Mr. Saletan states in part: "Studies have proved that secondhand smoke is harmful. But those studies aren't conducted in wide-open spaces." Sorry, Mr. Saletan, you have not done your homework. The State of California's Air Resources Board (ARB), that regulates California's outdoor air did a massive report in 2006 which resulted in secondhand smoke SHS being declared a " toxic air contaminant." There are several published scientific studies of SHS in the outdoor air in addition to this report, and they are reviewed in a paper listed on my website <www.repace.com>.under recent reports. These reports show that outdoor SHS may often be as high as indoor SHS in proximity to smokers, and that short term leves can be extremely high due to microplumes, high enough to trigger an asthmatic attack in susceptible persons. There are millions of asthmatics in this country. Moreover, most nonsmokers find SHS to be a nuisance. Just as noise and dog droppings are regulated in publc spaces, governments have the right and the obligation to protect the susceptible from the stupid. I suggest that you revisit this issue, and see if you want to retract your erroneous statement.

Then by this logic, we should also ban all cars, smokestacks, agricultural pesticides.

Personally, I think we should also ban public farting too.

Ephemeral whiffs of someone else's cigarette are far less of a danger than those trucks driving up and down your street, or the smokestack a few miles away. I'm not a smoker, but it is intolerant nuts like you that make me ashamed of liberals (and I am one).

Some people feel gays are a nuisance. I mean hey, we have to look at them!

(now I'm 100% for gay rights \ same-sex-marriage). We have to be careful with passing laws because something is a nuisance. The majority should NOT rule but instead freedom balanced with logic.

If we are talking about a 'large' outdoor space (e.g. a large park) smoking should be legal.

Those trucks are delivering goods; those smokestacks are manufacturing. Essential services. Not that their emissions shouldn't be controlled, they should, and are (it sez here). Smokers' emissions are far less necessary, and should be controlled in areas where others are nearby. It is unthinking, illogical liberals like you that make _me_ ashamed. Leave the propaganda for the neocons. And, jazzguitarman, gays do not exude a effluence that subjects innocents nearby to disease-causing material.

Thanks for pointing this out! I wish these reports would get more coverage. Mr. Saletan also leaves out another very important reason many localities are banning smoking in parks - cigarette litter. Butts do not biodegrade quickly. They are made of plastic and absorb toxic chemicals in smoke, many of which come from the large amounts of pesticide that tobacco growers apply to their crops. The butts end up littering parks and playgrounds. They even wash out to sea and end up in whales' bellies. Not only are they dangerous if ingested by curious toddlers, there is also legitimate concern about what will leach out of them.

How do you know those are essential goods? They could be delivering Twinkies, which cause the disease of obesity. Ban 'em.

In Saletan's response (<link>) to Repace, Saletan says:

"Studies of secondhand smoke have indeed moved outdoors. Their findings support restrictions on lighting up within a few feet of other people. But they don't warrant more than that."

So it appears that Saletan might consider it acceptable to ban smoking outdoors only when the smoker is within a few feet of other people. But, of course, people don't stand still the entire time they're in a park. It would therefore be exceedingly difficult to enforce some type of "moving circle of smoke" law. That's why officials want to ban it in the entire park. If nonsmokers deserve protection from secondhand smoke, they deserve it no matter where they are in the park.

By analogy, you might be the only customer in a NYC restaurant. Can you smoke? No, even though there isn't any one within a few feet of you. You can't smoke because someone MIGHT get within a few feet of you. Ditto parks.

Repace has been debunked on his hocus pocus science on indoor smoking bans, now he's trying to justify outdoor bans? What a joke !

Read it here: <link>

To think you are harmed by a little smoke! Airplanes put out more in one day than you will EVER be exposed to by a lifetime of smokers.

Cigarette 3 mg of nitrogen oxide (NO) and 40 mg of carbon monoxide (CO)
One single 747 takeoff/landing 115 pounds of NO and 32 pounds of CO
(That’s 52 million mg of NO and 14 million mg of CO)

500 takeoffs/landings per day CO equivalent of over 160 million cigarettes and the NO of Eight and a Half BILLION cigarettes.

AVERAGED EMISSIONS OF FINE PARTICLES IN GRAMS PER HOUR OR DAY
Cigarette .4 grams/hour (0.8 grams/pack)

Gas or Propane Furnace .001 grams/hour ( 0.024 grams/day)

Oil furnace .02 grams/hour (0.48 grams/day)

Pellet Stove 2.4 grams/hour ( 56.6 grams/day)

Single Simulated Log 8 grams/hour

Certified Wood Stove 8.2 grams/hour (196.8 grams/day)

Non-certified wood stove 15.6 grams/hour

Fireplace-hardwood (36 lbs. or 16 kg burned over 3 hours.) 30 grams/hour

Fireplace-softwood (31 lbs.or 14kg burned over 3 hours.) 59 grams/hour.

Auto-with Catalytic Converter .66 grams/hour

Auto-without Catalytic Converter 3.5 grams/hour.

Auto-smoking 6 grams/hour

Diesel 14 ton Truck or Bus 36 grams/hour

Diesel Truck or Bus 70 grams/hour References:
1986 SG Report pgs. 129, 130, 136

EPA Report “Technical Data… Commercial Aviation” 09/29/95 <link>

I read an article about a boy that OD'd on Nicorette gum given at school without parental knowledge. So, in a legal drug pushing scheme, pharmaceutical nicotine is pushed on 12 year old kids trumping parental autonomy. If anyone doubted that the anti-smoking, anti-overweight crusade leads back to Johnson & Johnson, open your eyes people!

Google worlds oldest smokers, you'll find ALL the worlds oldest people are or were smokers! The benefits of smoking tobacco have been common knowledge for centuries, and big pharma knows this and would wipe out the competition. From sharpening mental acuity to maintaining optimal weight, the relatively small risks of smoking have always been outweighed by the substantial improvement to mental and physical health. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Tourette's Syndrome, even schizophrenia and cocaine addiction are disorders that are alleviated by tobacco. Tobacco shows promise to prevent colon and prostate cancer and the endorsement for smoking tobacco by the medical establishment is good news for smokers and non-smokers alike. The revelation that tobacco is good for you is trumped by the pharmaceutical industry's plan to substitute the natural and relatively inexpensive tobacco plant with their overpriced and ineffective nicotine substitutions with 98% failure rates for quitting for 1 year or more. Big pharma has spent billions demonizing the pleasure of smoking using social engineering and profits from bans that destroys private businesses and pits one population against another. Follow the money!

As discerning readers surely have surmised, “marbee” is no ordinary commenter. He’s a spammer.

An online version of the “tax protestors” across the country, he has been sent out to create so much noise that some dimmer bulbs might think his spam has some distant relation to the truth.

marbee's specialty is hijacking message boards. His loose-rivet boilerplate is slammed onto every board in the country (Google him or his phrases). Innocent boards like Slate's are manipulated to function as his own freebie PR Newswire. He seems part of this cabal of maybe 10 shameless spammers who try by sheer force of numbers to make their lies seem true, deluging boards with torrents of misleading sewage.

Massive onslaughts of garbage intended to drown out truth is of course a typical, documented tobacco industry tactic.

It must be a full work-day to hit every message board in the country as he does.

And it’s all anonymous; he doesn’t have to stand up to spew this swill out in the open in front of a legislature, where he might have to account for himself.

Does Post-for-Pay exist? Read how corporations are taking their PR wars to the Internet without disclosure:

<link>

“Allegiances are not always explained. The most impassioned defense … on the blogs comes from Trevor Butterworth, editor of Statistical Assessment Service, also known as STATS. He regularly combs the Internet for stories … and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry.”

(STATS was funded by the tobacco industry)

Once the Flat Earthers, Holocaust Deniers and Green Card Lawyers start following marbee's scurrilous PR methods, message boards like Slate's will soon become as useless as newsgroups are today.

How would you know if you were not all over the forums yourself? Are you paid by the ACS/RWJF to roam the web being nasty and not adding anything to the conversation.

The WHO has been working on how to fool the people about SHS/ETS since 1975 when they were told the only way to get people to stop smoking was to make the public believe that SHS/ETS was killing their children and all the people around them. So, if Cigarettes were to be introduced now it would take many years to get the people brainwashed to swallow this fraud that SHS/ETS WAS KILLING PEOPLE.
Anyone over 30 has been raised around SHS. If it were as dangerous as they would have us believe, everyone over 30 would be DEAD.
The longest/largest studies by the ACS, the WHO and over 250 other studies found no connection to Cancer or Heart Disease. It's about time people were catching on to the fraud.
The 1993 EPA report has been vacated as a fraud by Federal Judge Osteen and by two Congressional Committees. Why hasn't the media exposed this? Could it be that they are paid too well to keep it hidden? IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT PROFIT NOT HEALTH. WAKE UP.

You must be one of the easily fooled.

Marbee will never repeat what he or she is posting enough times to reach the size of the spam propaganda coming from the pro-ban side and the Big Pharma shills. If he/she has to always repeat the same thing on every forum as you claim, could it be because the pro-banners are repeating the same lies over and over and over hoping that they will eventually become truth? Wake up and smell the second hand smoke, it won't hurt you!

And here comes virgilk, another cabal member, with his tobacco-funded study and his thrown-out judgement. Oh, brother. They have their own sites where they spout this swill, where whoever wants to can come & gorge themselves. But this little cabal's not happy with that, no, the whole internet has to get slimed. Can't wait for the Birthers to copy their technique.