I am not a smoker. I don't really know what conditions lead someone to pick up the habit, especially with anti-smoking campaigns proclaiming their message at every level of American society.

But you don't have to be a smoker to be troubled by the language of a study released last week by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention about the current state of second-hand smoke in our country. The study announced some seemingly optimistic statistics: The percentage of non-smokers with traces of second-hand smoke in their blood has fallen dramatically. Studies conducted in the late 80's and early 90's showed that 86 percent of non-smokers were inhaling second-hand smoke, whereas more recent studies from 1999 through 2004 revealed that that figure was then only 46 percent.

While these are positive results, the methods by which they were achieved are regrettable. The study says that the reason for the drop is the large number of restrictive laws that prohibit smoking in restaurants, bars and the workplace. It is this message calling for more and more burdensome restrictions that has made American society a hostile place for smokers. Our own state of Michigan has recently succumbed to this message by taking up legislation to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.

The American smoker is regarded as somewhat of a serial killer, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is just one of many voices contributing to this image. Smokers are people with an addiction, and though the consequences associated with that addiction - heart disease and lung cancer - are dangerous, smokers do not deserve to be persecuted. We are passing law after law to keep them out of our lives, forcing them to smoke at home.

Unsurprisingly, these discriminatory laws are having a less celebrated effect: The study's least positive statistic regarding second-hand smoke was that children's exposure is still above 60 percent, probably because smokers now have fewer and fewer places to smoke and their own homes are one of their last refuges. No one wants to make it illegal to smoke entirely - a belief in freedom and personal choice does not permit that conclusion. But if we truly want to give people the right to choose to be smokers, we have to offer them a compromise.

The pattern of increasingly restrictive laws against smokers must end. Fortunately, leaving the decision to the private owner will automatically accomplish the much-needed compromise. Restaurants and bars with customer bases consisting predominantly of smokers will permit indoor smoking, and other customers will have to accept the dangers if they still choose to frequent these establishments.

Other business owners will see merit in prohibiting smoking in order to satisfy a predominantly non-smoking clientele. This compromise will give non-smokers the choice to inhabit places that are smoke-free, while still providing the smoker somewhere to go outside of the home.

It should be left up to individual business owners to determine the extent to which smoking is permitted in an establishment, rather than having that choice predetermined by governing bodies that are biased against smokers. The Michigan legislature is one such governing body, voting last month to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.

At least the House of Representatives's version of the bill maintained exemptions for workplaces that have a specific smoking focus, such as cigar bars. Let us hope that this is the version that triumphs, or else Michigan smokers will have suffered a serious defeat at the hands of unnecessary policies. Just letting the owner decide will result in a fairer and more accommodating policy.

Protecting people from the dangers of second-hand smoke is certainly a noble goal. But forcing business owners to discriminate against some of their most vital customers is demeaning to the owner and the smoker, and it's even bad for the kids at home.

Robert Soave is a summer associate editorial page editor. He can be reached at rsoave@umich.edu.