Trying to turn the anti-smoking witch hunt into a liberal bashing is a bit of a stretch, of course, but the hysteria about second hand smoke morbity and mortality does seem to be a specious.
'specious' ed? Really??
Deadly Deception: The Tobacco Industry's Secondhand Smoke Cover Up
I got interested in this back when new reports on second-hand smoke were coming out NIGHTLY on the news. I remember the one that got me to the library to study it..
The screaming headline was "Smokers are killing their children".. I read the entire report TWICE. In order to make that claim --- the assumption was that a "child" would have to live in a 2 smoker household CONSTANTLY for 24 years to have a statistically important increase in fatal disease. I can believe that. Doesn't exactly warrant a legal stop for smoking in the presence of a child tho --- DOES IT? Not even close to infanticide either.
Second warning that made my bullshit detector go off were the times that judges threw out several meta-studies as being invalid. These meta-studies violated basic principles of experimental set-up and analysis.
Third warning was --- this is the ONLY TIME I've ever noticed the medical community NOT CONCERNED about dosage when measuring risk. Even mild exposure was just as dangerous as being a secondhand smoke lab rat.
This and the mantra that 2nd hand was MORE DANGEROUS to innocent victims than to the smoker themselves were MORE warnings to me that the 2nd Inquisition had started. And as a science type -- I better be more aware of the fraud and misrepresentation when politicians start making shit up to accomplish their goals.
Dammit! You answer was a lot quicker and shorter than mine, but still covered the main points!