Yeah, well, as far as the loved one things goes, the whole argument started on the basis of "walking past me smoking is nothing to freak out about" and "sitting next to me while I'm smoking is nothing to freak out about", whereupon Valg went into how incredibly carcinogenic cigarette smoke is.

For all that incredible carcinogenic goodness, assuming when they say "less than 1%" means "near 1%" as opposed to something far lower, its still only an increased likelihood, if you really spent your entire life surrounded by second hand smoke, of 0.19%.

That, to me, is negligable. I'm not saying I go around blowing smoke in babie's faces, but honestly the people who make the most 'clang' about this topic :

1) Don't work in bars.
2) Aren't consistantly surrounded by smoke.

They're people like Valg who may encounter it "out in the wild", at the occassional bar, or in some other, relatively rare setting.

Those people have a statistically insignificant increase in chance of getting lung cancer. So to make a huge post about how incredibly carcinogenic second-hand smoke is, is misleading and as I initially said, ignorant.

The whole anti-smoke community states all their statistics in relatives (ie, 2x more likely, 10x more likely, etc) because the hard, cold stats don't raise any alarms. If they came out and said, "Hey...listen...you're increasing your chance of getting lung cancer by 0.000238% every time you go to a bar" people would laugh at them.

I'm all for calling a spade a spade. I don't disillusion myself into thinking smoking isn't bad for me. But, at the same time, I'm not going to listen to the "spin" game. You want to argue its bad for you, state what you're arguing, that you're afraid of a minute fraction of a % increase. These people make it out to be a huge threat to your life when in reality its statistically insignificant.