compliance with indigenisation laws.
“On a non adjusted basis, operating profit reduced to US$2,4 million, as a result of an IFRS 2 share based payment expense of US$10,6 million.
“This expense represents the fair value of share awards made to employees by our Employee Share Ownership Trust as part of the company’s compliance with Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment legislation plus the associated payment of dividends to employees participating in the trust of US$0,4 million,” he said.
This was experienced across most of the company’s brands such as Dunhill, Newbury, Everest, Kingsgate and Berkeley.
Company chairman, Kennedy Mandevhani said BAT Zimbabwe’s prime brand, Madison, proved more resilient on the market.
“Successive increases in excise duty which impacted cigarette retail prices in 2011 and 2012 have been compounded by coinage constraints, resulting in consumers often paying higher prices than recommended by manufacturers simply due to the unavailability of coins,” he said. Classic cigarettes.
Mandevhani said industry cigarette volumes had reduced as a result of the slowdown in GDP growth, and the ongoing general affordability challenges that consumers in the country continue to face.
“Total revenues were US$23,1 million for the first six months of the year…mainly due to manufacturer increases net of excise on key brands in December 2012, which offset on part the impact of lower sales volumes,” he said.
Mandevhani said the economy showed signs of stagnation in the first half of this year. He said despite limited growth being achieved in the agricultural and mining sectors, investment in the economy has been constrained by domestic liquidity challenges and restricted availability of external credit lines.
One of the company’s highest expenses was the provision for a share-based payment expense of US$10 606 000 as part of compliance with indigenisation laws.
“On a non adjusted basis, operating profit reduced to US$2,4 million, as a result of an IFRS 2 share based payment expense of US$10,6 million.
“This expense represents the fair value of share awards made to employees by our Employee Share Ownership Trust as part of the company’s compliance with Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment legislation plus the associated payment of dividends to employees participating in the trust of US$0,4 million,” he said.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Another Risk for Babies of Smoking Moms
Women have been told it's important not to smoke while they're
pregnant. Some women may not realize how much smoking in pregnancy might
affect their children later on.
A recent study found that children may be more likely to catch an infectious disease requiring hospitalization in their first year if their mothers smoked during pregnancy.
In fact, children born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy were at higher risk for dying from an infectious disease than children born to non-smokers.
The most common types of infectious diseases among children born to smokers were respiratory illnesses, but the babies were affected by other diseases as well.
This study, led by Michael J. Metzger, PhD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, looked at whether mothers' smoking during pregnancy increased children's risk for infectious diseases later.
The researchers compared two sets of children, each including a group of babies born to smokers and a group of babies born to non-smokers. The children were all born in Washington between 1987 and 2004.
First, the researchers compared 47,404 babies who had been hospitalized with an infectious disease within their first year of life to 48,233 babies who were not hospitalized with an infectious disease before age 1.
In their second analysis, the researchers compared 627 babies who died from an infectious disease in their first year to 2,730 babies who survived their first year.
In both groups, the researchers found that babies born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy had 1.5 times greater odds of being hospitalized for or of dying from an infectious disease than children not born to smoking moms. Kent Convertibles cigarettes.
In particular, babies born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy had 1.7 times greater odds of being hospitalized for a respiratory infectious disease than babies born to non-smokers.
When the researchers took into account differences in the babies' birthweight and the pregnancy week when they were born, it did not affect the results of hospitalization risk.
Interestingly, however, when the researchers looked only at children with low birthweight, children born to smokers were no more or less likely to die from an infectious disease than children born to non-smokers.
Overall, however, the researchers concluded that smoking during pregnancy was linked to a higher risk of a wide range of infectious diseases among the babies after they were born.
"These findings suggest that full-term infants of normal weight whose mothers smoked may suffer an increased risk of serious infectious disease morbidity and mortality," the researchers concluded.
“We’ve known for a long time that babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are at high risk for serious medical problems relating to low birth weight, premature delivery and poor lung development,” said study co-author Abigail Halperin, MD, MPH, in a prepared statement.
“While respiratory infections have been recognized as a common cause of these sometimes life-threatening illnesses, this study shows that babies exposed to smoke in utero also have increased risk for hospitalization and death from a much broader range of infections—both respiratory and non-respiratory—than we knew before," she said.
Andre Hall, MD, an OBGYN at Birth and Women's Care, PA in Fayetteville, NC, said it's not news that smoking is an unhealthy habit.
"It is also generally understood that it is especially unhealthy for pregnant women and their unborn children," he said.
"In addition to problems such as intrauterine growth restriction, this study now suggests a link between a mother's smoking and the future development of infectious diseases in an unborn child," Dr. Hall said. "This attack on a developing child's immune system which may increase a child's diseases over their lifetime, should be avoided at all costs."
This study will be presented October 27 at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition in Orlando.
This study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and its findings should be interpreted with caution.
Information was unavailable regarding funding and possible conflicts of interest among the authors.
A recent study found that children may be more likely to catch an infectious disease requiring hospitalization in their first year if their mothers smoked during pregnancy.
In fact, children born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy were at higher risk for dying from an infectious disease than children born to non-smokers.
The most common types of infectious diseases among children born to smokers were respiratory illnesses, but the babies were affected by other diseases as well.
This study, led by Michael J. Metzger, PhD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, looked at whether mothers' smoking during pregnancy increased children's risk for infectious diseases later.
The researchers compared two sets of children, each including a group of babies born to smokers and a group of babies born to non-smokers. The children were all born in Washington between 1987 and 2004.
First, the researchers compared 47,404 babies who had been hospitalized with an infectious disease within their first year of life to 48,233 babies who were not hospitalized with an infectious disease before age 1.
In their second analysis, the researchers compared 627 babies who died from an infectious disease in their first year to 2,730 babies who survived their first year.
In both groups, the researchers found that babies born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy had 1.5 times greater odds of being hospitalized for or of dying from an infectious disease than children not born to smoking moms. Kent Convertibles cigarettes.
In particular, babies born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy had 1.7 times greater odds of being hospitalized for a respiratory infectious disease than babies born to non-smokers.
When the researchers took into account differences in the babies' birthweight and the pregnancy week when they were born, it did not affect the results of hospitalization risk.
Interestingly, however, when the researchers looked only at children with low birthweight, children born to smokers were no more or less likely to die from an infectious disease than children born to non-smokers.
Overall, however, the researchers concluded that smoking during pregnancy was linked to a higher risk of a wide range of infectious diseases among the babies after they were born.
"These findings suggest that full-term infants of normal weight whose mothers smoked may suffer an increased risk of serious infectious disease morbidity and mortality," the researchers concluded.
“We’ve known for a long time that babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are at high risk for serious medical problems relating to low birth weight, premature delivery and poor lung development,” said study co-author Abigail Halperin, MD, MPH, in a prepared statement.
“While respiratory infections have been recognized as a common cause of these sometimes life-threatening illnesses, this study shows that babies exposed to smoke in utero also have increased risk for hospitalization and death from a much broader range of infections—both respiratory and non-respiratory—than we knew before," she said.
Andre Hall, MD, an OBGYN at Birth and Women's Care, PA in Fayetteville, NC, said it's not news that smoking is an unhealthy habit.
"It is also generally understood that it is especially unhealthy for pregnant women and their unborn children," he said.
"In addition to problems such as intrauterine growth restriction, this study now suggests a link between a mother's smoking and the future development of infectious diseases in an unborn child," Dr. Hall said. "This attack on a developing child's immune system which may increase a child's diseases over their lifetime, should be avoided at all costs."
This study will be presented October 27 at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition in Orlando.
This study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and its findings should be interpreted with caution.
Information was unavailable regarding funding and possible conflicts of interest among the authors.
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