>>... I don't believe all the hype. I just wish they used that much propaganda against real polluters.
>
>Is it really only hype?

Well, I've heard one of the top officials, when he was asked "what are the statistics about lung cancer now that so many people have quit smoking", and he said "we don't know of any research on that". One would expect the whole thing to be checked for efficiency, wouldn't it?

So while smoking is in no way good for you, I think it's also not as dangerous as they claim. And I also believe nobody died from second-hand smoke.

No, not only hype, but a lot of it. Just like the tobacco companies paid for research which then showed the smoking is not detrimental to health, I also don't think the research paid by anti-smoking lobby was unbiased. Besides, it's not real research, it's mostly statistics. Specially in a country which has zero of a health system which can reach everybody, you can't have reliable data, only samples. With carefully selected samples anything can be proven.

>>>Even trying to justify the unjustifiable ;-)
>>
>>Smoking is bad, no doubt. But so is being a couch potato, or breathing on a congested highway, or eating meat laced with hormones and antibiotics, or having a tad too much heavy metals in your food... the list could go on.
>
>Couch potatoes don't bother me in restaurants. In fact they don't go to restaurants. Hmm I guess that's why they're called couch potatoes
>
>Please don't try to change the conversation ;-)

To me it's very connected. OK, couch potatos are a danger to themselves only (unless you sit next to a large specimen in public transportation), but about the other forms of pollution - I think that the whole campaign against smoking is just a pretext to do nothing about the rest, yet keep the façade of activity. And smokers are so easy to be against... I've seen some very ridiculous reactions in some places.

But then I had my revenge :). When I returned from my trip, having lost my matches (didn't even bother to have a lighter, being warned about that) to the French screening process before boarding the plane to NY, I went from cab to cab asking for a light. There probably were smoking lounges on airports along the way, but I simply had no time to find them, so... after about 12 hours I wanted to have a smoke outside. The first three cab drivers didn't even bother to answer, only the fourth made an honest attempt to turn on the lighter in the car. The lighter was not working; I got my light from someone else - and then picked this fourth cab to ride. The lady who drove the first one made a scene - probably thinking I was being racist (she was African-American, but then the next two were Caucasian). I had to tell the dispatcher I chose the fourth, as is my right as a customer.