Defenders of smokers' rights have often tried to dismiss the health threat of secondhand smoke as exaggerated. But the latest research indicates that, if anything, the dangers actually have been underrated. The involuntary inhaling of secondhand smoke puts non-smokers at greater risk than previously believed.

This week the American Heart Association, backed by the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, reported evidence is now "overwhelming" in linking so-called passive smoking with tens of thousands of heart-disease deaths each year. This makes passive smoking the third leading cause of avoidable fatal disease. Only smoking itself and alcohol use rate higher.This should not be a surprise. Two years ago, the staff of the Environmental Protection Agency recommended that secondhand tobacco smoke should be designated as a Class A carcinogen, putting it in the same class as asbestos, benzene and deliberately inhaled tobacco smoke.

The trio of health organizations are pushing to get smoking banned in all public places, saying that merely segregating people into smoking and non-smoking sections in the same airspace - while diminishing the problem - does not solve it. The Heart Association wants tobacco smoke to be treated as an "environmental toxin" and the public protected from its hazards.

Unfortunately, the 1992 Utah Legislature rejected a proposal for a ban on smoking in restaurants, with restaurant owners among the opponents. Yet the California Restaurant Association has supported a ban on smoking in restaurants in that state.

With facts on the seriousness of the smoking threat piling up, the arguments in favor of allowing smoking in public places grows weaker. As the Los Angeles Times pointed out this week, "The evidence that a public health problem exists is compelling. No room for equivocation remains."

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That puts a significant moral burden on smokers for the problem they pose to the health of non-smokers around them.

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