Is Big Tobacco biting back on the ban?

They're all talking about the MHF's men's health information site malehealth out there in cyberspace.

Normally we'd be delighted but following six comments on a single article over the week-end, editor Jim Pollard is wondering what's really going on.

'This is a page that's four years old and as far as I can remember hasn't attracted any feedback for at least a year. The article Joe Jackson and the Dodgy Science, talks about how the difficulty of proving anything beyond reasonable doubt can be used to undermine what our common sense tells us is probably healthy or not healthy. It includes the example, one of several, of passive smoking and it is this example that seems to have attracted all the attention.'

So what's going on? Perhaps nothing more than over-enthusiastic Googling by fans of Joe Jackson. (He's a pop singer, m'lud.)  Maybe we're seeing a sudden interest in the issues around smoking following the introduction of the ban in public places? Or a sudden interest in maleheath? Now that would be nice.

Jim says: 'I've invited a couple of the contributors to write articles so we'll see what they've really got to say but the flood - and it is a flood by our standards - is a little freaky. One of the commentators told me he was a member of Freedom 2 Choose and also contributes to Forest online which is funded by the tobacco industry.'

The beef seems to be around passive smoking. They say that passive smoking is the reason for the smoking ban and that there is no evidence that passive smoking is harmful. Both of these are open to debate, of course!

'It's curious,' says Jim. 'My impression is that the debate moved on from passive smoking years ago. Talk to people today about the smoking ban and smokers will tell you like it because it's helping them quit - something the vast majority of smokers want to do. Non-smokers say they like it as they no longer cough, no longer have streaming eyes and no longer have to spend the day in stinky clothes with smelly hair as the price for going in the pub. They won't mention passive smoking.'

Should we be worried? Probably not - although those who have seen The Insider, the terrific 1999 Michael Mann film about the lengths to which the tobacco industry went to maintain the lie that it did not believe or know that tobacco was addictive, may disagree.

• We'd welcome your thoughts on this...