Scre 'em - anything to stop smoking is good. It's suicide, and while 2nd hand numbers *may be* off, the aesthetic and health efffects aren't benign. Meanwhule, from the CDC:

Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year.1,6 Cigarette smoking is estimated to cause the following:1

• More than 480,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
• 278,544 deaths annually among men (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
• 201,773 deaths annually among women (including deaths from secondhand smoke)

 

Cigarette smoking causes premature death:

• Life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers.1,2
• Quitting smoking before the age of 40 reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related disease by about 90%.2

I always take my medical information from freelance writers who were former bartenders like the author of the article. I'll wait for future studies from scientific sources. I do note that the increased incidence of lung cancer and asthma associated with secondhand smoke is not addressed. Again I'll wait for controlled scientific studies. The benefit of science is that it is always looking at data and taking the time required to assess if there are risk factors that are better markers for disease. Freelance writers make rapid conclusions not based on systemic reviews of the literature. A scientific analysis looks at statistically valid studies that come to different conclusions and come to a preliminary analysis of what the trends tend to be, a meta-analysis. The article presents only one side of the data. Medical science is hard. This type of freelance writing is not as rigorous from a medical standpoint. We need better scientific education in classrooms so that citizens have means to analyze articles like this one.