Tobacco.org

A total of 106 reviews were identified. Overall, 37% (39/106) of reviews concluded that passive smoking is not harmful to health; 74% (29/39) of these were written by authors with tobacco industry affiliations. In multiple logistic regression analyses contr olling for article quality, peer review status, article topic, and year of publication, the only factor associated with concluding that passive smoking is not harmful was whether an author was affiliated with the tobacco industry.

Executive summary of the 6-year report from the Californaia environmental Protection Agency Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. You can download the entire document here.

Conclusions.‹The conclusions of review articles are strongly associated with the affiliations of their authors. Authors of review articles should disclose potential financial conflicts of interest, and readers of review articles should consider authors' affiliations when deciding how to judge an article's conclusions.

The world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect. The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been publicly accused of suppressing information. . . The results of this study, which have been completely misrepresented in recent news reports, are very much in line with the results of similar studies both in Europe and elsewhere: passive smoking causes lung cancer in non-smokers. . . . "IARC is proud of the careful scientific work done by the European scientific team responsible for this study", commented Dr Paul Kleihues, the Agency's director. "We are very concerned about the false and misleading statements recently published in the mass media."

"In all of these countries Philip Morris have already begun to identify and talk to suitable scientists. . . The consultants should, ideally, according to Philip Morris, be European scientists who have had no previous association with tobacco companies and who have no previous record on the primary issue which might, according to Remes, lead to problems of attribution. The mechanism by which they identify their consultants is as follows: - they ask a couple of scientists in each country . . . to produce a list of potential consultants. The scientists are then contacted by these coordinators or by the lawyers and asked if they are interested in problems of Indoor Air Quality: tobacco is not mentioned at this stage. CVs are obtained and obvious 'anti-smokers' or those with 'unsuitable backgrounds' are filtered out. The remaining scientists are sent a literature pack containing approximately 10 hours reading matter and including 'anti-ETS' articles. They are asked for a genuine opinion as independent consultants, and if they indicate an interest in proceeding further a Philip Morris scientist makes contact"
February 17th, 1988 note by Dr Sharon Boyse of British American Tobacco on a special meeting of the UK Industry on Environmental Tobacco Smoke, London This is the note and this is the May 31, 1997 British Medical Journal article

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News

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• 07/21/98 Tobacco Companies Find A New Champion In Cancer Row Electronic Telegraph
  
  A NEW hero of tobacco companies, WILLIAM OSTEEN, a federal judge who ripped apart as flawed a United States government contention that breathing "second-hand smoke" caused lung cancer, came under predictable heavy fire from the Clinton administration yesterday. Officials said that his ruling, which they pointed out was in the tobacco-state of North Carolina, would be aggressively appealed as it flew in the face of evidence that breathing someone else's cigarette smoke can seriously damage health. Judge Osteen, who worked as a paid lobbyist for tobacco farmers in the mid-Seventies, is known for controversial decisions. Last year, he was hailed as a friend of non-smokers by backing the government's authority to regulate tobacco products.
• 07/20/98 Don't Light Up Yet BBC
  
  But anti-smoking campaigners and the tobacco industry have told the Wall Street Jouranal that the ruling will have little immediate impact on the various US laws banning smoking at work, in restaurants and other enclosed places. This is because the EPA does not regulate indoor smoking, because local government rather than federal government have imposed many of the smoking bans and because the EPA report is not the only study advocating the dangers of passive smoking. However, it is one of the most influential.
• 07/20/98 Philip Morris U.S.A. Statement On Federal Court Decision In EPA Lawsuit Business Wire
  
  We believe, however, Judge Osteen's ruling supports our view that if involuntary exposure is minimized in public places, the enactment of severe smoking restrictions is not justified. For this reason we are working on solutions, including technological improvements in ventilation systems, to accommodate the rights and preferences of both smokers and non-smokers in the workplace and in public places. In addition, we enthusiastically support voluntary restrictions and reasonable regulatory measures designed to minimize involuntary exposure to ETS while preserving our consumers' ability to enjoy a legal product.
• 07/20/98 Smoking Foes Belittle Secondhand Smoke Ruling Reuters
  
  antismoking forces warned Monday that the decision will only fuel public wrath against the industry. In addition, plaintiffs lawyers handling secondhand smoke cases said the court decision would have minimal impact on their suits. They said they will focus instead on recent and far more damaging evidence linking smoke to cancer. "The tobacco industry certainly hopes this will make an impact. That's bull," said Robin Hobart, co-director of the Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights in Berkeley, Calif. "The industry is taking a risk. By raising the issue, they are giving us another opportunity to talk about the dangers."
• 07/20/98 ACS Says Ruling Against EPA Report Out of Step With Evidence US Newswire
  
  "Whether the EPA followed the guidelines of the Radon Act is not at issue as much as the implications of Judge Osteen's ruling. . . " said David S. Rosenthal, M.D., ACS Board of Directors President. "What the judge has done in this case has greatly endangered the public health. . . There is a significant body of evidence to show that not only does secondhand smoke cause lung cancer, but it is also associated with childhood asthma, middle ear infections, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, respiratory disease and precipitating heart attacks. . . John R. Seffrin, Ph.D., CEO, American Cancer Society, added, "We will do everything to ensure the EPA has what it needs to reissue a report which meets the guidelines of the Radon Act. We are very confident that the scientific evidence bears out the conclusions of the 1993 report, despite Judge Osteen's ruling.
• 07/20/98 Tobacco Scores Court Win CNN
• 07/20/98 Federal Judge Says EPA Overstated Cancer Link to Secondhand Smoke The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
• 07/20/98 Judge Voids Study Linking Cancer to Secondhand Smoke The New York Times
• 07/20/98 Federal Ruling Overturning EPA Report on Environmental Tobacco Smoke Should Cause Re-Evaluation of Smoking Bans and Restrictions NSA PR Newswire
  
  At a minimum, policymakers now have ample authority to re-evaluate bans and restrictions that relied on the EPA report. The ruling also provides sufficient reason for policymakers considering legislation to question and thoroughly scrutinize the so-called 'science' behind the claims of those seeking the prohibition of smoking," Humber said.
• 07/20/98 Hope For Pavement Puffers Times of London
  
  SMOKING inside offices and restaurants, which is rapidly vanishing across America, could be on the way back after a startling court ruling that "secondhand smoke" should not be classified as a dangerous cancer-causing agent. The federal court judgment has been hailed by smokers from coast to coast to help them to overturn the thousands of state and local bans on smoking.
• 07/20/98 Ruling Mainly a Moral Victory for Big Tobacco LA Times
  
  On balance, the ruling should be helpful to the industry, but "I wouldn't overstate ... (the) benefit," said Martin Feldman, an analyst with Salomon Smith Barney in New York. The ruling gives "the industry ammunition where they've had none for years," conceded Matthew Myers, general counsel for the National Center for Tobacco Free Kids. But he predicted it will do little to stem the tide of public smoking bans.
  Here's the item at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• 07/20/98 Despite Ruling, Smoking Bans Are Here to Stay, Officials Say Washington Post
  
  "Anyone who's had a cold that's been in a room with a smoker, from a common-sense point of view, knows that anything that pollutes the air makes their breathing ability worse. So there is science there. What the relationship is between that and the EPA rules, we'll have to look at carefully," she said.
• 07/20/98 Other Studies Support EPA on Secondhand Smoke Washington Post
  
  More than 100 major studies in the past 13 years have examined health consequences of passive smoking, and most -- about 63 percent -- found evidence of harm, from respiratory problems to cancer, according to a literature review published in May in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Of the reports that were inconclusive or found no health effects, nearly three-quarters were authored by scientists funded by cigarette companies, the JAMA article said. In fact, it said, the evidence "suggests that the tobacco industry may be attempting to influence scientific opinion by flooding the scientific literature with large numbers of review articles supporting its position."
• 07/19/98 EPA Defends Secondhand Smoke Report AP
  
  "The decision is disturbing," EPA Administrator CAROL BROWNER said Sunday. "We believe the health threats to children and adults from breathing secondhand smoke are very real." . . . EPA spokeswoman LORETTA UCELLI told The Associated Press that agency attorneys were reviewing the decision, but they "tell us the decision was based largely on procedural grounds." . . . "There is no legitimate question in the scientific community that secondhand smoke is a Class A carcinogen," said attorney STANLEY ROSENBLATT. "For a judge to come along years later and decide that it's not or is still an open question is a sad commentary." "People have got to realize that the decision comes from tobacco country. ... Coming from North Carolina, people expect that."
• 07/19/98Statement in Response to Judge Osteen's Ruling in the EPA Lawsuit This has the most excerpts from Osteen's ruling available. RJR PR
  
  "We feel vindicated by the federal court's decision that the EPA wrongly classified secondhand smoke as a cause of cancer in nonsmokers. This decision should prevent the EPA from becoming a participant in the anti-smoking industry's crusade to ban smoking. "Striking down the EPA's contention that secondhand smoke causes cancer destroys the basis for those agencies and state and local governments that have banned or restricted smoking because of the EPA's classification. The court's ruling supports Reynolds Tobacco's long-held belief that the science does not justify public smoking bans.
• 07/19/98 Secondhand Smoke Finding Struck Down Washington Post
  
  After five years of court pleadings and deliberations, Judge Thomas Osteen of the federal Middle District Court of North Carolina ultimately agreed with the industry. He issued his opinion late Friday, and many EPA and tobacco industry officials were unaware of it when contacted yesterday. EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner said . . . that the administration would almost certainly appeal the decision. Michael York, an attorney for Philip Morris Cos., said that Osteen's decision could force the EPA to reverse its stand on secondhand smoke. "Now it will be up to the agency to re-examine all of the relevant studies and make the honest determination that the statistical correlations are extremely weak -- certainly below that necessary to justify their classification of (secondhand smoke) as a Class A human carcinogen."
• 07/22/98 NORTH CAROLINA: Ruling Should Not Affect Local Smoking Ordinances Greensboro News & Record
• 07/21/98 CALIFORNIA: Bars Still Hoping to Be Smoking LA Times
  
  Health: Managers and some customers want end to state ban but doubt recent ruling on secondhand smoke will provide much ammunition.
• 07/21/98 Would Tobacco Ruling Affect Missoula? KECI, Montana/MSNBC
  
  In Missoula County, health officials have considered creating a smoking ordinance that would outlaw smoking in restaurants and other businesses. They're confident that Judge Osteen's ruling won't have a major effect on that plan. "I find this to be inconvenient," said Greg Oliver of the Missoula City/County Health Department. "The tobacco industry has been very effective in throwing lawsuits togetherŠ. This is another one, but I don't think that there's any question about the substance and the risk." Oliver said a Missoula smoking ordinance could be sent to elected officials for discussion this fall.
• 07/21/98 Statement by Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County Director of Public Health and Health Officer, on the North Carolina Federal Judge's Ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency's - EPA - 1993 Report on Secondhand Smoke Business Wire
  
  Judge Thomas Osteen's ruling regarding the EPA's 1993 report focuses on the statistical merits of the EPA's study regarding the classification of secondhand tobacco smoke as a Class A carcinogen. This is a fairly narrow issue in light of the substantial scientifically reviewed evidence linking exposure to secondhand smoke to cancer, heart disease, emphysema and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). . . Secondhand smoke is documented to be harmful to the health of Los Angeles County residents. It is imperative that public health measures designed to reduce exposure to this health threat be maintained.
• 07/20/98 Judge's Decision Should Have Small Affect On Central INDIANA WTHR CH. 13 (Indianapolis, IN)/MSNBC
  
  Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society considers the case proven. "Now there are roughly 45 epidemiological studies that find higher lung cancer risk in nonsmokers whose spouses smoke, so the evidence is really very extensive." Indiana's Attorney General, Jeff Modisett, says the ruling won't affect anti-smoking laws here. "There's no reason why a community couldn't go ahead and continue to enforce and pass these laws because they just like having a smoke-free environment."
  
  
• 07/19/98 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT MIDDLE DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA This court site doesn't look as if it posts decisions..
• 07/20/98 ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE (ETS) A.K.A. "SECONDHAND SMOKE" EPA
• 07/19/98 Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Industry's Suit Studies Focus On Epidemiological Studies Steven Bayard and Jennifer Jinot, authors of the EPA report, briefly rebut the industry's suit (1993)
  
• 07/20/98 Why Review Articles on the Health Effects of Passive Smoking Reach Different Conclusions May 20, 1998 JAMA
  
  A total of 106 reviews were identified. Overall, 37% (39/106) of reviews concluded that passive smoking is not harmful to health; 74% (29/39) of these were written by authors with tobacco industry affiliations. In multiple logistic regression analyses contr olling for article quality, peer review status, article topic, and year of publication, the only factor associated with concluding that passive smoking is not harmful was whether an author was affiliated with the tobacco industry.
  Here's a compilation of articles/resources on the EPA War Tobacco BBS
  
  
• 07/21/98 OPINION: Smokers 1, Health Nuts 0 R. Cort Kirkwood, Ottawa Sun
  
  Hard as it is to believe, judges occasionally make decisions contrary to the popular ideological fashions of the day . . Indeed, civil disobedience is not allowed unless the cause to which the disobedient declare allegiance is one from among the officially approved list of victims and crimes against them, such as women, blacks, homosexuals, the handicapped, the obese, the homeless, apostate clerics, the poor, the Indians, and, for all anyone can predict, HIV positive dwarves. . . So what if the EPA report is erroneous. The states will not reverse their laws . . . Even when the good guys win, they can't really win.
  
  
• 07/22/98 STREAMING AUDIO: Philip Morris Reacts To Federal Court Decision On The EPA's Report On Environmental Tobacco Smoke Business Wire
  
  Listen to streaming audio containing comments from ELLEN MERLO, senior vice president, Corporate Affairs, Philip Morris USA at http://www.newstream.com/r98-211.shtml
• 07/22/98 Smokers Learned To 'Just Live With It' USA Today
  
  Smokers on Tuesday shrugged off a federal judge's ruling that a major report linking second-hand smoke to cancer - a report that cleared the air in public places across the country five years ago - was faulty. Tobacco industry lawyers are determined to use the ruling to combat anti-smoking laws. But after five years of braving bitter cold and sweltering heat to have a cigarette, smokers for the most part have given up their fight to get back indoors.
  Here's the item at the Detroit News
• 07/21/98 EPA Plays Down Second-hand Smoke Ruling Financial Times
  
• 07/22/98 EDITORIAL: Having Second Thoughts On Secondhand Smoke Seattle Times
  
  This fudging drew criticism not just from the tobacco industry, but from independent analysts at the Congressional Research Service, Energy Department, UCLA, Yale and the University of Chicago. . . Nevertheless, the unmasking of the EPA's statistical deception on the health effects of passive smoke should give anti-smoking activists pause. EPA Administrator Carol Browner was no doubt well-intentioned when she stated last week, "We believe the health threats to children and adults from breathing secondhand smoke are very real." But in a world where truth in science matters, believing is not enough.
  
  
• 07/22/98 EDITORIAL: Secondhand Smoke -- Ruling Unlikely To Undo Protections Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
  
  The first is a question for science and the second a matter of public policy. Both can be debated -- and probably will be, as long as one tobacco company has a PR budget. But the best answer to each question is still yes, and this is so whether the EPA's stance resulted from a sound examination or a lousy one. . . Health questions aside, smoke is a noxious irritant to a vast majority of Americans, who simply won't return to the days when meals and meetings and airline flights were laced with the stink of someone else's cigarette. Lots of smokers, the considerate ones, wouldn't ask them to.
  
  
• 07/21/98 EDITORIAL: Another Tobacco Smoke Screen Deseret News
  
  So a district judge's ruling that secondhand smoke is not a dangerous carcinogen should be treated as another industry smoke screen . . . Finally, somewhat laughable is the notion of the tobacco industry calling into question the integrity of any ruling or policy not in its favor. This is the same bunch that, given recent revelations of its underhanded tactics to hook youthful consumers, should have zero credibility and public standing on matters directly related to its own bottom line ‹ its only real concern.
  
  
• 07/21/98 EDITORIAL: A Hazy Tobacco Win San Francisco Chronicle
  
  These rules are based not only on science, but on common courtesy and common sense. Americans riding in cramped aircrafts, dining in crowded restaurants or working in office cubicles will scoff at the judge's opinion. Barring smoking has cleared away a nuisance and distraction. . . in general, tobacco's agile lawyering evades the ever-growing sweep of public opinion against smoking and the hazards it imposes on everyone.
  
  
• 07/22/98 OPINION: Betrayal By Government Should Have Us Smokin' Kathleen Parker, Chicago Tribune [The first name's William, Kathleen. It's Thomas Osdene.]
  
  The report was conducted improperly, he said, and the science was lousy. In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Osteen wrote: "EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun . . . In the years since the EPA report, other studies have only added to the confusion. The California EPA produced a study that confirmed the EPA's findings. A new--and reportedly better--study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer found no statistical significance. Whom can you trust? . . . At best, the EPA report, which prompted life-altering judicial and legislative decisions, may be a numbing example of how government can fabricate information and modify behavior while the baffled masses are wondering what's for dessert.
  
  
• 07/22/98 EDITORIAL: Secondhand Science Very, very weird; is this a Cincinnati Post editorial, or a Dale McFeatters opinion piece (see below)?
• 07/21/98 OPINION: Secondhand Science Dale Mcfeatters, Scripps Howard
  
  Typically overreaching, the tobacco companies -- through their lawyers, not, it should be noted, their scientists -- are claiming the ruling gives them blanket absolution, that "science does not justify public smoking bans." Judge William Osteen made no such finding. He only ruled that this study overstated the cancer risk from secondhand smoke. . . But the decision still raises a critical point: Scientific studies used to justify major government policy changes should be close to bulletproof. Smoking is a health hazard and maybe secondhand smoke is, too, but a federal agency has no basis tinkering with the data to make it so.
• 07/23/98 Federal Court Announces That EPA 'Science' Has No Clothes PR Newswire
  
  With federal judge throwing out the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) claimed "science" on secondhand smoke, the agency is open to even more scrutiny by the courts, taxpayers, and the regulated community, according to the Small Business Survival Committee (SBSC) -- a national, nonprofit, small business advocacy organization.
• 07/21/98 TRANSCRIPT: Smoke Screen? Carol Browner v. Charlex Blixt, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript
  
  CHARLES BLIXT: It's not our position that second-hand smoke is not harmful to health. . . . CAROL BROWNER: More importantly, what you have here is a judge. A judge in Winston-Salem, North Carolina essentially trumping the scientific opinion of 18 independent scientists. Trumping the opinion of the Surgeon General, the National Academy of Sciences. You know, there's nothing else like this in EPA's history. . . We looked at all of the science, we reached conclusions, we presented those to independent scientists, we asked the tobacco industry what they thought about those in a draft form. They gave us thousands of pages. They appeared for hours before the scientists reviewing these findings and at the end of the day, the conclusion was unanimous. . . . And Jim, just one last thing. The tobacco industry did not challenge EPA's scientific findings with respect to our children. The respiratory findings that EPA made.
  
  
• 07/23/98 EDITORIAL: Epa Decision Reveals Arrogance Of Power Greensboro News & Record
  
  Federal Judge William Osteen s decision overruling parts of the Environmental Protection Agency s influential 1993 report on second-hand tobacco smoke is an important legal achievement
  
  
• 07/23/98 EDITORIAL: Judge Burns EPA on Smoke Salt Lake Tribune
  
  But, the EPA apparently did not let facts get in its way and it laid the groundwork for states, counties and municipalities -- including Utah -- to ban indoor smoking. . . But the folks at the EPA are employees of the federal government, and they can be dangerous to individual rights when they shape regulations based on faulty reasoning or poor science. . . After all, who knows what the EPA will aim at next. Ice cream?
  
  
• 07/24/98 Agency Sought To Link Smoke Studies To Cancer USA Today/Detroit News
  
  The Environmental Protection Agency launched its landmark 1993 study after concluding, based on dozens of previous studies, that secondhand smoke was harmful. With the help of a scientific advisory committee, it sought to quantify the cancer link. "We had enough information to make policy from the National Research Council report plus the surgeon general report," recalled James Repace, who retired from the EPA in February. "But we said if we're going to advise the public, people are going to want to know how much cancer does it cause and what's an appropriate control measure."
  
  
• 07/24/98 EDITORIAL: SCREEN SMOKE; EPA Needs A Fresh Look At Secondhand Variety Fayetteville (NC) Observer-Times
  
  Tobacco is a legal substance, and we support people's right to derive enjoyment from it (at their own peril). But indoors, in air everybody shares, smoke is pollution. Just as smokers have rights, nonsmokers should have a right not to have it thrust on them against their will. Having properly constituted federal research is a powerful backstop for the ordinances that regulate the when and where of smoking. EPA, go back and do your homework. Get it right. One way or another, let's settle this for good.
  
  
• 07/25/98 EDITORIAL: Hollow Victory New Scientist
  
  Let them savour the moment. Their victory will prove short-lived. The EPA will certainly appeal, and in any case a lot has happened since its study was carried out in 1993. More research has shown links between passive smoking and lung cancer. We have also come to know a lot about the industry's cynical attempts to obscure those links. . . It's not a strategy that can succeed in the long run. The victory in North Carolina--which just happens to be a tobacco-growing state--may be the industry's last gasp.
  
  
• 07/25/98 EDITORIAL: This Week's Laurels And Laments Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  
  This is enough to make anyone cough and wheeze. A federal judge in North Carolina -- wow, imagine that -- has ruled that a 1993 report by the Environmental Protection Agency that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer is flawed. The EPA, the judge ruled in a suit filed by the tobacco industry, based its report on inadequate science and failed to demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. Not surprisingly, the EPA will appeal. Justice, as they say, is blind. But maybe that's because of the thick smoke screen put up time and again by Big Tobacco to keep its foes at bay.
  
  
• 07/26/98 OPINION: Judge Smokes Out Tobacco Lie (New York) Daily News
  
  In a devastating 94-page opinion, Judge William Osteen put the cat to the Environmental Protection Agency. These ideological hustlers are responsible for all the madness we've experienced since 1993, when, without a scintilla of evidence, they declared that secondhand smoke causes cancer. . . The EPA announced that 3,000 people died every year from secondhand smoke. More people by far die from milk, not to mention bird droppings in national forests. . . In March, the World Health Organization was caught with the lie. It is the SS of the Nicotine Nazis. The WHO ran a multi-million-dollar study dedicated to proving that passive smoke causes cancer. It came up empty. The media censored that story. If you didn't read it in my column, you don't know it. And now the media do virtually the same with Judge Osteen's opinion.
  
  
• 07/28/98 OPINION: Commentary: Secondhand Smoke: It's Deadly. Period Paul Raeburn, Aug. 3, 1998 Business Week (Pay Registration)
  
  Although the Greensboro (N.C.) jurist claimed no particular scientific background, he took the unusual step of pronouncing judgment on the report's science--and found it lacking. . . The EPA study is now only one of hundreds of scientific reports on the hazards of secondhand smoke. Nearly all of them, including the most recent, confirm the EPA's findings--and go beyond it. . . What's more, industry documents have since come to light showing that the industry had firsthand knowledge of secondhand smoke's dangers. In the 1970s, industry researchers found that carcinogens called nitrosamines--in particular one called NNK--"were the most significant risk in lung cancer both among smokers and among nonsmokers subjected to sidestream smoke," said William A. Farone . . . While Osteen's authority as a judge gives him the power to throw out the EPA report, it doesn't give him the power to change the facts.
  
  
• 07/25/98 EDITORIAL: Smoke And Mirrors Toledo (OH) Blade
  
  The vast majority of people in this country are sick of the arrogance of the tobacco companies and their hollow claims that tobacco isn't harmful or marketed at kids. The failure of Congress to pass tough anti-tobacco legislation in the face of big tobacco's big campaign dollars is shameful, but it need not deflect the nation from its goal of being smoke-free. The people of this country intuitively know, and other reports have shown, that secondhand smoke is dangerous. Americans won't tolerate it, no matter what Judge Osteen says.
  
  
• 07/30/98 OPINION: EPA's Crusaders George F. Will, Washington Post
  
  The anti-tobacco crusade's rationale was threefold: Secondhand smoke is deadly to nonsmokers; people start smoking because they, poor things, are putty in the hands of advertisers; smokers cannot stop because nicotine is too addictive. . . Also in the Weekly Standard, Dennis Prager, a theologian and talk-show host, notes that the full apparatus of the modern state has been mobilized for "the largest public relations campaign in history teaching Americans this: If you smoke, you are in no way responsible for what happens to you. You are entirely a victim." . . This assault, a result of the politics produced by a culture of irresponsibility, is an emblematic fruit of Clintonism.
  
  
• 08/03/98 LETTER: Smoking Ban Laws Based On Faulty Research Albert Chan, Executive Director Tobacco Institute of Hong Kong, South China Morning Post
  
  Many people, including smokers, can object to cigarette smoke (technically called Environmental Tobacco Smoke or ETS) in certain situations. This is not unlike some people being annoyed about other forms of behaviour in public - the playing of loud music, for example. The objections are largely subjective. They are not based on anything other than a personal dislike. The bans on smoking in public places, however, were introduced as a "health" measure - taking the question of "personal dislike" into the realm of science, where objective evidence is supposed to rule. And here we find the situation is not as straight-forward as proponents of smoking bans would have us believe. . . The dubious conclusions of the EPA report have now been questioned. . .
  
  
• 08/01/98 Tobacco's Reaction To Ruling On Second-hand Smoke Jerry Heaster, Kansas City Star
  
  Politically, the industry and smokers have no chance of translating legal victories into major rights victories unless they're willing to become a political force. This isn't likely for a group that, although it's 40-million strong, allows itself to be brow-beaten and dispatched on daily guilt trips at whim. . . Joe Camel may sell cigarettes, but what smokers really need is a political rallying point. It's the only thing that makes sense for a business and its customer masses in an era of interest-group power politics.
  
  
• 08/03/98 MICHIGAN: OSTEEN: Lawmakers Won't Quit Anti-smoking Fight Detroit News
  
  Michigan lawmakers aren't pausing in their campaign to control secondhand smoke, despite a recent federal ruling that strongly criticizes the science behind smoking bans. . . Lawmakers in Michigan now are considering at least 25 new bills to regulate tobacco.
  
  
• 08/05/98 OPINION: Passive Smoke Is More Than A Nuisance Gregory J. Redding and Leonard D. Hudson, Seattle Times
  
  In its editorial, The Seattle Times declared, "in a world where truth in science matters, believing is not enough." . . The overwhelming and growing body of evidence serves to indict environmental tobacco smoke as a serious health hazard, despite the ruling of one North Carolina judge. . . Science clearly corroborates what the public knows intuitively: Secondhand smoke is dangerous to one's health. Using single studies or court rulings to argue the point does not change this fact.
  
  
• 08/07/98 NARO President Points to North Carolina Ruling as Reinforcing Oil Industry's Concerns Over Actions by Federal Environmental Agencies National Association of Royalty Owners PR Newswire
  
  "A ruling by a federal judge in North Carolina that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrongly declared secondhand tobacco smoke a carcinogen based on 'junk science' reinforces the long-held conviction by the oil and gas industry that many federal agencies often use unproved theories to support politically correct environmental agendas," James L. Stafford, president of the Ada, Oklahoma-based National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) said today.
  
  
• 08/07/98 EDITORIAL: EPA: Smoke and Mirrors Detroit News
  
  Most studies have failed to establish a significant link between second-hand smoke and cancer. The risk from drinking coffee or milk appears greater. . . The problem is that the EPA, under Vice-President Al Gore's hand-picked administrator, Carol Browner, ignores evidence that contradicts its beliefs. Congress should hold hearings exposing such cover-ups, as it is already doing on the environmental racism issue. It should also pass a bill, sponsored in part by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, requiring cost-benefit analysis of any regulation coming from the EPA, which would force a more realistic appraisal of EPA claims. Finally, if that's not enough to get the EPA's attention, Congress should simply slash its budget.
  
  
• 08/08/98 LETTER: The Facts About Kids and Smoking Bill Novelli responds to George Will op-ed in Washington Post
  
  Saturday, August 8, 1998; Page A19 We read with great disappointment George Will's column of July 30, "EPA's Crusaders." Judging from his ignorance of so many facts, one might surmise that Will had done precisely what Judge Osteen accused the EPA of attempting: "cherry picking facts" in favor of foregone conclusions.
• 08/08/98 LETTER: Tobacco's Shill Doctor responds to recent George Will op-ed. Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
  
  Clouding and distorting the issue by selectively ignoring recent data, Will creates a real threat to the future health and happiness of our children. In doing so, he raises one last question, "Did Mr. Will write this column himself, or did he simply accept it whole cloth from a tobacco industry copy writer?"
  
  
• 08/07/98 OPINION: Make Them Give Back Our Money Graph in op-ed by Steve Forbes, LA Times
  
  Never mind that official government estimates indicate a $1.6 trillion tax revenue surplus over the next 10 years. Apparently, none of this matters to this administration. In fact, the president and vice president prefer to pass massive tax increases (on tobacco and long-distance phone service, for example) and create expensive new government programs rather than let you keep more of what you earn. That's wrong.
  
  
• 08/12/98 EDITORIAL: EPA's big lie Worcester (MA) Telegram & Gazette
  
  The silence from the Environmental Protection Agency concerning the recent federal court ruling on secondhand smoke has been deafening. Perhaps the agency has been shamed into silence. . . In stooping to the same kind of selective "science" and distortion used by the rapacious tobacco companies, the EPA has done serious damage to its credibility.
  
  
• 08/27/98 Mistaken Ruling, Unmistakable Facts: How Judge Osteen Got It Wrong When He Vacated The EPA's Finding That Secondhand Smoke Is A Known Carcinogen and Why His Ruling May not Matter Analysis by Graham Kelder, Tobacco Control Resource Center, Inc.
  
  
• 09/02/98 OPINION: Rebuttal: Secondhand Smoke's Documented Danger Homer Read, President, American Lung Association of Michigan, Detroit (MI) News
  
  It's hard to believe with all of the credible information available, The Detroit News was still able to write such an erroneous editorial ("EPA: Smoke and Mirrors," Aug. 7). . . The News is following suit with Big Tobacco when it supports District Court Judge William Osteen's ruling on secondhand smoke. It is Big Tobacco's tactic to find one scientist or judge who will side with it in the face of hundreds of studies opposing it. Please don't buy into the tobacco industry's million-dollar advertising campaigns. Tobacco is deadly. . . If The News has questions about the health effects of tobacco, ask a health care provider.
  
  
• 09/15/98 Clinton Administration Appeals Decision on Secondhand Smoke Bloomberg
  
  The Clinton administration appealed a district court decision that overturned a federal ruling that secondhand smoke can cause cancer. . . In appealing the judge's ruling, the administration said it will present data to show that the conclusion of a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency risk assessment was "through, factual and fair" in linking cancer and secondhand smoke, EPA Administrator Carol Browner said. "Health study after health study confirms the serious risks posed by second-hand smoke," Browner said.
  
  
• 10/11/98 OPINION: Suspending The Rules Of Science Robert Matthews, Electronic Telegraph (London, UK)
  
  SO NOW the facts are out. With the publication last week of the full WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION report on passive smoking, anyone can check the accuracy of The Telegraph's exclusive story last March, which disclosed that the WHO had failed to find any convincing evidence that passive smoking causes lung cancer. Yet there has been little of the publicity which would have been expected for so striking a finding from a major study by an official organisation. But this is passive smoking research, where normal rules do not apply, including those of scientific investigation. . . But the other positive result is a real headline-grabber: statistically significant evidence that childhood exposure to cigarette smoke cuts the risk of lung cancer by 22 per cent. In other words, exposure to cigarette smoke can be protective.