Ledger

Issue date: 3/8/07 Section: Commentary

“We treat others as though we are guests
in their lives.”
The above quote is the motto John
Coulter, one of the University of Washington
administrators responsible for crafting the
campus-wide smoking ban, adopted several
years ago for a UW health services steering
committee which he led.
Obviously, that principle is a relative one
for Coulter. Or perhaps he had a weird interpretation
of what constitutes being a good
guest in mind last year when he formed the
“Smoking Task Force,” the committee in
charge of getting UW in compliance with
I-901.
Maybe he was referring to an annoying
visit from an overbearing mother-in-law
when he defined “guest” in his motto. If
that’s the case, Coulter can be applauded for
applying the same standards to all his work
over the years.
By superseding an already stringent
state smoking law, Coulter and his colleagues
have passed policy that dangerously
impedes civil liberties, while accomplishing
little to improve public health.
The UW smoking ban, which was implemented
at all three campuses March 1, is a clear attempt of social engineering waged
by UW administrators responsible for the
decision. Justified by strong anti-smoking
rhetoric, the decision to further marginalize
smokers was based on a “we-know-what’sbest-
for-you” attitude and lacked any scientific
data.
Perhaps that’s because most of the scientific
record provides absolutely no justification
for their decision to isolate smokers
from the rest of society. For example, in
a highly-referenced controlled experiment
conducted by Dr. James Repace, secondhand
smoke was found to be barely detectable at 23 feet away from smokers. Levels of smoke
high enough to cause any irritation disappeared
four meters away from the source.
Furthermore, there was a 75 percent decline
of particle concentrations in secondhand
smoke at a distance of one to two meters.
Repace’s study, “Measurements of
Outdoor Air Pollution From Second Hand
Smoke on the UMBC Campus,” concludes:
“Therefore it makes sense to post signs
warning smokers not to smoke closer than
about 20 feet from building entrances.”
Research like this backs up the case for
the current state law, which prohibits smoking
within 25 feet of a building’s doors,
windows and ventilation systems. What it
doesn’t justify is the Smoking Task Force’s
decision to ostracize smokers.
That’s because the ban has little to do
with public health. Instead, it is policy
crafted with the intent to erase a perceived
social ill – and that is the definition of social
engineering. When a group doesn’t have the
power to change a law, but does have the
power to create an atmosphere full of overbearing
regulations and unnecessary hype,
they place themselves in an omnipotent
position well above democracy. And of course, it’s because they know
best. Or so they think.
There is a magic number often cited by
anti-smoking groups when pleading their
case for smoking bans: 3,000. That is the
amount of non-smokers who die from secondhand
smoke each year, according to a
1993 EPA study. While this presents a seemingly
strong indictment against smoking in
public, there’s one problem – the study was
a statistical train wreck.
With the results being published before
the study was completed, the EPA never
could find the numbers to back their strong
conclusion. Instead, they switched their
confidence interval from 95 percent to 90
percent – a move that is sacrilegious in
the statistics community. Furthermore, the
EPA omitted nearly half the available scientific
studies on secondhand smoking in
their meta-analysis. Their actions were so
egregious that a federal judge accused the
EPA of “cherry-picking” their data.
Apparently, a handful of UW administrators
picked their fruit from the same tree.
And while the fruit they harvested may look
palatable, it is actually poisonous to society
if consumed.

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