Legal paternalists want to charge parents who expose their children to tobacco smoke with child abuse. I can just hear Dad now. Yes, he lit up occasionally in my presence when I was a kid. But it was usually after doing something truly abusive - like cutting off my phone line or clamping down on curfew. We've all heard the arguments used to justify the regulatory jihad against tobacco.
Secondhand smoke kills tens of thousands of people each year.
Smokers impose costs on society in the form of higher health-care costs. People who smoke don't know that smoking is bad for them. The proportion of teens who smoke has increased slightly since cigar-chomping President Clinton took office, but is still much lower than it was 20 years ago. Casual exposure to secondhand smoke has little or no impact on life expectancy. Smokers tend to die before they are old enough to collect Social Security and Medicare, so they don't impose a cost on anyone except themselves.