A Primer On Totalitarianism for College Students in Pennsylvania: Part One

Dear Editor:

Reporter Bill Schackner recently reported on the legislature's ban on smoking indoors and outdoors on state-owned college properties ("Smoking Banned Entirely At Colleges," September13).

For years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has displayed on its official government Web site a "fact sheet" about respiratory health effects of "environmental tobacco smoke" ("Fact Sheet: Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking" http://www.epa.gov/iaq/ets/pubs/etsfs.html#Summary.) This fact sheet labels ETS a class A carcinogen, along with a disclaimer that "EPA no longer updates this information, but it may be useful as a reference or resource."

The designation of ETS as a carcinogen underlies the argument that secondhand smoke kills ... but it was completely debunked in 1994 by Dr. John C. Luik of the Niagara Institute in Ontario, Canada. Luik determined that of 30 studies used by EPA to designate ETS as a carcinogen, 24 showed no statistically significant connection between ETS and lung cancer.

In1998, a federal court ruled EPA wrongly classified secondhand smoke as a Group A (known human) carcinogen, because "EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun" and then "adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the Agency's public conclusion." The federal court ruled EPA's own internal risk assessment experts had told the agency the risk assessment did not support a Group A classification.

The Pennsylvania legislature and school authorities support smoking bans based upon hysteria and junk science. They ought to be ashamed.

Ralph W. Conner (rconner@heartland.org) is local legislation manager at The Heartland Institute.