Smoking in public places should be illegal. Today, we, the affirmative team, will give you many reasons to prove why. People have been smoking cigarettes for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until recently that people started to realize exactly how bad cigarette smoking is. It can have a number of negative effects on the smoker, such as lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. Not only can it have these effects on the smoker, but a person who is simply being exposed to the smoke can contract the same illnesses, which hardly seems fair.
Smoking in public places endangers people’s lives by causing secondhand smoke, which has been proven to cause lung cancer. Many reputable groups, such as the US Surgeon General’s office, National Research Council, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, have inspected the evidence and reached the same conclusion. Studies show that people who breathe secondhand smoke are 150% more likely to get lung cancer later. Exposure to secondhand smoke causes about 47,000 deaths from heart disease and 3,000 lung cancer deaths, making it the third leading cause of preventable death in the country.
Not only that, but secondhand smoke causes up to 300,000 cases of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia in infants and young children. These children and adults are totally innocent and have made the choice to keep their bodies healthy by not smoking. Yet their results are just as bad, if not worse, than the smokers! Americans should have the right to be healthy if they so choose, and to do that, we need to create a smoke-free environment in all public places. Cigarette smoke contains about 300 dangerous chemicals. In order to contain these chemicals to just the smoking sections, ventilation rates would have to be increased more than a thousand-fold to reduce cancer risk. Even if we had the money to do that, it would be impractical because it would create a virtual windstorm! Many places in the US already ban smoking, and the results have all been positive. 85% of the nation’s shopping malls are now smoke-free.
Princetonborough and township are setting an example that hopefully many other towns and cities will follow. They are the first localities in the New York metropolitan region to outlaw smoking in almost all public places, including bars and restaurants. The law states that smoking should be allowed only in private homes, outdoors, and in the borough’s single smoke shop. This is precisely the kind of law we need throughout the United States. Many restaurants across the nation have banned smoking, and it has not hurt business at all.
Even smoke-free ordinances in North Carolina, the number one tobacco-producing state in the US, have brought about a positive effect. The vast majority of studies have shown the same thing. Studies in California and Arizona had similar results. Massachusetts’ smoke-free restaurants increased sales by 4%.
In New York City, eating out has increased since the city’s clean indoor air law took effect. The year 2000 was the target date to make all enclosed public areas smoke-free. New York started by limiting the smoking sections in existing restaurants and making all new restaurants completely smoke-free. In all my research, I only found one article on how clean indoor air regulations had a negative effect, and it turned out those places were getting paid off by the tobacco company! Not only does the new law not affect the restaurants and other public places, but it doesn’t affect the people negatively either! In a recent poll, 2.8 million of the 46 million smokers said they’d quit if there were a national ban.
Fifty thousand others would decide not to start each year the law is in effect! This may not sound like a lot, but it is. Cigarette consumption would decline at least 10%, which is about 2.5 million packs a year! Before, about half of the non-smokers avoided certain restaurants because of the smoke. Now, 17% of non-smokers eat out more and are making up greatly for the 33% of smokers who refuse to eat in these restaurants. This may seem like a lot, but in fact, it isn’t! Only 30% of Americans smoke, so actually only 10% aren’t eating out because of the law, while about 30% more people are! In total, 86% of the American population is not only fine with the Clean Indoor Air law.
