If going to a restaurant and spending an hour or so there, twice a week, is directly linked to the deaths of 60k people (or, as the Surgeon General's own report put it, 22,000-69,000) per year, how has the human race survived?

I'm reading a book about the founding of Australia right now, and I just don't get it.  I mean out of 800 or so convicts that were initially "transported beyond the seas", about 150 of them didn't make it.

6 months.  Locked in the hold of a boat. With rats. And no understanding of hygiene.  And little food.  And the food they did have was rotten.  And they didn't understand what caused scurvy.  And all kinds of other things...

And 60% of the population of the United States smoked until about two or three decades ago... so how do any of you visit your grandparents?

So the question is, how does me going to Applebee's once a week for a drink with friends, sitting next to the smoking section, with the fans and vents and so on-- to the point that the only smell of smoke is about as strong as the cologne on the guy trolling for chicks three tables over-- going to kill me?  Or anyone else?

The Dept. of Energy did a study back in the nineties, where they wired bartenders with devices that detected smoke, and found that they "smoked" the equivalent of 6 cigarettes A YEAR.

If you want to do something to save restaurant workers and bartenders, ban alcohol.  15 thousand people were killed in 2007 because of drunk drivers.  

That's direct causation... not, "nevermind the red meat three meals a day, eating too much fast food and drinking coffee, and family history, obviously the guy died of heart disease because he was in a room with people blowing smoke at him that they had already filtered through their lungs."

And the EPA's own report labeling 2nd hand smoke a carcinogen was thrown out of court by Federal Judge William Osteen, who said in his opinion:

The Agency disregarded information and made findings based on selective information... [The EPA] deviated from its risk assessment guidelines; failed to disclose important (opposing) findings and reasons; and left significant questions without answers... Gathering all relevant information, researching and disseminating findings, were subordinate to EPA's [goal of] demonstrating [that] ETS was a Group A carcinogen... In this case, the EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun; adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the Agency's public conclusion, and aggressively utilized the Act's authority to disseminate findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme...and to influence public opinion... While doing so, [the EPA] produced limited evidence, then claimed the weight of the Agency's researched evidence demonstrated ETS causes cancer. (Osteen, 1998)

(I'll update with links for that later... playing with the kids right now)

This is junk science wrapped into a moral crusade to ostracize a group of people to the point that they are driven out of existence.  Oh, and the fundraising's good too.

See, if you read the letters to the editor on this issue, you learn things like "smokers are mentally deranged," and people don't like them "spewing out their death on everyone."

Is smoking good for you? Am I denying the dangers?  Absolutely not.  See, I'm dealing with it in my family right now.  But I'm not going to get emotional and lash out against everyone else.

I've seen this before, on a much smaller scale.  See, we humans like to join things, and make decisions, that are based on: "I'm better than you."