Problem: smokers, having been banned from smoking in almost every place except perhaps the basements of their houses, still insist on smoking.

Solution: Move the goalposts. Again:

Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, [Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School] said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’”

I don't smoke, and find being in a smoke-filled room of any sort very unpleasant. That said, redefining the dangers of smoking to include the smell that comes off a smoker's clothes to me seems flat ridiculous. Second hand smoke is so dilute it took years to come up with convincing evidence of its dangers. This "third-hand" smoke would almost by definition be far more dilute, and correspondingly less dangerous.

But far be it from me to stop the nanny train from running over adults who both know the risks and take steps to prevent them from affecting their children. The anti-smoking lobby quite obviously knows better than anyone else what's good for all of us. That any of us try to hold them back just shows how irrational we all are.

More's the pity.