For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health

In this controversial book, Jacob Sullum demolishes the leading claims of the antismoking movement; their assertions have been advanced, he says, because the movement's principals would like the government to take control of the tobacco industry. Have you heard that secondhand smoke is bad for you? "There is no evidence that casual exposure to secondhand smoke has any impact on your life expectancy," writes Sullum, a drug policy expert and senior editor at Reason magazine. The debate over smoking is really more about the nature of liberty--how should a society restrict the choices of its members?--than it is about public health. Ex-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop is certain not to like For Your Own Good, but Sullum makes a powerful and provocative case against America's public health crusaders.