While adults can try to avoid smoky areas, children and infants cannot and are therefore especially vulnerable. Studies show that babies whose parents smoke are admitted twice as often to the hospital for conditions such as bronchitis and pneumonia. Children under age 2 are particularly susceptible because their lungs and immune systems are not yet fully developed and being exposed to second-hand smoke can hinder lung development.

Children exposed to second-hand smoke have more symptoms of respiratory irritation like cough, excess phlegm and wheezing. Every year second-hand smoke is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower-respiratory-tract infections in infants and children under the age of 18 months, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations.

Given the extent to which prohibitions on smoking in public have been enacted at this point, I fail to see how this debate can legitimately continue to proceed as a public health argument - unless of course we all want to be prohibitionists because there are an awful lot of things we can tell other people not to do.

Meanwhile DuPont et al, the big three and big oil among others get a free pass on poisoning an entire nation - and there is simply NO WAY that we can avoid their toxins - hell with acid rain we can't even count on retreating into the wilderness as a way of protecting ourselves.  So they're killing me and the vast majority of public health initiatives coming out in this country in this era are discussions about preventing people from having the choice to smoke tobacco, eat sugar, eat meat, ride a bike without a helmet etc. as if they're the only ones who get to decide how you live and die.  I have a problem with that.

Of course, I am an anti-prohibitionist and I don't believe that laws addressing individual personal behaviors are efficacious.  I think broader policy changes like giving people access to healthcare and giving people an environment that is trully free of carcinegenic toxins that they can't see, smell or taste like they could a cigarette or a nearby smoker would be a far more effective health policy.  At least with cigarettes you have a choice.  There is a whole world of pollutants that are just as if not more dangerous that you simply cannot avoid in our environment.  And the reality is that all the major stakeholders will try to keep it that way - they've done a fabulous job of making sure that the studies of the effects of their products could fit into my back pocket while the studies on cigarettes pile up in warehouse upon warehouse.

My Grandfather died of liver cancer.  His was not metasticized which is a form of liver cancer that less than 1% of liver cancer patients have.  He grew roses in the south.  He had 300 rose bushes that I did my best to tend to during the time I cared for him when he was dying.  He used a chemical on those bushes once a week for 10-15 years that killed a certain kind of mold.  I went out with all the gear and followed all the procedures in using that chemical to treat the bushes so that they wouldn't die before him.  

After only getting part way through the treatment, I had to stop.  I was nauseated, my skin was crawling/itching, I felt awful.  I got into the shower and spent over an hour trying to catch my breat and get the chemical off of me.  I suspect that had he been in California it would have been a carcinogen.  But as this was in Florida it was not.  I talked to his doctor who didn't want a thing to do with investigating my theory.  As this was the pre-internet age there were few ways for me to investigate and contact people.  I met one of the reps at the garden store too and the minute I asked about the danger of the chemical he went ashen white and changed the subject.  That is when I really started to look at and think about the "safe" chemicals that are all around us.

  Living in any society necessarily requires some sacrifice of individual autonomy. I think most people, even you, would agree that some degree of relinquishment of autonomy is beneficial to not just society generally but you as an individual within society.

free people are happier people, free people are less violent...