The latest "study" speculating that children under 12 living in homes with second-hand smoke are more likely to have behavioral problems is absurd!

Anyone who lived in the 50s, 60s, 70s, & 80s can tell you that a huge percentage of homes had second-hand smoke during that time along with restaurants, bowling alleys, etc. So, if there were even a grain of truth in the statement that second-hand smoke causes behavior problems in children, the majority of children in this country raised during those years would have had behavioral problems!!!!

The reports on this study remind me of the old joke about research and results. A researcher cuts off the legs of a frog and then yells at the frog "jump, frog, jump"; and, when nothing happens, the researcher records: "When you cut off a frog's legs, the frog becomes DEAF"!!!!!!

Only 6% of kids live with a smoker? Great news! That means 94% of kids aren't in a bad environment.

I don't think it's the smoke so much as it is the smokers. It's the cultural norm that the smoker is a rebel like Joe Camel or The Marlboro Man, and what kind of role models are those guys really? Would you want Joe Camel raising a kid? Would the Marlboro Man be a great father figure? Of course not, so of course smokers are going to be worse parental units than non-smokers.

The upbringing is going to be total crap, because if the parents weren't raised better than to be non-smokers then they weren't raised right at all so they'll never raise their own kids right either.

I remember back in 2003 when Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Phoenix, AZ) banned smoking in jail there was a huge uproar because almost all inmates are smokers. Hardly any non-smokers get arrested, much less incarcerated! The prisoners would have burned down the jail, but because of the ban on smoking and smoking materials, nobody had a light.

It's both telling and true that cigarettes are prison money. Prisoners use cigarettes like cash in the stir, because pretty much all prisoners are smokers. While the smoking population of the general public is about 20%, that number leaps to an astonishing 90% of prison inmates, more than quadruple the smokers found on the street.

It's not the smoke so much as the culture. Smokers are the bad hombres, they go for the bad boy (or girl) image of tobacco use and the reason they do so is that they want to be bad people. In most cases, that's a mission accomplished.