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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