Why the tobacco industry fears the passive smoking issue

Abstract

The tobacco industry has identified the passive smoking issue as the single most important problem confronting its economic future. During the 1980s, the industry has been engaged in an elaborate and expensive international campaign seeking to refute the evidence against passive smoking's effects on health and to position the issue as one essentially concerned with civil liberties and smokers' ''right.'' There are three main reasons for the industry's concern: first, the passive smoking issue allows a widening of the definition of smoking beyond its discussion as a personal habit, legitimizing it as a social problem; second, successful cases of litigation against employers by workers with hi..