Leave those smokers alone

Star-Telegram | Joseph Blast:

“The only legitimate grounds for interfering in smokers' choices are the potentially harmful effects of secondhand smoke on nonsmokers. Anti-smoking activists say secondhand smoke contains 4,000 poisons and carcinogens -- that even a tiny dose can cause severe health effects. They claim that ‘there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.’ This is pure junk science. The first principle of toxicology is that the dose makes the poison. We are exposed to thousands of natural poisons and carcinogens in our diets every day, but they don't hurt us because the exposure is too small to overcome our bodies' natural defenses. The same is true of secondhand smoke. No victim of cancer, heart disease, etc., can ‘prove’ that his or her cancer or heart disease was caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Oh spare me. The days are long gone when smokers could argue that the connection between tobacco smoke and disease was not proven. Yet they persist in arguing that nonsmokers should put up with noxious fumes because the quantities of carcinogens in secondhand smoke are insufficient to prove to the smokers that they are harming others' health. Why should the burden of proof be on the victim at all? It should be enough that the victim doesn't want to breathe your foul exhaled smoke. I'm willing to have smoking bans in restaurants, offices, stores, and other public places just because the smoke annoys the hell out of the others. It makes some eyes water. It aggravates asthma in others. It makes everyone's clothes stink. This is real harm, physical harm, even if it doesn't cause the victim to immediately keel over with a heart attack, stroke, or cancer. When smokers violate everyone else's rights to breathe clean air, I have no moral objections to restricting smokers' own so-called rights. I'm sure John Stuart Mill would agree.