The passive smoking myth
Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at 13:05 
The March/April issue of Tobacco Asia includes a three-page, 2000-word Q&A feature with me about secondhand smoke.
It’s rare to be given an opportunity to address this issue at length so thanks to both the magazine and interviewer Thomas Schmid.
Headlined ‘The Passive Smoking Myth’ it’s currently available only in print (or to subscribers online) but if that changes I'll post a link.
In the meantime here’s my response to a question about the ‘endgame’. It will be familiar to readers of this blog:
The endgame is clear: governments and anti-smoking campaigners want to create a smoke-free world in which the use of combustible tobacco is confined to a tiny ‘pariah’ rump of the population. This will be followed by a world in which all forms of recreational nicotine are prohibited to ‘save’ us from possible addiction, regardless of whether we want to be saved or not.
To achieve that goal an environment of fear has been created in which the argument that adults have a right to smoke as long as they don’t harm anyone else is outweighed by the claim that there is no safe level of ETS [environmental tobacco smoke]. The suggestion that smokers are harming non-smokers is a carefully orchestrated means to an end, designed to turn even the more tolerant non-smokers against those who smoke.
To this I added:
The threat to vaping and reduced-risk products is equally clear. According to Jacob Grier, whose articles have appeared in Reason, Daily Beast, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and numerous other publications, the anti-smoking movement has a long history of exploiting dubious science for political gain. Today's moral panic about vaping, especially in the United States, has its roots in the decades-long campaign to delegitimize the use of nicotine in pursuit of a complete ban on smoking in public.
Grier rightly focuses on the arguments surrounding passive smoking. However, what he and others overlook is that many of today’s most prominent pro-vaping advocates are also the very same people who sold us the myth that thousands of non-smokers die each year from second-hand smoke. The irony of that deception is that the relentless scaremongering about second-hand smoke will almost certainly lead to vaping bans in public places too because as far as the public and many politicians are concerned there is little difference between tobacco smoke and e-cigarette vapor.
Oh what a tangled web we weave.
Reader Comments (4)
Passive smoking scam. It was invented to create fear and loathing of people who smoke to force them to quit and incite public hatred against them in the ideological quest for a world without smoking.
If it was so dangerous they would not have made up the concept before then seeking, and failing, to find the evidence to "prove" it.
Despite it being used against us, apart from vested interests cherry picked studies it is still not proven.
Anecdotal evidence of 54 years smoking has proved to me that I have never harmed anyone else in my life nor have I ever been harmed by it.
"Passive smoking" is a literal smoke screen to hide all other factors that can harm behind it including traffic fumes, and it is pushed by powerful and extremely well funded vested interests whose wealth depends on others believing it but the type that do not want to give up those other harmful things they enjoy or depend on like their car.
One of the many overlooked studies showing the second hand smoke scam: Judy Peres, No Clear Link Between Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer, JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 105, Issue 24, 18 December 2013, Pages 1844–1846, https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djt365
Pat
"Passive smoking scam. It was invented to create fear and loathing of people who smoke to force them to quit and incite public hatred against them in the ideological quest for a world without smoking."
How right you are.
US ruling turns smokers into junkies
12 August 1994
"Nicotine is addictive, a panel of experts on drug abuse decided last week. The decision leaves the door open for the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco as it does other addictive substances.
Over the past few months, the FDA’s commissioner, David Kessler, has been campaigning for tobacco to be regulated in the same way as many other drugs. To do so legally, he must demonstrate that nicotine is a powerful drug, and that the tobacco companies depend on nicotine’s addic-iveness to keep smokers smoking."
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14319381-300-us-ruling-turns-smokers-into-junkies/
2 years later
For Immediate Release: April 1996
Contact: CDC Media Relations (404) 639-3286
Exposure to Second-Hand Smoke Widespread
"Nearly 9 out of 10 non-smoking Americans are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS, or second-hand smoke), as measured by the levels of cotinine in their blood, according to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The data, reported by the CDC in this week's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows measurable levels of cotinine in the blood of 88 percent of all non-tobacco users. The presence of cotinine, a chemical the body metabolizes from nicotine, is documentation that a person has been exposed to tobacco smoke. Serum cotinine levels can be used to estimate nicotine exposure over the last 2 to 3 days.
"This study documents for the first time the widespread exposure of people in the U.S. to environmental tobacco smoke. This new information will be critical in estimating the extent of related disease and developing effective public health strategies," said David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., director, CDC."
https://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/second1.htm
A tragic fate for an ancient herbal medicine.
A very valuable crop for Big Health industries as well as Big Tobacco.