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It is highly unlikely that "The most important risk factor that leads to emphysema is cigarette smoking." This applies to all breathing-related disease. Under 20% of US adults smoke, and a fraction of these will develop a breathing-related disease. Restrictions are so stringent that few of us have any exposure to tobacco smoke whatsoever. Yet rates of breathing-related diseases (and cancers) continue to rise. The most carcinogenic (cancer-causing) type is smoke is the kind that contains oil particles -- from traffic fumes, not tobacco smoke. One car produces as much smoke (of a more dangerous type)than a crowd of cigarette smokers. Traffic smoke is everywhere, permeating buildings.

Logic demands that we recognize that our excessive use of private motor vehicles is the cause of these diseases, not tobacco smoke. However, tax policy requires that we put the blame on tobacco. If all tobacco disappeared, it would have virtually no impact on rates of disease, much less on general air quality. It's important to recognize that oil is critical to our economy, and especially to campaign funding. US "Big Tobacco," by contrast, would be marginally impacted by banning tobacco. This is because Big Tobacco relies on exports, and more importantly, on the very broad range of non-tobacco consumer products that they sell.

The danger of the "tobacco crusade" is that it has been so very successful at distracting us from the far greater health risks caused by excessive traffic pollution. Take a look at any city from a distance; see the yellow-grey dome of haze covering the city? That's not caused by tobacco. That murky mess of sooty, oily air is what millions of Americans are breathing every day. That, folks, is "the most important factor" in all breathing-related disease.

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