yazadjal.com

Sydney Smith attacks the hysteria surrounding second hand smoke and critiques the unnecessarily scary research that has lead to bans on smoking in public places around the world (including India).

If banning public smoking really reduced heart attack rates by forty-percent, wouldn’t New York city cardiologists have noticed by now? A forty-percent decrease in business is hard to overlook. And wouldn’t the city’s health department, which believes strongly in the benefits of smoking bans, have noticed, too?

Smoking is bad and smoking around non-smokers without their permission is rude. But exaggerating the dangers that smokers pose to non-smokers is not wise. For one thing, it undermines the credibility of the medical profession. For another, it promotes an attitude of intolerance that should give us pause in a free society. The way things are going, it will be only a matter of time before a smoker is charged with manslaughter for his co-worker’s heart attack.

It helps to know that she’s a practising doctor. Read the whole piece.