On a practical level, there is simply no reason for the ban on American smokers. The "Public Health" argument, deployed by the EPA, is unconscionably flawed4 and distressingly familiar. Public Health as a rationale for legislation and segregation has a long and dishonorable record. Till the end of the 1950's, the identical kinds of arguments--the "menace to public health"--supported racial discrimination. It was widely accepted and officially tossed around that if a black person and a white person drank for the same fountain, rested in the same rest room, or ate from the same plate--even though the plate had been washed in between--poor whitey would catch his death. In the course of our history, the banner of Public Health--"statistically proven" and trumpeted by the press--has been used to discriminate--also to legislate--against the Chinese, the Italians, the Irish and the Jews...who've been fingered as the "causes" of polio, cholera, TB and bubonic plague.5 This is simply an old hus