Indeed, wood smoke is chemically active in the body 40 times longer than tobacco.

Oh, my God! Why didn't I think of that as a way to raise money? I have a domain, so I could just set up a Web site with a shopping cart and ask people to donate to my public health cause.

Maybe we should all just stop fighting the antis and cash in on the hysteria they have generated. We can all set up "public health" Web sites with shopping carts where we can ask the sheeple to donate. No one will know we are smokers because they can't see us.

Why didn't I think of this before? As it stands now, we are being robbed daily. But we could get our money back by setting up these Web sites. Then the antis and hysterical non-smokers could voluntarily hand our money back in the name of their own cause, and we wouldn't have to stress ourselves out so bad fighting them.

Cal. has the Mexican border on their doorstep. Marlboro sells to Mexico, Mexico sells to anyone, you're only allowed to bring in 2 cartons per person, but those laws haven't meant much to smugglers. Smuggling cigs is big business.

My father-in-law will be 80 his next birthday, smokes like a steam engine, gardens every day, mows 2 1/2 acres of yard, takes his wife shopping every other day, and does all the household laundry and floors. His wife of 50 years has never smoked, and is just as healthy, in fact she can run me down shopping. Funny how she hasn't got lung cancer from SHS. The same senario can be said for my parents except they are a few years younger. My dad smoked Camel unfiltered for 40 years (now he has changed to cigars), my non-smoking mother never got lung cancer.

I smoked throughout my pregnancies and all the time I was raising my kids, they were healthy, (of course that was before the terror of cigarettes was in the news), back when smoking was good for you. Today neither of my sons have health problems, neither smoke, one is in the Army the other is a fireman. Even being a fireman and being around smoke from buildings hasn't given him any disease. You have to be very healthy to be a fireman or to be a soldier. My smoking didn't influence my kids to smoke. However, now that there are so many anti's, it compels kids to smoke to revolt against their nonsmoking parents. It's just the way kids are.

Now some anti-smoker psychos have come up with 3rd hand smoke, claiming just being a smoker will harm your kids. All I can say is, they better start figuring out how they can build enormous orphanages throughout the states to house all the kids they need to protect. They are going to have to take all the smokers kids and the kids of people who barbeque or have fireplaces, fire pits or camp fires too. If cigarette smoke is that bad imagine fireplaces or fire pits!

I'll bet these doctors for healthy air drive cars and fly, & probably have big boats!!!
Actually these nuts could be good for smokers. Once they deem it necessary to pass a law banning, fireplace burning, fire pits, barbequeing, camp fires and etc. it will effect a ton of nonsmokers and would be enough to get smoking bans overturned.
It still amazes me how we are even alive today, after all people cooked over wood for thousands of years, not to mention everyone had a fireplace for heat. How did humanity survive it?

Fair enough, the reasoning isn't yours. But by that reasoning, we have to ban driving, boating, lawn mowing, factories and air traffic. Especially since cigarette smoke is only a minute particle in the air compared to all of the above. It is impossible to use that reasoning without including all fuel burning machines that create a "health hazard" to people around them.

That reasoning alone could be challenge enough to have the bans overturned.

Why aren't the "clean air people" raising hell to ban the real culprits? It's simple, they aren't willing to give up the convenience of driving around, suffocating the air themselves, oh no, they aren't going to sacrafice their own comfort for clean air, yet they are willing to force me to give up a pleasure of mine to placate them. If you stand on a street corner waiting for traffic, you will inhale far more noxious fumes than if there was no traffic but a smoker next to you. Think about it, cigarette smoke pales in comparison. It is illegal hypocrisy, outright and without any doubt. Legally if cigarettes are baned for that reason we absolutely have to ban machines. How could you have the right to polute the air in one way, but not in the other? It seems to me in the USA you have the right to create, sell and distribute machines that polute the air, thereby giving you the right to use those machines, what's the difference between using those machines and smoking a cigarette? It stands to reason, smoking is a right, just like you have the right to use fuel burning machines. There isn't even a law against running a gasoline motor indoors, although it is unadvisable. Still there's no law against it. People die after every hurricane because they run generators in their house.

Josh, perhaps you can post and highlight "protected class" as mentioned in the Uniformity Tax Clause; I can't seem to find it. Perhaps we're reading two different Clauses.

You mentioned in one of your posts that "the residue from exhaled smoke is a health hazard;" however, reports from OSHA and ORNL have proven that SHS dissipates immediately into the air and is unlikely to have any effect on others.

No you are right, there is no mention of the term protected class there. I hope I didn't say that it is mentioned there, if I did then my mistake.


I know OSHA is a federal regulatory group, but I googled ORNL and the only result I was getting was some Oak Ridge laboratory. The smoking bans are state laws, not federal ones. So if each state wants to create stricter standards than the federal government sets, it is within their power. The only problem I see is if the exhaled smoke isn't the health hazard, then the smoking bans have no meaning or purpose in the workplace.

BINGO!!!!!!!!!!

And ORNL is a privately owned laboratory. Should that make a difference? They confirmed what OSHA has been reporting all along and went a step further.

Unfortunately, even with all the new studies that can be gathered to counter the ones used to support the bans passage, they will make no difference at this point to overturn the ban in court. They are useful in supporting an argument to the legislature to request a reversal or change in the law. However, I am betting everyone has a scientific study or two in their pockets.

http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=44459

What's the legal standard for proving that secondhand smoke actually causes fatalities? Is it "beyond a reasonable doubt," "preponderance of the evidence" or some other standard?

Is there anywhere we can read about actual cases of actual non-smokers who supposedly died as a result of SHS? How about all the children who have supposedly keeled over as a result of their parents' smoking? It looks like you would have to be able to point to actual people and not just statistics in order to prove SHS is harmful, when you're dealing with the law.