Some are arguing that clouds like this pose no harm to bystanders if it is found outside, which is clearly against a growing body of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Take a listen to an interview (it begins at 6:11) conducted this past Tuesday by CKNW’s Christy Clark and the chair of the Park Board Aaron Jasper. It is clear from her very first question, Clark is just itching to pick a fight and agitate Jasper.
Clark first launches into a question of why the Park Board isn’t taking notice of pot smoking outside:
“It’s not your concern that people are smoking an illegal product in public when you want to…I mean, aren’t you concerned about second-hand smoke?”
Clearly a loaded question that has little to do with the jurisdiction of the park board, as pointed out by Jasper. But she kept on with the same line of questioning for several minutes.
Then she moved onto this tactic:
“But one of the unintended consequences – and the research seems to support this – of what you’re doing is going to be to drive people to smoke indoors. It seems to me as a public official you should be vitally concerned about unintended consequences of your actions.”
Clark might have studies that do conclude this. However, it is a huge stretch to suggest that if people can no longer smoke specifically in Vancouver’s parks, beaches and trails that they are immediately going to head indoors. Believe it or not, there are still places for people for people to smoke outdoors, and even if the argument is made that the Park Board’s decision is simply pushing the harmful effects elsewhere, the fact still remains that the Park Board is doing all that it can do within it’s jurisdictional purview.
Finally, Clark launches into what has to be the pearl of her twisted logic in this statement:
“So how does put people in harm’s way to have a cigarette out in a perfectly open area? I haven’t seen, um…I mean, the evidence that I’ve seen about second hand smoke is almost exclusively focused on smoking in confined spaces.”
Hmmm…well, Clark has clearly not done her research, because one google search on “second-hand smoke outdoors impact,” for example, produces a number of articles and studies that state the contrary.
You want context Christy? Take a read of this excerpt regarding the Stanford University study:
“In the study, the researchers used portable electronic monitors to make precise measurements of toxic airborne particles emitted from cigarettes at 10 sites near the Stanford campus. “We wanted to quantify the potential level of exposure to outdoor tobacco smoke that could occur in everyday settings. To do this, we used five different, state-of-the-art instruments to measure secondhand smoke at parks, open-air cafes, sidewalks and outdoor pubs where smokers were present.”
Each instrument was calibrated to measure an airborne pollutant known as particulate matter-2.5 (PM2.5), which consists of thousands of microscopic particles that are less than 2.5 micrometers in width–about 30 times narrower than a human hair.”
“A typical cigarette lasts about 10 minutes. We found that if you’re within two feet downwind of a smoker, you may be exposed to pollutant concentrations that exceed 500 micrograms of PM2.5 over that 10-minute period. If you’re exposed multiple times to multiple cigarettes over several hours in an outdoor pub, it would be possible to get a daily average of 35 micrograms or more, which exceeds the current EPA outdoor standard.
Outdoor tobacco smoke consists of brief plumes that sometimes exceed 1,000 micrograms. On the other hand, clean air typically contains less than 20 micrograms of PM2.5. Therefore, a person near an outdoor smoker might inhale a breath with 50 times more toxic material than in the surrounding unpolluted air.“
Unsurprisingly, cigar enthusiast Alex Tsakumis uses almost the exact same talking points as Christy in a post from yesterday.
Unfortunately for both, the science doesn’t back up their positions.
Once again, this is a bold and groundbreaking decision by the Park Board that deserves praise, not feeble attempts at diversion.
