In the early 1970s radical Antismoking groups like ASH and GASP began increasing pressure on mainstream health groups like the American Lung and Heart Associations . Such groups had previously avoided efforts for widespread smoking bans as too authoritarian and lacking scientific basis. While smokers resisted pressure to quit for their own health, a campaign promoting peer and family pressures through fear of SHS might be more effective. The results of these studies are rarely statistically significant, and don't address casual exposures in public places. No effort is made to examine the effects of better ventilation in offices or restaurants in order to establish safe levels of SHS exposure.
Research is directed almost solely toward producing political pressure for total bans.
That finding was based on the results of 11 studies which had found almost no scientifically significant evidence to support such a conclusion. The EPA derived the conclusion only by changing their normal guidelines and standards. On the basis of this report, thousands of businesses and offices throughout the United States banned smoking in the 1990s . In 1998 the EPA report was finally declared invalid in a federal court and its conclusions were thrown out, though with much less publicity. EPA's conduct left substantial holes in the administrative record.