In all cases, scientists point to man's relationship with fire as making a marked difference between humanness and being an animal. Fire means smoke, and for a million years mankind has slowly evolved from smoke-filled cave dwellings to huts and homes reeking of smoke. For a million years, and in all places, man has lived with and breathed second-hand smoke. Only in the past fifty years, in western industrialized societies, have electric ranges and modern heating removed the necessity of breathing smoke. A walk through any third world city or village will immediately provide a reminder of the environment mankind developed in and around during the past million years.
Smoke permeates the atmosphere.
Before 1940, even in the United States, the historical and normal symbiotic relationship between man and smoke existed. More frightening is that smoking has decreased steadily for over thirty years and the no-smoking campaigners have failed to realize cancer has not declined correspondingly. The fact is, cancer has increased exponentially and dramatically. The opposite of what non-smokers predicted. It is virtually impossible to locate a grandmother over sixty who has not remarked at the minor childhood respiratory infections their grandchildren suffer which they as children and their children never incurred.