"You still may not agree with the law... But you certainly can’t argue with the facts."

This advertisement by the California Department of Health Services has been blaring over the radio for months, part of a massive state campaign so omnipresent that the average radio-listener might well wonder if the state has devoted its entire budget to preventing second-hand smoking. The ad proclaims that second-hand smoke kills, advising the public that though they may disagree with the loss of personal liberty resulting from a California law banning smoking in public places, they must obey the law because of "the facts." The facts apparently are that second-hand or passive smoke kills, though these facts are never made explicit. But in reality, the state government is ignoring the facts.

On July 17, 1998, U.S. District Court Judge William Osteen ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made both procedural and scientific mistakes in a 1993 report concluding that passive smoke caused as many as 3,000 cancer deaths per year among non-smokers. That EPA report helped launch a wave of laws restricting smoking in public places, of which California’s is but one example. Judge Osteen’s ruling makes it clear that the EPA overstepped its bounds in declaring second-hand smoke a Class A carcinogen. The judge sharply criticized the EPA, stating that: "Gathering all relevant information, researching, and disseminating findings were subordinate to EPA’s demonstrating ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] a Group A carcinogen." In other words, their conclusion came before their research.

The judge further noted that the EPA would not have demonstrated a statistically significant association between passive smoking and lung cancer if they had used its standard scientific methodology but that the agency had purposefully changed its methodology in order to find an association. Unfortunately, this type of misrepresentation is not unprecedented.

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) was criticized for selectively suppressing results from its recent study on the effects of second-hand smoke, the second-largest such study ever conducted. The press reported that the WHO buried "undesirable" findings that there were no significant risks associated with second-hand smoke in a large, internal document unavailable to the public. The WHO continues to mislead by claiming that its study showed some increased risk of contracting lung cancer in those exposed to passive smoke, despite the lack of statistically significant results supporting this assertion.

Government agencies are selectively promoting scientific evidence, playing fast and loose with accepted scientific methodology, and utilizing disingenuous advertising techniques to boost public opposition to passive smoke. Their motives may be well-intentioned — stopping people from an unhealthy habit. However, an outright ban on smoking is politically infeasible, given concerns for civil liberties.

Two strategies attempt to bypass these concerns: Demonstrate that tobacco is so addictive that smokers are powerless to quit, despite the hundreds of thousands who have managed to accomplish this breathtaking feat; or promote the idea that cigarette smoking is nearly a form of murder to innocent bystanders, justifying a ban on smoking even in private establishments such as bars and restaurants. On the other hand, these are dangerous strategies.

Smoking is certainly a health risk, not to mention a dirty, smelly, and expensive habit. Whether or not smokers accept this opinion, one would certainly be hard-pressed to find a smoker who doesn’t know and accept the health risks of smoking. Our society is based on the concept that smokers are free and responsible adults, allowed to make their own decisions about pleasure versus risk. They may make what somebody else considers the wrong decision, but freedom is ultimately the right to make the wrong decision.

Similarly, our freedom and prosperity are inextricably based on our right of private property, which is not something that should be diminished on the basis of dubious scientific evidence. Bar owners who risk their money, energy, and future on their private business have a right to run that business as they see fit. Nobody forces customers into a smoky bar. If customers avoid smoky bars voluntarily, however, that is the most certain way to assure the presence of smoke-free bars.

Here, then, are the facts not mentioned in government ads on the effects of second-hand smoke:

1. no demonstrated link to cancer;
2. personal liberty trampled;
3. private property rights destroyed;
4. the elite deciding how everyone should live.

To paraphrase the California Department of Health Services, you may not agree with first- or second-hand smoking, but you certainly can’t deny the facts. Government is being less than honest in its crusade against smoking. Ultimately, this is a great deal more dangerous than the putative risks of second-hand smoke.

* Mark Schiller, MD, is a senior fellow in medical studies at the Pacific Research Institute and an assistant clinical professor at the University of California at San Francisco