Public Smoking Should Be Banned

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A Breath of Fresh Air is my Right: Banning of Smoking in Public Places
Is it fair for that person to get sick too, because he/she around with smokers? Countless medical studies over the years have proven the link of smoking cigarettes to the deterioration of the smoker’s health. According to Mazzone and Arroliga (2004), “Nearly 450,000 persons will die every year of a disease attributable to tobacco use. In the United States, tobacco use kills more people each year than AIDS, suicide, murder, car accidents, and illicit drugs combined” (para. 1). Follow-up research, however, also points out its adverse effects to the greater populations, environment, and the workplace. For this apparent reason, legislative and judicial laws should be enacted to legitimize a complete smoke ban to prevent the spread of illnesses, preserve the environment, and promotes the right to a conducive and healthy working environment.
Public smoking should be banned so as not to affect another person’s health. Environmental smoke (ES) or secondhand smoke (SH) accounts as the major cause of heart attacks not only in active smokers but also in passive smokers. Furthermore, it is one of the aggravating causes of respiratory and circulatory illnesses in children, such as asthma, bronchitis, and pulmonary infections. In a study conducted by Simons, Moineddin, Stieb, and Dell (2014), on maternal secondhand smoke exposure and its association with the development of childhood asthma, results indicate that “children whose mothers have home second-hand smoke exposure during pregnancy are more likely to develop physician diagnosed asthma and to develop asthma sooner, even if the mother does not smoke actively during pregnancy” (para. 30). Also, in the case of...

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...icy are further elaborated in the study of Fichtenberg and Glantz which concluded that, “smoke-free workplaces not only protect non-smokers from the dangers of passive smoking, they also encourage smokers to quit or reduce consumption” (2002, para.8). Thus, banning smoking in workplaces would contribute to the change in smoking behavior of people which in the long run, would aid to their transition of quitting smoking.
It is said that “tobacco companies kill their best customers.” Therefore, the governments’ and legislators’ implementation of a full restriction of public smoking will be highly beneficial to another person’s well- being and quality of life, the conservation of the environment, and the prevention of company losses. Smoking could stop smoking by abiding such restrictions now or they could die trying to abandon their lethal relationship with nicotine.

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