Smoking bans are ridiculous. Period. If this were 1989 instead of 2009, next to nobody would have a problem with smoking in public. And in fact, almost nobody did until 1993, when the EPA declared that “secondhand smoke,” a term unheard of by most of us until 1990 or so, was declared to be a “Class A Carcinogen.” The terms “secondhand smoke,” “passive smoking” and “Environmental Tobacco Smoke” were coined by two groups of people:

A) Those offended by the smell of smoke, and

B) those angered because either they or a loved one became sick due to a “smoking-related” illness.

This is in itself questionable, to say the least. Let’s suppose 65-year-old John Doe weighs 300 pounds. He also eats 4 Big Macs every week. His exercise consists of getting up off the couch to grab a beer out of the refrigerator. He also happens to smoke a pack of cigarettes every day. Now let’s suppose poor John drops dead of a heart attack. Smoking will automatically be recorded as the cause of his myocardial infarction and be added to the supposed 500,000 annual deaths allegedly attributed to smoking. In addition to this scenario, the Center For Disease Control pulls these numbers out of a computer. They are estimates that are pulled out of someone’s backside, and carry no proof whatsoever. In reality, the number of deaths directly caused by smoking is probably less than half of what is claimed.

Here’s another little tidbit of information: While it’s true that 87% of lung cancer cases will be found in smokers (or former smokers), the CDC fails to inform the public that less than 10% of smokers will ever GET the disease. In fact, a 75-year-old woman who smokes three packs (that’s 60 cigarettes) a day for a period of 55 years has about a 15% chance of developing lung cancer within the next ten years. This also means that she has an 85% of NOT developing the disease! There are approximately 55 million smokers in the United States alone, and only 150,000 or so will die from lung cancer each year. I’m not claiming that smoking doesn’t carry health risks. Certainly it does. People who indulge increase their chances for emphysema, COPD, and heart problems, but the assumption that everyone who smokes will go to an early grave is simply not true. There are plenty of people in nursing homes who were around before movies had sound who still smoke like chimneys. Of course now, they’re thrown outside, which brings me to my second and most important point.

It is utterly preposterous to the point of being insulting to the intelligence to believe that a minuscule trace of smoke emanating from a 70 millimeter stick of tobacco and paper will somehow travel several feet across a room, enter another person’s bloodstream, attach itself to his/her lung, and begin a malignant growth or clog his/her arteries. Let’s be honest here. The former Surgeon General is an idiot. He claimed that a mere 30 SECONDS of exposure to someone smoking could cause an instant heart attack! This would be synonymous with claiming that if someone drinks a Pepsi too fast and belches in a diabetics direction, the innocent party will go into a high blood-sugar coma.

“Secondhand smoke” is hundreds and even thousands of times less concentrated than the direct smoke that a smoker ingests. An average sixth-grader should be able to determine that if it takes several decades for a smoker to experience ill effects from his/her habit, then it would require thousands of years; rather CENTURIES, for a nonsmoker to render the same damage. Why people can’t fathom this is beyond me. Not to mention, I pose a question: Why aren’t millions of people who grew up in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, when smoking was very prevalent, either dead, hooked up to respirators, or have had four or five bypass surgeries by now? Those in opposition love to use this analogy: Smoking sections in restaurants are like having urinating sections in swimming pools. They are shooting themselves in the foot with that argument, because they are right. Allow me to explain: A swimming pool contains thousands of gallons of water. Let’s suppose 15 or 20 people are too lazy to get out and use the restroom. A typical urine stream is about 12 ounces. If 20 people relieved themselves in the pool, that’s 240 ounces of urine DILUTED by thousands of gallons of water. I’m not advocating the use of swimming pools as toilets, but the point is that if nobody SAW the act of urinating, it would go unnoticed.

Similarly, for decades, nobody cared whether or not anyone smoked in public. That is, until the government and media planted it into their minds that it was a health hazard. I believe the big pharmaceutical companies are behind this, for they stand to reap huge profits from the sale of smoking-cessation drugs. The EPA lied by changing the definition of just what a “Class A Carcinogen” was in order to include ETS on their list. They also ignored research that showed no link to disease. As a matter of fact, the whole Report was ruled invalid in 1998 by Federal Judge Willam Osteen. They used junk science to obtain their results. Meanwhile, politicians’ pockets were filled with funding from Anti-Tobacco groups and today the bans continue unabated. At first, smokers were thrown outside from restaurants, public transportation, and workplaces. This has now been extended to bars, hotel chains, and even OUTDOOR places such as sports stadiums, theme parks, beaches, and in some cases, if you happen to live in the People’s Republic of California, SIDEWALKS. Never in my wildest dreams when I began smoking in 1975 did I ever think that those who smoke would one day be treated like criminals.

Smokers are now regarded as child abusers if they so much as even think about lighting up in the presence of young ones. We are told we stink. We are ridiculed. In short, we are hated. Children in schools are being taught to not only despise tobacco, but also those who use it. Famous historical figures such as Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt are now having smoking materials airbrushed away from photos in school textbooks. Try to find a copy of Abbey Road where Paul McCartney is still holding a cigarette. This is social engineering, and has absolutely nothing to do with “public health.” Sharing a room with a smoker is about as life-threatening as an earthquake in India would be to someone standing in a cornfield in Nebraska. The goal here is to denormalize smoking. It’s wrong. Common sense has taken a backseat to hysteria. It’s time for the brainwashing unseen since Hitler became Chancellor of Germany to come to an end. Smokers and nonsmokers co-existed in peaceful harmony for decades. The current bans are nothing short of Fascism, and I don’t know about you, but I’d like the America I once knew to be returned. How about it?