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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoking#Economic 2nd paragraph. Actually says that Philip Morris preformed a study that showed that it is actually cheaper to let people die young. Of course this was an older study before so many wonderful and expensive (But life saving just ask my mother, who had and is now lung cancer free. She stopped smoking about fifteen years before getting the cancer.) Drugs and therapies. So I don't think it is any longer more economically viable since curing the cancer wasn't cheap but on the other hand my mom's retirement won't be cheap for your company or social society.(Not saying she doesn't deserve it.)

Hmm, is this the same Philip Morris that hid the dangers of smoking for decades and covered up the additional fire risk of a new 'safer' cigarette. Forgive me if I take it with a pinch of salt.

A federal court has held that an employee whose health is adversely affected by tobacco smoke residue has a cause of action under the Americans With Disabilities Act [ADA] against an employer who refused to reduce his exposure in his workplace, and a complaint by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) recently forced a university to protect a woman and her unborn child whose health was threatened by tobacco smoke residue on the clothing of an officemate who smoked outdoors.

In the latter situation one doctor stated that "her sensitivity is also to the tobacco smoke residue on the person or clothing of a smoker, not just the smoke in the air. Therefore, to protect her health, especially during her pregnancy, she should not be assigned to an office with someone who smokes during the work day.'

Another doctor said that "smoking and second hand smoke has known effects on the placenta that carries nourishment to the baby. Therefore, to protect her health and the health of her baby, she should not be assigned to an office with someone who smokes during the workday, even if that person doesn't smoke in that room.'

In addition to these two situations in which a nonsmoking man and woman (and her unborn child) were expressly protected from third hand smoke, several courts have recognized at least by implication the right of children to be protected from third hand smoke.

Apple can't sack employees for whinging so the only thing left to do to avoid the risk is to void the warranties. For all we know employees have complained and it's not just a case of Apple being super Nazis.

There's also a solid statistical correlation between smoking and heart disease. One source for such data is the multi-generation Framingham Study. For example, see this from 2006 or this from 2005. You don't like the Framingham Study? Try ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities). See this and then read abstracts from some of the many articles that cite it. Here's a nice one from 2006.

Now, it's also clear that using nicotine replacement therapy as a way to quit smoking is good for your life expectancy. what's not so well studied is what happens to people who've never smoked and who start to use nicotine. In other words, in the published literature, the dangers of nicotine may be masked by the benefits of smoking cessation. This remains to be seen.

The evidence against nicotine is that it causes arterial damage. The statistical correlations from Framingham & ARIC are between smoking and coronary heart disease (not to mention cancer,but I'm focusing on CHD). The guy I worked for was all about studying arterial damage to predict odds of heart attack and stroke. You see, the damaged artery tends to become sclerotic and develop plaques. Vulnerable plaques can break off, enter the blood stream, and then get stuck in a small blood vessel, blocking it and starving some region of tissue for blood. If that tissue is in the heart, you have a miocardial infarction. If it's in the brain, you have one form of stroke. Nicotine also raises blood pressure, increasing the risk of the other form of stroke (the two kinds of stroke are blockage and bleed).

In other words, there is good reason to believe that nicotine has some harmful effects. The real question is in which cases its benefits outweigh its harm.

See the thing is, in just about every city where smoking is banned from bars, lots of bars close down.

I've seen reports that say there is no significant impact; please cite your source for this claim. Thanks. (Hate secondhand smoke; love bar. Usually try to sit by the door of my favorite tavern when fresh air dillutes the cigarette fumes.)

Instead of banning smoking entirely, the correct way to handle it would have been to simply enforce a minimum standard of air quality in the "workplace" where people are serving smokers

Sounds good in theory, though I'm not sure if that can be enforced in practice.

It would also be helpful to get the radioactive polonium and lead out of cigarette smoke with appropriate agricultural regulation.

The tobacco companies know this. In one case, Phillip Morris told the Czech government about these "benefits" so that they would keep the tax on cigarettes down.

Since when do cigarettes give off radiation?

Tobacco contains large amounts of polonium-210 which is radioactive.

A smoker who smokes 1 pack a day gets the equivalent of something like 200-500 chest x-rays in a year.

Some links:

http://www.no-smoking.org/may00/05-19-00-1.html

http://www.ringnebula.com/peds_paper.htm

http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/Drugs/THC/Health/canc er.rad.html

If you're interested in estimating your yearly radiation dose, check out:

http://newnet.lanl.gov/main.htm

Compare the dose from a plutonium powered pacemaker with that from smoking one pack of cigarettes a day -- cigarettes give you about 10 times as much radiation as the pacemaker.

This post was obvious sarcasm. It's mocking the tendency of detestable companies (tobacco companies, et. al) to wrap themselves in some public relations charade of helping kids or senior citezens to make it less palatable to punish those companies. Oh, don't sue the RJ Reynolds out of existence! I depend on them for my warm dinner at the old-folks home!

I'd have figured they'd have all been Bought Now pretty quickly.

Nah. The supply ran dry briefly when Enron bought them all up, but then they dumped them back onto E-Bay just in time for the Arthur Andersen buy-up, who then dumped them back on E-Bay just in time for the California government Oracle debacle...

At which point they the E-Bay supply did briefly dry up because California did an internal transfer of the machines to their INS Center.

But they dumped them back on the market in plenty of time for Global Crossing Inc. to buy them up and subsequently dump them back on the market for ICANN to buy them up.

The tobacco companies however, do not participate in E-Bay auctions. They have standing policies on shredding documents. They keep "document shredders located 'throughout the building', as well as of a 'disintegrator' in the basement". Apparently they have to shred so many documents that they still have to "contract with security firm Group 4 to shred those less sensitive papers".

And, and an added bonus, here's a link to THE ART OF RECONSTRUCTING SHREDDED DOCUMENTS.

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Smoking prevents carpal tunnel syndrome.

There have been studies to attempt to show a lesser incidents of carpal tunnel syndrome in smokers for the frequent breaks, etc. However, there have also been some studies which claim that smoking actually aggravates repetative stress injuries(check here and here for some findings).

If you want the best of both worlds (i.e., lots of breaks without depriving your nerves of oxygen), I'd suggest getting a large water bottle and sipping from it all day long. Fill it up every time it gets empty (that's one break per). If you do it right (depending on the size of the bottle), you should go through it two or three times per day. The real payoff is that it forces you to get up and go to the bathroom about as often (if not more so) as your smokin' coworkers. If you don't forget to wash your hands, it probably keeps your desk cleaner too.