I wrote a kickass post about this last night, but it got eaten, so I will write something entirely different now.
It's 5 cigarettes on average. Not everyone is average and declaring it as if 5 cigarettes a year is either the maximum or exactly how much everyone gets is stupid, stupid, stupid. Stop bitching about how everyone here doesn't understand the way science works, you're misrepresenting figures.
You're ignoring the outliers. There is anecdotal evidence of people who have never smoked but worked in smoke-heavy environments such as bars before the smoking ban being asked by doctors how many cigarettes they smoke a day because their lungs are coated with tar. They are on the high end of the distribution with significant exposure. The evidence about them is anecdotal, but it is anecdotal precisely because outliers get pruned from studies for statistical convenience as they pull up the average. Even heavy smokers are affected severely by secondhand smoke in smoke-heavy environments.
Not every smoker dies from cancer or develops obvious health effects, but there are subtle, everyday effects of smoking. Those often cannot be measured in passive smokers. Also, there are once-off physical responses such as nausea, headaches and coughing which are very unpleasant. I don't have to do a scientific study to prove to you that I get a headache every time I'm exposed to secondhand smoke.
Quote:
Your example is not the same, nor would it even work in practice as saying you don't have the right to do want you want even if it is legal in your own home or business. More and more bars are opening up that are "private" to allow smoking in them when the extent of their privacy is that you will be allowed in with ID and then become a member of the private club. Open membership to a private club is the ultimate answer for us smokers. These places usually just a have a short list of rules at the door that you agree to if you enter.
A private smokers-only bar is fine. Poor bar staff at that place though, I hope they can make the free choice to wear a gas mask without getting fired on their ass. My problem is with mixed venues hosting bands. Thankfully after the smoking ban the inside is smoke -free, and the smokers can just pop outside for their hit. Before that severe asthmatics couldn't see bands at all.
Quote:
I think you are wrong on that one. Almost everyone in my family smokes and as such I think there is a precondition that mentally the brain doesn't work right if it expects you to be using a chemical based on hundreds of years of family history.
HAHHAHAH according to this my father and I should be savage alcoholics! Get your genetic determinism outta here

Where's ya science now? You "think"? Right. So only you're allowed to make fuzzy, unsourced statements. So people who've quit smoking no longer have properly working brains? OH LOL.
Quote:
The people should decide what is best for themselves not a centralized governing body.
I'd rather listen to expert opinion. The government are elected democratically and are professionals. I'm not going to listen to "the people". I hate "the people". They remind me of some sort of degenerate ape gone horribly wrong and then replicated over and over. If I could I would just give harmless, painless birth to telepathic, steel-plated, burrowing hoversharks with laser attachments and enslave the plebs.
P.S. The sharks are also Borg.