[Zetack]

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I didn't even read what that guy said, but I'm pretty sure Penn does not smoke at all. He said he's never smoked or drank any type of drug in his life.

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I don't know if he drinks or does drugs but I've seen him smokes cigars.

I said that he used his forum on "bullshit" (which otherwise was a great show) to state that no one had proven second hand smoke had health consequences on the people subjected to it. In my opinion, he let his own habit dictate
the content of the show. So "Bullshit" became bullshit.

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I can't wade through all the conflicting information on the subject myself because I'm just not that interested. But there is a strong possibility that Penn is correct. Perhaps it's your biasis at work rather than his...

--Zetack

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I haven't read the public health research articles nor do I consider myself qualified to properly analyze them (though I am clueful). However, I'm fairly willing to trust the NIH on this one and they estimate that about 1 percent of people dying from tobacco smoke die not from primary cigarette inhalation, but from second hand smoke. Given how awful cigarette smoke is for you (there's a solid tome of scientific literature corroborating that one) and that cigarette smoke can have 400 chemicals including 20 known carcinogens (as well as oxygen-robbing carbon monoxide), I don't think it's unreasonable to say cigarette smoke is unhealthful to a serious extent.

You aren't a smoker perchance, are you? I've definitely seen addiction undermine reason and consistently so with nicotine addiction. The use of nicotine causes addiction in more cases than any other known psychoactive substance.

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I think I had three cigars in college and wacky tabacky on about three occaisions since college. So that's my smoking record over the last 17 years. I'd guess I'm not addicted to nicotine.

Like I said, I haven't dug throught the literature, but I've heard it suggested by some fairly convincing folks that the studies the govenernment relies upon are simply bad science. And I note that the world health organization did a study in 1998 which found an increase in lung cancer among the spouses of smokers but that the increase was not statistically significant. And indeed, that same study showed an actual decrease in the riks in children of smokers.

So I don't know, and don't care enough to try and figure out who's doing good science and who's not, and am not sure I have the expertise to figure it out.

But I've thought of Penn as a stand up guy, and I would hope that he actually did the research.

In anycase it's at least plausible to me that the risk from second hand smoke is one of those things that's become accepted because A. There's huge political and social push for it, B. its intuitively very plausible to us that its true and C. its been stated as a fact so incredibly often.

And what do I know, it may be true. I'm just saying that maybe Penn wasn't shooting off at the mouth just because he likes to smoke cigars.

--Zetack