The notion that smoke drifting from cigarettes poses a danger to the health of those who aren't smoking is at the heart of today's aggressive anti-tobacco campaign. It is the propaganda prize that enabled the abandonment of traditional, responsible health education in favour of a fire-and-brimstone crusade.

Why?

If any damage done by smoking is done only to the smoker, then it is the smoker who must be persuaded to quit, or who must be informed about risks. If, however, you can convince everyone in society that they are "passive" smokers, sharing the risks of smoking without ever having lit up in their lives, then you can use the force of social persecution to "modify" smokers' behaviour. Or at least you can try.

So it was that "passive smoking" was born. But as you will learn in this section, the "passive smoking" monster is a puff of public relations smoke. The "overwhelming evidence" of dangers to non-smokers from smoking, the assertion that "smokers are killing you" or that you are for all intents and purposes a smoker if you linger around smokers -- these are all big, politically irresponsible, spin-doctored lies.

A serious examination of the body of science (surrounding the second hand smoke) issue yields this conclusion: there is no reason to believe that ETS presents a (health) risk to nonsmokers.

In short, the health authorities and politicians have been telling us A WHOPPER. A whopper which, at this late date, supports a great many professional careers.

So why do they want you to believe that "second-hand smoke is killing you?" They want to encourage discrimination against smokers, as a way to make them stop smoking and thus create "a healthier society." Examine your own core values and decide if this is a political technique that you would like to see normalized!