More fear mongering. I support smoke free environments but to say things like "sty away from smokers" is just working toward making another group of people for everyone to hate. Living in NYC I find it hard to believe that walking past a smoker would be worth more attention than the pollution from traffic or the constant exposure to cleaning agents. Right now there is the smell af ammonia wafting through my 4th floor window and I constantly scrub the black soot of my window sills. Sure smoking is dangerous but is it destroying the ozone? Put out the info you have but don't make it sound like by walking past a smoker in a doorway you will drop dead before you get to your office.

Clyde:
A) The Surgeon General has nothing to do with pollution control -- that's the EPA's job -- so he can't come out and start bashing (or praising) air pollution standards.

B) He's not saying second-hand smoke is MORE unhealthy than air pollution, merely that it IS unhealthy, which is a simple fact.

C) Neither the SG nor anyone else is advocating "hate" for smokers. Rather, he, like I (and many others), wish they'd quit for their own health and mine.

This isn't about intolerance for something people have no control over -- it's about the desire to reduce exposure to a known carcinogen. If you had had several family members die of cancer, you'd know that it's a terrible, awful way to die. If you had, you wouldn't be so cavalier about something so deadly.

The fact that people CHOOSE to put their own and others' lives at risk every day borders on the criminal. We don't let people drive drunk because we know it can lead to other people being killed. Why we have so much tolerance for smoking in public places, when it has essentially the same effect, is explainable only by its prevalence and the powerful lobbyists on behalf of the tobacco industry.

Smoking in your own home is one thing -- while it's stupid and drives up everyone's insurance costs -- at least it's not directly risking my health or that of my family. But there's just no valid justification for permitting smoking in a restaurant, where one person's habit puts at risk everyone around him.

My mother and both grandparents smoked most of their lives, so it's not like I've been sheltered from the practice. On the contrary, being so close to it has made me just that much more aware of its consequences, both direct and indirect.

His statments are outright false. His own study does NOT state what he put in his press release. There are also 33 studies by the EPA that come to an absolute no correlstion to 2nd hand smoking and illness. Ive been a safety and health engineer for 30 years and its utter nonsense. It takes 30 years for an actual smoker to have health related issues. There is what is called a Dose-Response curve. A certain Dose elicits a certain Response. But of course the media and scientific illiterates such as politicians will jump on the band wagon.

Yes, yes, Bill, and the sun still orbits the Earth, which is, of course, flat. Providing some links to support your claims will help your credibility. Otherwise, it's just the ramblings of some guy's post on a blog.