Here’s the thing. If you work in the electronics/computer fields you definitely want to follow best practices. And, has been mentioned here, not smoking is a best practice. But as far as general consumer use goes how many cigs a day would it take to cause an iMac to fail before its 6 to 7 year life span is up. I’m not trying to be flip, just playing devil’s advocate. How much of a concern is this to the average user?
Zero.
Computers are designed to function in a wide variety of environments.
As for "following best practices" that's pretty relative and a far more recent development. The policy helps enforce the control freak mentality of a lot of today's IT professionals.
People have been smoking around electronics and computers for a very long time, literally decades. Relatively recent changes to workplace health policies have made some people forget history.
Go look at old photographs of computer labs, NASA launch control centers, NASA mission control centers, airplane flight decks, etc. There were tons of (mostly) men smoking cigarettes, ashtrays everywhere. Even Hollywood does a decent job capturing this in movies set in the past.
Hell, people used to smoke in hospitals. Russian cosmonauts smoked on the Mir space station. Naval sailors have been smoking on board warships, submarines, etc. for decades.
Don't worry, smoke isn't going to destroy your average consumer electronics device, including your automobile which now has more computing power and more integrated circuits than a $1000 PC from the late Nineties. Somewhere on this planet where workplace health policies aren't as stringent as many Western industrialized nations, there are rooms full of computer equipment and a bunch of smokers.
You can't smoke in computer labs, server rooms, etc. today because of workplace health regulations that gained a foothold starting in the Nineties. Those laws are there to protect human beings and have nothing to do with safeguarding electronics.
The no-smoking policy actually originated from the F&B industry. Bartenders and waitstaff did not want to spend their entire shifts inhaling second-hand smoke from restaurant patrons. The people most opposed to the proposal weren't the patrons themselves but in fact were the restaurant management/owners who were terrified that a no-smoking policy would kill off business. In fact, the opposite became true.
Over years, the no-smoking policy spread elsewhere but in no way was the IT industry instrumental in lobbying for this. It was driven by the hospitality and service industries where workers did not have the option to leave a smoke-filled workplace for one that was smoke-free.
Smoking is an unhealthy habit for human bodies but that's a separate discussion to be held elsewhere.
