Free Republic

A Japanese company is granting non-smoking employees an extra six days of paid holidays a year after they complained that they were working more than staff who took time off for cigarette breaks. Tokyo-based marketing firm Piala Inc. only introduced the non-smokers' perk in September, but employees have been quick to take advantage. "One of our non-smoking staff put a message in the company suggestion box earlier in the year saying that smoking breaks were causing problems", said Hirotaka Matsushima, a spokesman for the company. "Our CEO saw the comment and agreed, so we are giving non-smokers some extra time...

President's Obama's call for a 94-cent-a-pack hike on federal cigarette taxes to fund early childhood education programs is controversial. Anti-smoking groups applaud the proposal, but some tax experts and tobacco companies are against it. The case for the tax. The tax is being presented as way to fund education and reduce smoking rates. It would raise roughly $78 billion over 10 years. "The proposed tobacco tax increase would have substantial public health benefits, particularly for young Americans," the president's budget read. "Researchers have found that raising taxes on cigarettes significantly reduces consumption, with especially large effects on youth smoking." After...

An unsettling fact about lung cancer is that not even clean living can guarantee a free pass. A significant proportion of cases — 10 to 15 percent — occur in people who never smoked, and just in the United States, 16,000 to 24,000 a year die. What causes the disease in nonsmokers is not known, though researchers suspect genetic susceptibility combined with exposure to cancer-causing substances like asbestos, radon, certain solvents and other people’s tobacco smoke. A huge new study conducted in Europe, North America and Asia, based on 2.4 million nonsmokers who had lung cancer, provides new information about...

...At 44 years young, [Lisa] Roffman is preparing to die. "There's a limited time period," she said. "... Two and a half years ago, Roffman, a non-smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer and given less than five years to live. "It was a complete and total shock," she said. "I certainly thought that it was going to be people who had smoked their whole lives. I always thought it was more men than women. I thought they were people who were 60 or older." As the number of men with lung cancer declines, the American Cancer Society estimates that 73,020...

I would like to focus on the moral issue between smokers and nonsmokers. Smokers argue that their personal freedoms are infringed upon by the imposition of any restriction on their habit. Nonsmokers respond that their right to breathe clean air is compromised by smokers' exhalations and burning tobacco. There is an obvious answer to satisfy both arguments. The law should recognize the right of any smoker to contaminate his private atmosphere in his home or in a smokers' club, so long as the pollutants are not allowed to escape into the public domain. A further concession to smokers could take...