e scientific and regulatory communities alike have repeatedly insisted that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a potential occupational carcinogen and that it is therefore necessary for both government and business organizations to take a proactive role in reducing exposure to ETS (Discomfort from environmental ..., 1992).
However, Tollison (1988) has pointed out that ETS raises many complex issues for debate and analysis. A short list of such issues includes: possible health effects of ETS on nonsmokers; the measurement of ETS and other substances in indoor environments; economic incentives and the appropriate public policy toward ETS; law and civil liberties; collective bargaining and corporate management; the behavior of interest groups and bureaucracies; and how smoking itself and ETS are meaningfully different from other behaviors that could be objectionable.
Tollison (1988), writing in the wake of government regulatory efforts to control ETS in the workplace, has noted that the complexity of these issues is seldom addressed in public discussions, largely because opponents of regulation and advocates of what could be called choice can be presumed to operate primarily in terms of vested interests. For smokers, the right to smoke in the workplace is often positioned as a civil rights issue or a personal health choice. Many smokers and nonsmokers as well question the reliability and validity of scientific studies used to bolster arguments for restricting smoking (Armentano, 1998).
At the same time, organizations such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are equally convinced that there are very real linkages between second-hand smoke and lung cancer as well as heart disease, nasal sinus cancer, sudden infant death syndrome, and many other damaging and even life-threatening diseases in adults and children (NCI report on, 2000).
From the perspect...