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Recent updates to public information in Colorado Department of Revenue public reports reveal the trend for diminishing rates of increase in bar trade revenues continues, while increases in restaurant sector sales accelerate. "The most recent comparative sales data for the first quarter of 2007 confirms a trend that we first identified early this summer," said Allen Campbell, Senior Vice President of the Coalition for Equal Rights, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) bar and tavern trade group headquartered in Colorado Springs.
Campbell said the well-established changes in competitive hospitality trade sector revenues are important in light of OSHA criteria for regulatory economic impact. OSHA generally considers a regulatory action to be not economically feasible if it would cause a decrease in related industry or sector revenue of one percent or cause a decline in profits in excess of ten percent. OSHA also usually considers a regulatory action not economically feasible if the action would cause a change in the competitive structure of an industry.
"The Colorado smoking ban violates all three OSHA economic feasibility criteria," Campbell said.
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This letter is in response to the editorial, "Tobacco lobby thwarts OSHA crackdown," Sunday, July 15, 2007, by Steve and Alice Schneider.
Steve and Alice Schneider repeat the lie that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. This violates a basic principle of toxicology that dose makes the poison. . . .
We don't know how much secondhand smoke a nonsmoker inhales as she works near smokers; it may be less than one cigarette a day. Perhaps that worker should smoke a few just as a preventive measure, if secondhand smoke is as dangerous as proponents of smoking bans say.
If regulatory agencies such as the Office of the Surgeon General are going to issue such irresponsible reports, we should be glad that legislators provide oversight; that is what a potential cutoff of funding for an OSHA regulation by a few regulators is. And of course anti-smoking groups will sue for eliminating workplace smoking. Rather than work through the political process and through good science, they instead ask an unelected judge to do their dirty work for them.
Barbara Banaian's July 6 column "Smoking bans are about policy, not about facts" has, at its premise, the notion that because the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not set a standard on exposure to secondhand smoke, that the claims surrounding its dangers must somehow be exaggerated.
Not surprisingly, the tobacco industry and its allies have long made this argument. . . .
The truth of the matter, which Banaian unfortunately overlooked, is that OSHA has tried to regulate exposure to secondhand smoke but the tobacco lobby has repeatedly thwarted those efforts.
OSHA attempted to implement such standards during the Clinton administration but was stopped when tobacco industry lobbyists convinced some members of Congress to strip funding for the federal agency if they went forward with the proposal. . . .
Despite claims to the contrary, secondhand smoke is indeed extremely dangerous. That's why last year, after reviewing existing credible studies, the U.S. Surgeon General came to the conclusion that there are no safe levels of exposure to secondhand smoke and that only policy that completely prevent that exposure are effective in protecting public health.
Thankfully, the Minnesota Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty recognized that in the passage and signing of a law that will make nearly all Minnesota workplaces smoke-free starting on Oct. 1.
Elliott Taylor's chief contention is that a smoking ban will protect the health of the innocent public, yet he offers no proof whatsoever that secondhand smoke poses a health risk (Monitor letter, Mar. 28).
Eighty percent of the epidemiological studies over the past quarter century show only a statistically insignificant relationship between secondhand smoke and either lung cancer or heart disease. Please note that 49 of those studies had to do with massive exposure: nonsmokers living with smokers for decades.
I had to laugh at his mentioning OSHA:
"Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standards. . . . It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."- Greg Watchman, acting assistant secretary of OSHA, to Leroy J. Pletten, PhD, July 8, 1997.
From the early 1980s to the present, neoliberal doctrine has called for government policies of privatization, funding cutbacks, and deregulation of public health and other domestic social programs in the belief that the market rather than the public sector can best organize and distribute crucial societal services. Proponents of a neoliberal and deregulatory mixed approach of command and control and self-regulation argue this approach provides the most adequate means to conduct regulation in the legalistic and adversarial U.S. regulatory process. In April 1994, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a proposed rule to eliminate tobacco smoking in most workplace rooms, arguing secondhand tobacco smoke annually killed up to 13,700 nonsmokers. The tobacco industry purposely delayed public hearing procedures (later halted altogether by Congress and the president) primarily to advance unhindered private property rights and profits rather than submitting to a public command-and-control regulatory framework to reduce deaths due to secondhand tobacco smoke.
- I was disappointed to read that the Tribune has switched its position on the proposed smoking ban in Chicago ("For a Chicago smoking law," Editorial, Oct. 27).
First let me make clear that I am not a smoker (except for the occasional cigar) and that I prefer non-smoking sections of bars and restaurants or non-smoking bars and restaurants.
I have a stronger preference, however, for individual choice over government-controlled choice. . . .
If the issue is to protect workers, why not require employers to take necessary steps to limit or reduce risk? This limited, focused governmental method has worked for years in the form of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Chuck Magerl thinks supporters of Lawrence's smoking ban are going overboard in their effort to protect bar and restaurant workers from the health risks posed by secondhand cigarette smoke.
Magerl, owner of downtown Lawrence's Free State Brewing Co., 636 Mass., said an important fact had been lost in the controversy surrounding the Lawrence City Commission's decision to ban smoking in virtually all indoor public places. An oft-cited reason for the ban is to protect the health of workers.
But the federal agency that oversees workplace safety issues, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has no regulations that say workers shouldn't be exposed to secondhand smoke.
"What people are really saying in this debate is that we don't want to live by OSHA's rules," Magerl said. "It seems like their battle should be with OSHA, not with the Red Lyon or some other bar in town." . . .
Dr. Steven Bruner, a Lawrence physician and supporter of the ban, said OSHA was controlled by Washington politicians, many of whom receive big campaign contributions from large tobacco companies. Bruner said it was clear OSHA understood the health dangers of secondhand smoke because it proposed tough regulations in 1994.
"They just got beaten down politically," Bruner said. "OSHA did its job. The politicians just didn't back them up." . . .
An OSHA spokesman, who refused to give his name for publication, referred all questions to a 2001 OSHA news release on the subject and a two-page written handout the agency has produced on the issue.
The documents state that OSHA stopped working on regulations after it became clear that local and state efforts were becoming effective in reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, and that the agency's resources "are best directed at other issues."