After reading through blog after blog I was having a hard time deciding which one I felt the most strongly about. The new abortion law seemed to be a hot button, ironically I found it too politically incorrect to comment on. Then there was a blog about pink slime in our food being, "no big deal", which was incredibly distasteful. For someone, like me, with a degree in nutrition I found it incredibly "wrong"for pink slime to be "no big deal". But, today someone else made my mind up for me when I stepped out of People's Pharmacy with my seven week old baby and my eight year old son and received a blast of secondhand smoke in all of our faces.
The blog, Smoke and Mirrors, by Alison stayed mainstream in settling into more of a "freedom" type of approach, but I do not think the Smoke-Free Texas campaign is trying to take away the liberties or freedoms of a smoker as much as it is trying to provide the "freedom"or "liberty" to others to choose whether they want to be around secondhand smoke or not. In the blog she states, "No one should be forced to do what society thinks is "right" if its not what you
or I view as right for ourselves." I found it counterintuitive to make such a statement without thinking about the person having to inhale the secondhand smoke. I do not smoke, and I do not think I should have to share the clean air with a smoker. She then goes on to say, "The fact that Texas has adopted this whole
"smoke free Texas" thing shows me that tomorrow I might wake up to find that I
can't eat fast food because of the fat content and it's relation to heart
disease." I understand where she is trying to go with this, but smoking and fast food are two very different subjects. If you CHOOSE to eat fast food you are only harming yourself and no one else around you, but if you CHOOSE to smoke outside the person next to you is affected.
My main argument with the blog/article is that secondhand smoke leading to or not leading to cancer is a very debated topic depending on where your information is found. It is also a little more complicated than "just secondhand smoke leads to cancer". According to the American Cancer Society's Facts on Secondhand Smoke "Secondhand smoke is classified as a “known human carcinogen” (cancer-causing agent) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US National Toxicology Program, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization.
Tobacco smoke contains more than 7,000 chemical compounds. More than 250 of these chemicals are known to be harmful, and at least 69 are known to cause cancer.
SHS has been linked to lung cancer. There is also some evidence suggesting it may be linked with childhood leukemia and cancers of the larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat), brain, bladder, rectum, stomach, and breast."
The EPA, IARC, WHO, National Toxicology Program, and American Cancer Society have enough research to scare me into not wanting my children exposed to secondhand smoke for any length of time if I can prevent it. I feel this law is more about protecting liberties rather than abolishing them. Who is to say you have the right to smoke (even though you are a non-smoker) and my seven week old, six year old or eight year old don't have the right to fresher "immediate"air? It is not only cancer they could contract but asthma or lower respiratory infections.
I think she made good arguments in her favor, but could have made a stronger argument by checking into any and all possible facts. Comparing the freedom to smoke with diabetes and sugar really threw me off. Sugar does not cause diabetes, and there is no correlation with sugar to diabetes especially in Type 1, to expect the world to ban sugar is unrealistic because it is not directly linked to diabetes like secondhand smoke and cancer is linked.
Maybe I am being overly critical because I also feel strongly towards this law, but in some aspects it is a lose-lose law. Both sides of the law are going to feel that they have lost their "freedom"in a sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment