Steven Milloy at Fox News is taking anti-smokers to task for the dangers of their rhetoric. He says that their my way or the highway attitude, where they claim that the only way to keep from dying of lung cancer is to quit smoking altogether, is reckless and malicious toward the health of some smokers. Last week a "study" was released that made the claim that smokers are no better off for cutting their smoking habit rather than quitting altogether. The "researchers" claimed that cutting back smoking (known as harm reduction) won't due, and that quitting smoking completely is the only answer.

The University of Minnesota study was accompanied by a Journal of the National Cancer Institute editorial hailing its results and concluding that there are "certainly insufficient data to support the practice of encouraging smokers to pursue reduced smoking as a harm reduction strategy."

That statement is demonstrably false.

Milloy notes that it has long been shown that smoking dangers increase as smoking increases, and it stands to reason that smoking less would lessen the dangers. Since some smokers are unable to quit completely, telling them that cutting their intake is not good enough is not just a lie, it's a deadly lie; something that anti-smokers have for years been accusing tobacco companies of telling.

The anti-smokers are pushing their temperance agenda so hard, that they don't care what the affects are. Milloy notes, "It's a disturbing attitude that seems to be driven more by a blind hatred of the tobacco industry than concern for the health of smokers."