THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
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Fag-end of the debate

Fag-end of the debate

Re: "Data on risk of second-hand smoke is 'circus of opinions'," Letters, October 25.

If you can tolerate one more letter on second-hand smoke, I’d like to relate an experience I had several years ago. I was at a party and a young woman who had asthma became very ill because people around her were smoking. Without needing to look at a single study, we non-smokers know from first-hand experience that being around smokers can cause immediate discomfort and even sickness.
John Arnone argues that people have other unhealthy habits, but society doesn’t intervene to curb them. Well, that’s because their habits don’t directly affect the health of others around them.
In the past I recall reading letters by Arnone in which he supported a crackdown on drug abuse, so it’s not as though he’s a great libertarian who has sympathy for those with addictions other than tobacco. All he cares about is his own convenience, and he doesn’t care how it affects his family, his friends or the community around him.
Eric Bahrt
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