Illinois Smoking Ban

[JonoBN41]

This second-hand smoke business is hysterical, and I mean that. People assume now that it's genuinely harmful.

In 2006 the U.S. Surgeon General called a press conference and practically pounded on the podium in order to impress upon us all that second-hand smoke is harmful, and that there is no safe level of exposure.

There are safe levels of all kinds of nasties, such as arsenic, lead, mercury, biphenyls, PCBs, - you name it. But not smoke.

He said that second-hand smoke could account for as many as 3,600 deaths per year in the U.S. Notice the words "could" and "as many as".

The account of this press conference was reported by ABC News, which concluded with the statistic, apparently meant to add drama to the story, that each year 245 million Americans are exposed to second-hand smoke.

Okay, let's do the math. Dividing 3,600 by 245 million, we get .0000146 or .00146%. That's not even two thousandths of one percent.

As any statistician will tell you, that number is not only statistically insignificant, it pretty much proves the safety of second-hand smoke.

But all these studies and meta studies aside, remember that cigarette smoking was very early identified as causing lung cancer and heart disease for the very reason that smokers got it, and non-smokers didn't. If in fact second-hand smoke had had a similar effect on everyone, we would still be trying to figure out what was causing it.

Smoking bans are an agenda, and are not based in scientific fact.