Environmental Tobacco Smoke Studies
Pub Date: 1/1/2003
If taking in tobacco smoke first-hand is bad for you, common sense would seem to indicate that taking it in second-hand couldn't be much better.
Certainly exposure to second-hand smoke, particularly for a non-smoker, can be unpleasant, but the question of its relationship to one's health is far more uncertain.
Much ink and many millions of dollars have been spent trying to locate some link between second-hand smoke and health complications, but thus far, most of the efforts have been less than clear-cut.
However, a certain segment of the population, convinced it's just "a matter of time" before research will bear out their "common sense" conclusions, has decided it's acceptable, even ethical, to present shoddy or inconclusive science as fact, even if that means bending the truth.
Though there's little doubt that most in the anti-smoking crusade have their hearts in the right place, to disseminate misinformation and attempt to curtail citizen's freedoms on the basis of myth, sets a dangerous precedent.
To understand the facts about second-hand smoke, one is forced to take a skeptical stance, be willing to accept uncertainty, politically incorrect positions and sometimes, to question what would seem the most obvious common sense. Though this stance might be difficult, the alternative--a smoke screen of untruth--is far more noxious.
Source: Extra, a special supplement to The Montana Tavern Times, Dec., 2002, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.