Smoking Bans: Good or Bad?

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Smoking Bans: Good or Bad?

I grew up with a mother and father who did not smoke, but when we would go visit my Grandma and Aunt every weekend I would not be able to stand the smell and always felt like I was suffocating. The only thing I really knew about the smoke in their houses was that it smelled horrible, I didn’t understand that it would affect me later on in life.

One day during my seventh grade Physical Education (PE) class I started having a hard time breathing, I thought it was because I was running around playing with my friends. After about thirty minutes I was finally able to catch my breath after relaxing for a little bit, but when I got home I was out of breath again. I would raise my arms above my head and it would feel like I just ran a mile without stopping for a break. I did not know what was going on and my mom was not home from work yet, so I decided to just relax and focus on my breathing. My mom finally came home and I told her I was having difficulty breathing, she rushed me to the emergency room.

In the Emergency Room (ER) they hooked me up to oxygen. My blood oxygen level was dangerously low. After about thirty minutes they unhooked me and had me do three different breathing tests, then they hooked me back up to the oxygen. I had no idea what was going on. An hour later they told me I had a type of asthma. It is bronchial related, or just called seasonal asthma for short. I grew up working with horses and had never had a problem with pollen or any kind of dandruff, so we were shocked that I now had asthma.

The Doctors believe this was a result from being exposed to my Aunt and Grandma’s smoky houses filled with secondhand smoke. Even though I was never there very long, over the years those weekl...

... middle of paper ...

...the health of non-smokers.

Works Cited

Boyes, William J., and Michael L. Marlow. "The Public Demand for Smoking Bans." Public

Choice. 88 (1996): 57-67. JSTOR. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.

Glantz, Stanton A., and Caroline M. Fichtenberg. "Effect of Smoke-free Workplaces on Smoking

Behaviour: Systematic Review." British Medical Journal, 325.188 (2002): n. page. Web.

07 Mar. 2014.

Saad, Lydia. "More Smokers Feeling Harassed by Smoking Bans." Gallup. Gallup, 25 July 2007.

Web. 09 Mar. 2014.

Yount, Blake. "An Argument against Smoking Bans." Examiner.com. Examiner, 13 June

2009. Web. 09 Mar. 2014.

Zablocki, Rong W., et al. "Smoking Ban Policies and Their Influence on Smoking Behaviors

Among Current California Smokers: A Population-Based Study." Preventive Medicine

59 (2014): 73-78. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Mar. 2014.

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