Bullshit!

Penn & Teller for the most part are fantastic but the second hand smoke thing being bullshit I find extremely interesting and very hard to believe (Season 1 Ep 5). Need to read more on this and report back!

My first problem with the episode is the evidence they present that they claim the government uses to justify banning smoking in public areas in the US. They present some EPA document and a WHO report I think. Both were reports probably written by a group of people who surveyed the literature. They may have missed things, not presented conclusions clearly enough or simply had so much conflicting information that it was difficult to know what was true.

But beyond all of this does it not make sense that if you accept that primary smoke causes lung cancer and heart disease that second hand smoke would provide a fraction of that damage? Makes sense I think, so reducing the risk has got to be a good thing.

Furthermore, reducing the areas that smokers can smoke is doing the smokers a favour by encouraging them to quit. Obviously not everyone would see it that way but for the most part I believe the majority of smokers would rather quit if not for the addiction.

Anyway that is all until I bother reading some literature.