Smoking Ban in Public Areas

Some smokers say they have rights to smoke in the public areas because selling and buying cigarettes both are legally; however, as taxpayers, they are not only unable to enjoy the benefits of paying the extra tax but they are also deprived of the freedom of smoking in the public areas. They regard the legislation of smoking ban in public areas as a ridiculous law, and it should be abolished. It is true that the smokers were collected an extremely higher tax on cigarettes and they do have the rights to utilize cigarettes. Yet as a matter of fact that paying extra higher tax cannot be an efficient excuse to abuse cigarettes in the public areas, and smoking cigarettes in public areas has already been a social problem for a long time. Since 2005, the Alberta government began to implement the smoking ban law in public areas. Many non-smokers do not have to bear the second hand smoke produced by the smokers any more. A very interesting survey was conducted by the International Health Organization (IHO) in 2001 on smokers’ attitudes on smoking. It shows that when cigarette smokers were asked if they know the harm of the cigarette, almost all of them answered yes. Most of them had the experiences of trying to quit smoking but failed. After their failure to quit smoking, they continued their habit of smoking again. With the law to ban smoking in public areas, smokers may have a strong motive to quit this bad habit. I strongly support this law because this policy will help most of both smoker and non-smokers to improve their health and prolong their life.

First of all, an advantage of a smoking ban in public areas is this law leads to prolong the life-span of people. We have already known that there are many diseases which are caused by cigarette smoking. Cigarette contains over 4000 chemicals including more than 50 carcinogens, such as carbon monoxide, benzene, and hydrogen cyanide. One of the diseases is lung cancer. A published study (1) on cigarette smoking concluded that lung cancer kills more people each year than any other cancer. Around 4.6 million of people died of this disease in the world in 2002, among these, 64% were long time cigarette smokers. Furthermore, there are still many other diseases related to cigarette smoking, such as heart diseases, birth defects and a host of other disorder. All these diseases threaten the health and the life quality of human beings, and they cut people’s life-spans. Another research conducted by Beijing University on smoking had a very astonishing result. According to this research, each person was supposed to have an average life of 150 years, but the fact is almost none of us could live such a long time. There are many factors which could lead to our shortened life. It shows smoking is the most critical factor that could shorten our life-span. Each cigarette can cut two minutes of life-span. That is the reason why the nickname of cigarette smoking is “long term committing suicide”.

Secondly, another advantage of this law is it will also protect the health of non-smokers. The cigarette smokers might get extreme satisfaction in smoking, but they might not realize that the smoke they produce is threatening the health of other people who are staying in the same room with them. However, the non-smokers might feel not only annoyed by the smell of the horrible smog but their health would be damaged severely by this smoke as well. A research about second hand smoke told us second hand smoke is more harmful and dangerous than that of the first hand smoke. Second hand smoke is extremely dangerous to those who have never smoked before; moreover, second hand smoke would hurt the nervous system of a child and that would lower the mental capacity (IQ) of children. For example, a research shows 25% of children of smokers have showed a lower IQ level than their peers at the age of one, compared to 9% of non-smokers.

Thirdly, an additional benefit of a smoking ban in public areas is it will help some smokers to quit this bad habit more easily and more smoothly. It is not easy for smokers to quit the habit of cigarettes. Because to quit smoking cigarettes not only needs the endurance of smokers but a good environment is also required. We always hear some smokers talk about their own experiences on quitting smoking. At first, almost all of them had a good decision to quit smoking, but finally the result was most of them ended up their attempts with beginning to smoke again; furthermore, most of them smoked many more cigarettes than before. One critical reason that caused this failure was there was not a good environment around him during their smoke quitting periods, and once they smelled or saw someone was smoking a cigarette, they were lured to come back to smoke cigarettes again. Doubtless, the smoking ban policy will definitely help smokers to decrease their likelihood of smoking often, especially in forbidden public areas. Also, Alberta’s winter is very cold, and if a smoker is not allowed to smoke inside of the building, they would be far less likely to smoke. It would force them to quit this bad habit.

The smoking ban policy, however, decreases the provincial and federal tax dearly. It is estimated that this policy has already decreased the tax income for the government by about CA$200 million totally since 2005. But on the other hand, the research inventory on lung cancer and other cigarette related health costs has already decreased totally by CA$100 million after this policy was carried out. Moreover, the fire cases related to cigarette smoking has also showed a tendency of decreasing gradually yearly since 2005. Therefore, this policy is a worthwhile policy.

Looking around the world, a smoking ban policy has already been used in many countries, such as the UK, the USA, and even in many developing countries. I think the law of banning smoking in public areas embodies a kind of respect to human life, and I also believe that this policy would be beneficial for everyone no matter whether he is a smoker or non-smoker.

References
The Ten Top Causes of Death http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310.pdf
Alison Motluk Passive smoking dents children's IQ
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2251