A letter to the New York Times touts the health benefits of walking in the city, but argues that those positive effects are easily offset by "inescapable clouds of second-hand smoke." We've been down that road before. Anti-smoking advocates rail against second-hand smoke outdoors, while conveniently forgetting to mention that your average car produces a hundreds times the toxic exhaust in a few minutes that your average smoker does in an entire day. Smokers, reviled as they've become, are an easy target; meanwhile, drivers, for all the harm they do to our respiratory health, are beyond reproach, because they are virtually all of us.
(By the way, try this: Look at a picture of the smog-covered hills and valleys of the Los Angeles area on a hot day, and estimate how much of that smog is caused by smokers.)
The above is nothing new. What is new is the other accusation the letter to the Times levels at smokers: that they cause "hip-level cigarette burns." I guess the scenario is that inattentive smokers with lit cigarettes nonchalantly bump into passers-by, scalding them.
With that, the arguments against tobacco have now officially moved from the overblown to the freakin' ridiculous.
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