Introduction
When your parents were young, people could buy cigarettes and smoke pretty much anywhere even in hospitals. Ads for cigarettes were all over the [place. Today we are more aware of how bad smoking is for our health. Smoking is restricted or banned in almost all public places and cigarettes companies are no longer allowed to advertise on TV, radio, and in many magazines. Almost everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, emphysema, and heart disease, that it can shorten your life by 10 years or more, and that the habit can cost a smoker thousands of dollars a year. So how come people are still lighting up? The answer is a word, is addiction. Indeed smoking should be banned in public places.
Once you start smoking, it’s hard to stop since smoking is a hard habit to break because tobacco contains nicotine, which is highly addictive. Like heroin or other addictive drugs, the body and mind quickly become so used to nicotine in cigarettes that a person needs to have it just to feel normal. People start smoking for a variety of different reasons. Some think it looks cool and others start because their family members or friends smoke. Statistics show that about 9 out of 10 tobacco users start before they are 18 years old. Most adults who started smoking in their teens never expected to become addicted. That’s why people say it’s just so much easier to not start smoking at all. (Robert 1989).
How smoking affects your body
There is no physical reason to start smoking. The body doesn’t need tobacco the way it needs food, water, sleep and exercise. Many of the chemicals in cigarettes, like nicotine and cyanide, are poisons that can kill in high enough doses. The body is smart. It goes on the defense when it’s been poisoned. For this reason, many people find it takes several tries to get started smoking. First-time smokers feel pain or burning in the throat or lungs, and some people feel sick or even through up the first few times they try tobacco.
The consequences of this poisoning happen gradually. Over the long term, smoking leads people to develop health problems like cancer, emphysema (break down of lung tissue), organ damage, and heart disease. The disease can limit a person’s ability to be normally active and can be fatal. Each time smokers light up, that single cigarette takes about 5 to 20 minutes off the person’s life. Smokers not only develop wrinkles and yellow teeth, but they also loose bone density, which increases their risk to osteoporosis, a condition that causes older people to become bent over and their bones to break more easily. Smokers also tend to be less active than nonsmokers because smoking affects lung cancer. Smoking can also cause fertility problems and can also impact sexual health in both men and women. Girls who are on the pills or other hormone-based methods of birth control like the patch or the ring increase their risk of serious health problems, such as heart attacks if they smoke. (Robert 1989).
Smoking in public places
In this day and age, smoking becomes common thing for people. They always smoke without concern about the surroundings. Some people thought smoking can liberate their tension and can relax their minds but how about the nonsmoker near you? Actually smoking can give lots of negative effects for the smoker and the secondhand smoker. There are several reasons why smoking should be banned from the public places. (Richard, Roger, Diane and Kenneth, 1991)
Why smoking should be banned from the public places
Usually, smoking is allowed at the sideways, restaurants and also at the community centers but these places has many people including the children. Let’s assume there is a smoker at those places, automatically the people surrounding will be the secondhand smoker. Usually people don’t usually smoke because they understand the danger of smoking but what I am worried about is the secondhand smoker. It is because secondhand smoke will irritate our lungs and it also reduces the oxygen on our in our blood. Furthermore, the secondhand smoke can harm the cardiovascular system of nonsmokers in many ways. For one thing, it causes corony heart diseases such as heart attack.
Then, how to protect the nonsmoker from getting the secondhand smoke? Of course the banning smoking in public places is the best idea, but it’s not easy to execute. The government must do lots of things such as to determine what public places will be smoke-free. However, there are several ideas for the nonsmoker to avoid them from the secondhand smoke. Firstly, they must always ensure the nonsmoking option that is available. Today, many restaurants have nonsmoking sections and the hotel offer nonsmoking rooms and floors. Furthermore, at the office, you can ask the smokers if they would not smoke around you. You also can use a fan and open the window to keep the air moving, but the best way is not to smoke.
If the smoker concern about the other people’s health, they are not smoking at such places. The government also should make a campaign to avoid people from smoking.it is very important to expose about the danger of smoking in public places. In another hand, the government also must punish the person who cannot obey the rule. The smoker must pay a fine. Other than that, the ministry of health must also find the best way to stop this smoking habit. When all sectors get together, they can stop smoking habits (Richard, Roger, Diane and Kenneth, 1991)
Should Smoking be bounded from public places?
Public here refers (concerning the people as a whole). Banning smoking in public places isn’t just a question of taking away ones group’s freedom for the benefit of the other group. It is something that is in the interest of people as a whole. It comes down to a decision between the healths of a whole nation versus the freedom of the minority.
Arguably by allowing smoking in public places is it the freedom of nonsmokers that is been restricted. We choose not to smoke but by going out in to a public place, this choice is effectively taken away. By smoking in public, the smoker is forcing everyone in the vicinity to smoke too, perhaps there should be signs everywhere reading public smoking areas only at least for the sake of nonsmokers.
For years now, the nonsmokers had to endure the unpleasant inhaling of stale cigarette or coming home smelling like the inside of a dirty ash tray and for those people who have to work under these conditions in bars and restaurants, the situation is even more exacerbated as they have no escape.
Perhaps most significant is the detrimental effect that passive smoking can have on anyone’s health. Passive smoking has been linked to an endless list of serious health problems ranging from bronchitis and asthma to lung cancer and heart diseases and even SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). According to cancer research figures several hundred people each year in the UK die from lung cancer caused by passive smoking
Quite apart from the enormous cost to the NHS, what is even more infuriating is that in the vast majority of cases, illnesses developed through passive smoking might have been avoided. International experience has shown that the best way to rapidly and successfully tacked health risks from secondhand smoke is to take action on smoking in public places.
A ban would not only improve the lives of us nonsmokers but would also encourage those causing the problem to help them. Areas such as California, where smoking in public places has been banned entirely suggest that smoke-free environments reduce both the number of smokers in the population at large and the number of cigarettes they get through (Joanna, Adrian, and Ivan 2003)
Finally, many people would argue that if we ban smoking in public places where it will end and that having no-smoking areas in bars and restaurants is enough. But here is an anonymous comment “A smoking section in a bar or restaurant is like having a peeing allowed section in a public swimming pool-it spread! So would you swim there?”(Joanna, Adrian, and Ivan 2003)
Rationale
The major rationale cited for smoking bans is the protection of workers, in particular from the harmful effects from secondhand smoke, which include an increased risk of heart diseases, cancer, emphysema and other chronic and acute diseases. Many countries in various forms have introduced laws implementing bans on indoor smoking over the years, with legislators citing scientific evidence that shows tobacco smoking is often harmful to the workers to themselves and those inhaling secondhand smoke.
In addition such laws may reduce health care costs in the short term but do not calculate for the increased health care costs of an averaging population, improve work productivity and lower the overall cost of labor in a community thus making a community more attractive for bringing new jobs into the area and keeping current jobs and employers in an area. In Indiana for example, the state’s economic development agency wrote into its 2006 plan for acceleration of economic growth that it encourages cities and towns to adopt local smoke-free workplace laws as a means of promoting job growth in communities.
Additional rationale for smoking restrictions include reduced risks of fires in areas with explosive hazards or where inflammable materials are handled, cleanliness in places where food or pharmaceuticals, semiconductors or precision instruments and machinery are produced, decreased legal liability, potentially reduced energy use via decreased ventilation needs, reduced quantities of litter, and to encourage current smokers to quit (Joanna, Adrian, and Ivan 2003)
Medical and scientific bans
Research has generated evidence that secondhand smoke causes the same problems as direct smoking, including lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and lung ailments such as emphysema, bronchitis and asthma. Specifically, meta-analyses show that lifelong non-smokers with partners who smoke in the home have a 20-39% greater risk of lung cancer than non-smokers who live with non-smokers. Nonsmokers exposed to cigarette smoke in the workplace have an increased lung cancer risk of 16-19 %.
A study issued in 2002 by the international agency for research on cancer of the world health organization concluded that nonsmokers are exposed to the same carcinogens as active smokers. Sidestream smoke contains 69 known carcinogens, particularly benzopyrene and other polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, and radioactive decay products such as polonium 210.Several well-established carcinogens have been shown by the tobacco companies own research to present at higher concentrations in secondhand smoke than in mainstream smoke.
Scientific organizations confirming the harmful effects of secondhand smoke include the U.S. national cancer institute, the U.S. centers for disease control, the U.S. national institute of health, the United States surgeon general and the world health organization. (Joanna, Adrian, and Ivan 2003)
Air quality
Bans on smoking in bars and restaurants can substantially improve the air quality in such establishments. For example, one study listed on website of the CDC, center for disease control states that New York statewide law to eliminate smoking in enclosed workplaces and public places substantially reduces respirable suspended particles levels in western New York hospitality venues. RSP levels were reduced in every venue that permitted smoking before the law was implemented, including venues in which only secondhand smoke from an adjacent room was observed at baseline. The CDC conclud3ed that their results were similar to other studies which also shown substantially improved indoor air quality after smoking bans (Joanna, Adrian, and Ivan 2003)
Consequences of smoking
The consequences of smoking may seem very far off, but long-term health problems aren’t the only hazard of smoking. Nicotine and the other toxins in cigarettes, cigars and pipes can affect a person’s body quickly, which means that teen smokers experience many of these problems. Bad skin. Because smoking restricts bad vessels, it can prevent oxygen and nutrients from getting to the skin, which is why smokers always appear pale and unhealthy.
An Italian study also linked smoking to an increased risk of getting a type of skin rash called psoriasis. Cigarettes also cause bad breath and leave the smokers with a condition called halitosis, or persistent bad breath. Bad smelling clothes and hair. The smell of stale smoke tends to linger, not just on people’s clothing, but on their air, furniture, and cars and it’s often hard to get the smell of smoke out. Reduced athletic performance. People who usually smoke can’t compete with nonsmoking peers because the physical effects of smoking, like rapid heartbeat, decreased circulation, and shortness of breath impair sports performance.
Greater risk of injury and slower healing time. Smoking affects the body’s ability to produce collagen, so common sports injuries, such as damage to tendons and ligaments will heal more slowly in smokers than non-smokers. Increased risk of illness. Studies show that smokers get more colds, flu, bronchitis and pneumonia than nonsmokers, and people with certain health conditions, like asthma, become sicker if they smoke and often if they are just around people who smoke. Because teens that smoke as a way to manage weight often light up instead of eating, their bodies lack the nutrients they need to grow, develop and fight off illness properly. (Robert, 1989)
Criticisms of bans
Smoking bans have been criticized on a number of grounds i.e. government interference with personal lifestyles or property rights. Critics of smoking bans including artist Joe Jackson and essayist and political critic Christopher Hitchens, claim that bans are misguided efforts of retrograde puritans. Typically, this argument is based on John Stuart Mills’s harm principle, arguing that the damage to public health through second hand smoke is insufficient to warrant government intervention. Economic loss.
Another claim is that smoking bans hurt the business of that hospitality business, especially those near a border with a place that does allow smoking, such as another state or an Indian reservation, and there are media reports of individual’s establishments, which have suffered, reduced revenue since the ban came into effect. The recent ban introduced in to Ireland suggested this when the number of fixed licenses required by the republican trade dropped by 440. There is perceived hypocrisy as some countries hardly enforce their smoking bans, and continue to profit from tax on tobacco products. This was suggested as a reason for the UK not having a smoking ban in place. (Nardone, 2002)
Arguments against smoking been a victimless crime
The main arguments here are the health risks of passive smoking and increased health costs borne by the society. On the latter point, certain studies suggest that complete smoking cessation might actually increase total health care costs in the longrun. this possibly stems from the fact that nonsmokers live longer on average and can thus incur higher total lifetime healthcare costs. The argument rationalized that if nonsmokers live longer, they also pay during their lifetime more taxes than smokers that statistically become ill and die earlier.
Because smoking-related deaths occur around retirement age, for many people, and thus around the time when a person begins to pay much lower income taxes, the premature death of a smoker probably presents a net gain for the government in healthcare costs. It can also be noted that in many countries especially in the US and Europe the tax on smoking raises revenues that significantly outweigh the cost of smoking to healthcare as a source of net income to the government. (Nardone, 2002)
Arguments against bounding in public places
There are several arguments against the ban. They include the economic consequences for pubs and other hospitality industry businesses would be excessive. We want to live in a tolerant society, which does not limit liberty or freedom of choice.
The rights of smokers outweigh the risks of workers who are free to choose whether to do a dangerous job. There are concerns that not only could be economic consequences of a ban to disastrous for the hospitality industry, but they could also have serious social consequences, leaving many village pubs, which are vital institutions, to close. It is claimed that in some villages the loss of the pub would mean the loss of the heart of the village
There is also strong feeling that we do not want to live in a society, which readily bans activities, we may disapprove of other people’s actions but we should be reluctant to ban them. This is a feeling shared by many people, but its not an argument for never imposing a ban on an activity, each issue has to be judged on its merits.
Related to our desire to live in a tolerant society is the strongly held belief that smokers have a right to pursue a legal activity, especially in places like pubs where smoking is common and where, importantly, where no one is forced to go. Judging by the opinion polls, this argument is relatively popular, if decreasingly so.
Other proponents of the view accept that there is a risk to workers but argue that other jobs are more dangerous and people choose where to work. If they are concerned about the risk to their health from a smoky environment, they can always find a less dangerous job. In balancing the economic effect in business and smokers’ rights against workers’ rights, we have to weigh the likely effect on each group. The experience in Ireland suggests that economic consequences on the ban on the hospitality industry have been slight and that smokers’ suffering has been relatively trivial. If smokers want to smoke, they go outside and they do not seem to mind too much. (Nardone, 2002)
Conclusion
As conclusion, the government must stop the import of cigarettes or increase its price even the country get an income from that to make that country as a clean from smoker. Through this way, we can be an example to other countries
All forms of tobacco. Cigarettes, pipes, cigars and smokeless tobacco are hazardous. It doesn’t help to substitute products that seem like they are better for you than regular cigarettes. The only thing that helps a person avoid the problems associated with smoking is staying smoke-free. This isn’t always easy, especially if everyone around you is smoking and offering you cigarettes. It may help to have your reasons for not smoking ready for times you may feel the pressure, such as just I don’t like or I want to stay in shape for soccer.
The good news for people who don’t smoke or those who want to quit is that studies show that the number of teens who smoke has dropped dramatically. Today, about 23 % of high school students smoke. If you do smoke and want to quit, you have lots of information and support available. Different approaches to quitting work for different people. For, some, quitting cold turkey is best. Others find that a slower approach is the way to go. Some people find that it helps to go to a support group especially for teens. These are sometimes sponsored by local hospitals or organizations like the American cancer society
When quitting, it can be helpful to realize that the first few days are the hardest. So don’t give up. Some people find that they have a few lapses before they manage to quit for good. Staying smoke-free will give you a whole lot more of everything, more energy, better performance, better looks, more money in your pocket and in the long run more life to live so better you stop now.
Reference
Richard D, Roger C. Diane E. Kenneth F. (1991). Self-interest and public opinion towards smoking policies. A republication and extension. The public opinion quarterly, Vol. 55, PP. 241-254.Oxford-university press.
Joanna, C. Adrian, F. and Ivan L. (2003). The effects of smoking status and ventilation on environmental tobacco smoke concentrations in public areas of UK pubs and bars. ARIC, Department of Environmental And Geographical Sciences, The Manchester Metropolian university, Chester Street, Manchester.UK.
Robert E. (1989). No Smoking. The ethical issues. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.
Goldstein, S. (2005). Will a smoking ban stub out business? Journal: NJBIZ.California.
Nardone, R. (2002). Restaurant, bar owners unhappy with smoking bans. Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal.
Edwards, L. (1993). Smoking bills becoming a drag on relationships. San Diego Business Journal. U.S.
Shephard, Roy J. (1982). The risks of passive smoking. New York, Oxford Up. Chapter Seven.