A reply to Kaplan and Parlow: Minority rights and public health are not mutually exclusive.

It is unfortunate that Kaplan and Parlow (1988) misinterpreted our plea for justice and compassion in balancing the rights of smokers and non-smokers (1987; see record 1989-01264-001) as a blanket endorsement of smokers' rights to expose abstainers to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). We absolutely do not advocate such a straw man; obviously, innocent third parties have the right to be protected. Kaplan and Parlow's assertion that our position is that "smoking is not a legitimate threat" is totally incorrect. In pointing to the controversy in the scientific literature about the degree of risk associated with ETS, we were not arguing that the risk is non-existent, nor that smokers are entitled to do as they please if others are adversely affected (or even if abstainers simply find ETS esthetically objectionable). Rather, we were emphasizing that the warlike rhetoric, emotionalism, and morally superior stance of the anti-smoking crusade can have a negative impact on the scientific objectivity that ought to guide social policy. The commendability of one's goals is not an excuse for ignoring contrary evidence or failing to examine the evidence for preferred hypotheses as critically as one would the support for unpopular causes. Our concern in our article, which Kaplan and Parlow failed to realize, was with how the rights of both smokers and non-smokers can best be achieved with a minimum of social and personal costs. The intent of our article was to remind readers that, in the past, emotionality and haste on the part of well-intentioned reformers have often been responsible for unnecessary social disruption and trammelling of individual rights--all while failing to achieve their noble goals. We agree with Kaplan and Parlow's position that individuals must be protected from exposure to unwanted ETS and that is the position we took in our article. This, however, can be done without creating greater social problems by trampling on the rights of smokers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)