We all know smoking is an unhealthy habit, as well as one that is widely regarded as distasteful and reflective of a certain lack of self-regard. In the space of hardly more than 20 years, it has passed from an activity widely pursued at work, at restaurants, in airports, and aboard public transit into one that is widely banned from public or semi-public places, with its remaining aficionados confined to office-building loading docks or weird side-exits and alleys.That said, the force of moral conviction that has come to surround anti-smoking laws might be a little disturbing to anyone old enough to remember the after-effects of Prohibition -- or well-traveled enough to have spent some time in, say, Saudi Arabia. Press coverage of a new medical study on the dangers of "third-hand smoke" -- the residue from tobacco smoke that clings to clothing and fabric -- is full of panicky language, with mothers fretting that their children will never be "completely protected," and editorial side-notes wondering if parents of young children should even associate with smokers and their potentially dangerous sweaters and scarves.
With even the authors of the original study -- published in January’s issue of Pediatrics -- wondering if the results would lead to calls for a ban on smoking in one’s own house, we have to wonder whether this hasn’t gone too far. After all, though Wall Street Journal blogger Rachel Emma Silverman should be free to ostentatiously turn away when smokers at her "favorite outdoor cafe" turn in the direction of her son, others should also remain free, if not to smoke there, then to at least point out that the air above a downtown sidewalk might be home to even greater dangers than a bit of cigar smoke trapped in the fibers of someone's shirt.
