Cigarette Smoking around the World

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As of 2002, more than 430,000 people every year die from use of tobacco- more than AIDS, alcohol, drugs, abuse, car accidents, murders, suicides, and fires COMBINED (“Cigarette Smoking” 2). Scary, isn't it? That even though cigarettes can cause that many deaths, people still smoke them? Cigarette smoking is a serious problem in the United States. Especially when it is done in public. Public smoking should be banned because it is a hazard to the people around.
Smoking comes with many problems. Not only for the smoker, but for the nonsmokers who are exposed to the smoke. In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified second-hand smoke as a Group A carcinogen- the most dangerous category of carcinogens. About 600,000 people worldwide die from second-hand smoke every year (“Smoking” 3). More people die from second-hand smoke than from smoking the cigarette himself or herself. In a roundabout sort of way, the smokers who smoke in public are causing the death of other people. Isn't that illegal?
Second-hand smoke can also cause a variety of seriously, deadly aliments. Every year more than 3,000 deaths from lung cancer and 35,000-62,000 deaths from heart attack and respiratory tract infections are caused from breathing in second-hand smoke (“Cigarette Smoking” 2). Second-hand smoke only takes ten minutes to begin damaging the heart. Ten minutes isn't a lot of time for the amount of damage second-hand smoke can cause. In that ten minutes spent around smoke, the smell sinks into the fabric of clothes. The smell will then stay in the fabrics and other people will inhale it, including children.
Public smoking also affects children. “Reducing adult smoking may eliminate role models who lead children to light up” (Glaeser 2)....

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...uction in second-hand smoke) oppose each other, then the balancing, as on a teeter-totter, must be done to see if one good or public benefit outweighs the other” (Nowlan 3). The public's health is more important. Why should one person hold the power to choose life or death for another person?
What do I propose to fix the problem of public smoking? I say we ban it all, but that's not realistic. I say we ban smoking in any place children are allowed. That includes outside restaurants, parks, playgrounds, and outside stores. Allow smoking in casinos, because we all know the state needs as much money as it can get, but have a designated room for the smokers so the public isn't exposed. So, Indiana State Assembly, why not give it a whirl and see what happens? Or has all the exposure to secondhand smoke gone to the brains of the people who keep our lungs and hearts safe?

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