Free Republic

Mayor de Blasio is ramping up the city’s war against smoking — at home, The Post has learned. The administration is planning to select and pay four health-advocacy groups $9,000 apiece to pressure landlords and developers to prohibit smoking in their apartment complexes so neighboring tenants don’t inhale secondhand smoke. That means smokers would be barred from lighting up in one of their last sanctuaries: their own living quarters. Smoking is already banned in public places, including bars and restaurants, workplaces, sports venues and parks.

Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of secondhand smoking, both because they are small and still growing and because they're often a "captive audience" for tobacco smoke. Now, researchers identify another problem: a greater risk for respiratory complications during outpatient surgical procedures. Dwight Jones, MD, of Children's Hospital Boston and Neil Bhattacharyya, MD, from Brigham and Women's Hospital followed 405 children, 168 of whom came from households with smokers. The children were having day surgical procedures at Children's, ranging from drainage of middle-ear fluid to circumcision to hernia repair. All had general anesthesia and received oxygen through a face...