Of all the deadly clouds of Americans began to fear – as a metaphor in the “clouds of war” and the real meaning, as in the sense of the mushroom – none of them has killed more people and continue to threaten us as much as a cloud of tobacco smoke.

Although we live in an era when the dangers of smoking is well known and accepted as a scientific fact that most Americans, more and more people prefer to avoid tobacco, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. It causes about 467,000 deaths each year, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

It’s more American tobacco-related deaths per year than the U.S. military deaths in all four years of World War II. We expect and demand that the government protects us from threats, much less threatening, so we should call the San Jose City Council pass a resolution outdoor smoking when it comes to a vote on Tuesday.

Resolution of the San – Jose would fill one of the last, but the most serious gaps in the protection of the public from tobacco smoke: a cloud that threatens the lives and health of people who choose not to smoke, but still can not avoid its harmful effects. This is especially true for people living below the poverty line, for men of African-American workers, builders, workers and service workers who are exposed to secondhand smoke at higher rates than Americans as a whole, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 100 cities in California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and New Jersey have extended protection from tobacco smoke in indoor places in the open air dining areas, the total area of apartments, condominiums and mobile home parks, and off-line, in which people wait for services, such as at an ATM or light-rail station.

While the business opposition to passive smoke had disappeared decisions – because they were afraid of churn from the bars and restaurants, and do not materialize – the libertarian argument of the government surge in private behavior is preserved in places such as San Jose, where bans on smoking in open air was offered. But this argument misses the point that evens the most ardent libertarians support in our society: the freedom of one person ends where my nose begins.

The purpose of Resolution San Jose is not for people who want to puff on it. This is to prevent people from causing danger to their behavior in all of us.

While the rest of us can choose – and many of us – to avoid indoor places that we know will be obscured in smokers, it is impossible for us to avoid smoke in places where people gather outdoors.

Secondhand smoke is deadly, whether we find it indoors and outdoors. Unlike some other well-known effects of hazardous chemicals, there is no known safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke, which contains over 7,000 chemical compounds.

About 46,000 of us die each year from heart disease only a trace of passive smoking – half way between the death of U.S. taxes in Korea and Vietnam to continue the war comparison. In addition, there are more deaths from other causes, including seven types of cancer.

Passive smoking is a factor that threatens the safety of people is greater than the crime. Infectious disease epidemics are the only natural phenomena regularly kill more Americans. But secondhand smoke can be prevented. The City Council should consider it as such.

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