Smoking a Smokeless Solution

On average 26% of Americans smoke, leaving behind them restaurants, bars, and numerous other places covered with a thick blanket of smoke full of deadly toxins and cancer causing agents for the remaining 73% of Americans to breathe. Cigarette smoke at any level of exposure can have deadly consequences, yet, it is allowed almost everywhere including parks and restaurants that are frequented by innocent children. Cigarette smoke and its toxins leach into carpet, furniture, and even leave white walls tainted yellow with tar. These toxins left behind by cigarette smoke linger long after the smoke dissipates. Cigarette butts are scattered on almost every street and ashtrays are usually full and overflowing. Every year smokers are responsible for fires that burn hundreds of acres and many homes, all of which could have been prevented. American smokers have made smoking a normal daily activity that children everywhere grow up watching and accepting as normal. This makes children much more likely to pick up the same habit. Nonsmokers and children everywhere are subjected to deadly secondhand smoke on a daily basis. There is nowhere left to go that we can be safe from this silent killer. Smoking should not be allowed in public places because of the exposure to secondhand smoke to the nonsmokers, the negative impact that smoking has on the environment, and the potential health risks that the smoker face.

Smoking in public places should not be allowed because it exposes nonsmokers to secondhand smoke. Smoking is supposed to be choice; however, that is no longer the case. Everywhere Americans turn there is another smoker polluting the ever precious air that we as humans need to survive. Nonsmokers have virtually no choice on wh...

... middle of paper ...

...

Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses—United States, 2000–2004. Morbidity and Mortality

Weekly Report 2008;57(45):1226–8.

2. Colgrove. James, Ronald Bayer, and Kathleen E. Bachynski. “Nowhere Left to Hide? The Banishment Of

Smoking From Public Spaces.” The New England Journal Of Medicine 364.25 (2011):2375-2377.

3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of

the Surgeon General. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office

on Smoking and Health, 2004.

4. Smith, Elizabeth, Patricia A. McDaniel. “Covering Their Butts: Responses to the Cigarette Litter

Problem.” Tobacco Control 2011: 100-106.