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Mon Dec 2 22:15:11 CET 2002

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San Francisco The Examiner

Publication date: 11/29/2002

The Big Lie of secondhand smoke
BY SIDNEY ZION
Special To The Examiner

    NEW YORK -- Once upon a time in America, it was non-negotiable that the two boldest towns in the country were San Francisco
and New York. The Barbary Coast and Hell's Kitchen were bound together thumb-to-nose against prohibitionists, who were
described by our patron saint H.L. Mencken as those who feared that "somewhere, someone is having a good time."

    Then, nine years ago, San Francisco left our hearts smoldering in an empty ashtray. Of all the gin joints in all the world, San
Francisco was the first to ban smoking. And guess who wants to come to that smoke-free dinner -- the reformed smoker, the
billionaire mayor of New York, Michael M. Bloomberg.

    All the time in his testimony to the City Council and his bombardment in the media, Mayor Mike cites San Francisco, in a turn on
Sinatra's anthem: "If they could kill it there we can kill it everywhere, it's up to you, New York, New York."

    So it's time to talk turkey about this secondhand smoke craze to my once-upon-a-time second city, and let you know just how
bonkers you are and just how you began the greatest brainwashing of the 20th century.

    Because despite the rantings of the lung and heart "experts" (the former claim 3,000 deaths a year from secondhand smoke; the
latter, centered at UC San Francisco, claim 30,000 to 60,000 a year, and without blushing state that a half-hour exposure in a smoke-
filled bar can cause heart disease), the second you take these "studies" out in the sunlight they give junk science a bad name.

    The Big Lie, to be fair, didn't originate in San Francisco. It opened in Washington in the first year of the Clinton administration,
1993, with an Environmental Protection Agency report that began the civil war in saloons and restaurants. Denounced eventually in
Federal Court as "corrupt science," the EPA gave the number of dead each year of lung cancer due to passive smoke as 3,000. So
now it wasn't a question of choosing your own poison, you were poisoning me.

    Two years later, the Congressional Research Service, an independent arm of Congress, found that there was no scientific basis
for the notion that secondhand smoke endangers health. This study was demanded by Rep. Henry Waxman ,D-L.A., the leading anti-
smoking advocate in Congress. When it came out the way he didn't want it to come out, he stuffed it -- and the media censored it.

    In March 1998, the World Health Organization found that secondhand smoke was a zero. The WHO, the very SS of the Nicotine
Nazi world, deep-sixed this extraordinary report based on a study that covered 21 countries over 10 years, costing millions of dollars.

    Today, the WHO cites dozens of statistical studies "proving" that passive smoke kills, but never mentions its own report! Par for
the course for the zealots who live on the line that the end justifies the means.

    But there's another but -- impossible as it may seem, the negative has been proved, not simply by WHO statistics.

    The U.S. Energy Department conducted a six-year study in 17 cities during the 1990s. Nonsmoking bartenders and waiters were
wired up to determine whether secondhand smoke was a danger to their health. The result across the board: nothing, nada. The
amount of smoke inhalation was eons below the danger line.

    And last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration decided to drop plans for setting up federal rules for indoor
smoking. OSHA said it was because there is no evidence that secondhand smoke is harmful.

    And yet against all this -- which bet me you didn't know, given the censorship of the anti-smoking media -- we go like lemmings to
the sea, the ship of fools, buying into the lie that we are protecting bartenders and waiters from the fumes of guys and dolls like you
and me.

    It's a sick joke, spreading now across the world. If 1 percent of it were true, Mike Bloomberg and the city fathers of San
Francisco wouldn't have the breath to tell us we were the walking dead.

    Sidney Zion, a former New York City newspaper columnist, is a freelance writer.

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