Smoking in Halakhah

First of all, I don't know if it was a secret before but it is clearly now public knowledge that two of my contemporaries -- R. Daniel Z. Feldman and R. Dovid Gottlieb -- are on the RCA Halacha Committee. Furthermore, not only is R. Feldman a Yashar author but so is another member of the committee, R. Chaim Jachter. But that's not what this post is about.

The RCA Halacha Committee has published a ruling prohibiting smoking (ruling - PDF; RCA press release). This is a must-read. Will this change the world? No. But it will do more than silence will.

(See also this post. The ruling did not seem to address that issue. And see this post on motzi la'az al ha-rishonim.)