The Coalition for a Smoke-Free City funded a full-page ad in the New York Times promoting a 100 percent smoke-free city by appealing to the City Council to ban smoking in all restaurants, restaurant bars, nightclubs and bars and right off the bat the heading of the article is a lie.

     It reads:  "The #1 Killer in the American Workplace is... Secondhand Smoke."

     They claim secondhand smoke causes 3,000 deaths from lung cancer, of otherwise healthy nonsmokers; 62,000 deaths from heart disease, 26,000 new asthma cases, up to one million cases of aggravated asthma and up to 300,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in toddlers.

     These figures that have been reported to afflict the entire nation (although many groups inflate these numbers at will).

     How many of these numbers are actually work-related?  Spread them out across the nation and if you come up with two service oriented employees what do you have?  Causation or coincidence?  I drew this number out of a hat but you get the idea.

     You should also be wary of qualifying words such as "up to."  When someone says something is anywhere "up to" (fill in the blank) you should demand to know what is it, really.

     It also begs to be questioned what "otherwise healthy nonsmokers" means.  It couldn't possibly mean that had these 3000 people not been subjected to smoke they would have never gotten sick.

     Yet that is exactly what they mean, logic be damned, and forget about the fact that nonsmokers who are not exposed to tobacco smoke also get lung cancer.

     They want to ban smoking in bars and nightclubs to protect the workers now but to back up their agenda had to resort to statistics that have practically nothing to do with these establishments.

     They stated their intended purpose in large print and then inserted some fancy footwork into the body to have you believe the figures are somehow connected to their aim.

     They mixed the pot to dupe the reader and unless you're familiar with their tactics you won't ever realize they're doing it.

     According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the No. 1 killer in the American workplace is transportation accidents.

     Many of the Environmental Tobacco Smoke studies have been discredited by respected members and organizations of the scientific field.  Anti-smokers continue to stand behind an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study that was struck down as junk science by a Federal Court judge.  The study classified SHS as a Group A carcinogen but the judge, and later, the Congressional Research Service, found that its classification was arrived at unscientifically.  Of course the EPA reaffirms their conclusions.

     With that in mind, it needs to be noted that 20 years ago, the Centers for Disease Control added saccharin to the official list of carcinogens, only to remove it from the list this year.

     It seems they were mistaken (oops).  Government agencies are not infallible.

     The biggest single problem is that few people understand how health risk studies actually operate and the anti-smoking community uses that fact to their advantage.

     We mistake correlation for causation and coincidence for conviction.  The Statistical Assessment Service (STATS)  is a group that keeps the record straight against what the media and the fanatics toss at the public.

     They give a wide berth to epidemiological studies, which is the technique used in studying SHS, and warn us that we are continually fooled into thinking we know something due to the results of these studies when in fact we really don't.

     STATS has said that the statistical evidence being thrown around about SHS has "more holes than a wiffle ball."

     The Coalition for a Smoke-Free City claim they are not prohibitionists.  They are worse.  They are coercionists.

     That is a much sneakier threat, nullifying individual will.  Their goal is for a smoke-free society.

     Banning smoking in bars is merely a rest stop on the road they are on.  Smokers and all those that believe in accommodation for everyone cannot afford them any more traveling privileges.  It's time to siphon their gas.

     Remain alert and stand guard because if you don't, Step #3 isn't far behind - banning smoking in your own homes.

Audrey Silk is the president of NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment