Smoking in Public Places free essay sample

It is well-known that cigarette smoking is dangerous to ones health; thousands of Americans die prematurely each year from the effects of smoking, and millions more live on in ruined health with crippled lungs and overstrained hearts. (Brodish 1999) Nonsmokers often question the rationality of smoking at public places in light of these enormous health risks: Why engage in an activity that will ruin your health and perhaps eventually kill you? Smokers defiantly, if dishonestly, respond with the claim that they have the right to smoke, even if it is not the most rational thing to do. But do they? This is a controversial issue, one that has immediate implications for public policy regarding smoking. This paper demonstrates that smokers generally do not have the right to smoke in public places, in a wide variety of cases, because it is inconsistent with their duty to respect the right of others (to be free from harm). We will write a custom essay sample on SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Then a variety of arguments for smoking in public places presented. The underlying aim of this paper is to provide a moral guide to the formation of a public policy toward smoking behavior. Such a policy, paper will argue, is likely to have as its consequence the elimination of nonsmokers exposure to secondhand smoke. The paper will at the end explore several policy considerations that might lead to the elimination of exposure to secondhand smoke. The focus of paper, is on the so-called right to smoke, and what role it should play in the development of a just public policy regarding smoking, whatever that policy may be. Background It is important that this distinction between activity and passivity not be confused with the more controversial distinction between doing something to another and letting something happen to another. The relevance of this distinction is often debated in the context of euthanasia. The general rule seems to be that ones right to pursue an activity survives only so long as the exercise of that right does not infringe upon the right of another to be free from harm. The right to be free from harm is in some sense more basic than the rights one may have to perform certain activities. This harm principle is perhaps the fundamental liberty-limiting principle. (Goodin 1989) Suppose there is a public room, say a bar, populated by smokers and nonsmokers, and individuals of both groups have the right to be present in the room. The air in the room is filled with smoke, and it is clear that the cause of this is the activity of the smokers. Since the nonsmokers have to breathe the smoky air they had no part in producing, the smokers are doing something to the non-smokers. Since both the smokers and the nonsmokers have equal right to be present in the room, the nonsmokers stand to smokers as victims stand to those who shoot them. The non-smokers have actively placed themselves in the room, presumably, but they have not actively done anything to the smokers in the way that the smokers have actively done something to them. Nor have they actively sought to place themselves in a smoky environment, that responsibility belongs to the smokers. If the nonsmokers are harmed by the presence of the smoke, then the smokers have violated the harm principle. The right to smoke persists only so long as the act of smoking does not conflict with the more basic right of nonsmokers to be free from harm. On the condition that they are causing harm, the smokers are obliged to refrain from smoking, and this remains true even if those doing the harm are unaware of the harm they are causing. (Feinberg 1985) This places a burden on smokers to change their behavior to comply with the rights of nonsmokers. This inconvenience to smokers, which is often viewed as a harm to smokers, is asymmetrically related to the harm caused to nonsmokers; it is the smokers who are doing something to the nonsmokers, while the reverse is not true. This point is crucial in determining an appropriate policy when the interests of smokers and nonsmokers conflict. If harm is indeed being caused, public policy should prevent the smoker from smoking in this room. The issue now turns on whether the smokers are harming the nonsmokers. There are at least three levels on which smoking may harm nonsmokers. The first involves the distasteful odor of cigarette smoke, in the air and in the clothes and hair of even nonsmokers, who are in the same room as a smoker, let us call this the level of annoyance. The second involves the short-term physiological irritation of the eyes, nose, mouth, throat, and lungs caused by the inhalation of smoke; let us call this the level of irritation. The third involves the long-term risk of disease caused by repeated exposure to secondhand smoke; let us call this the level of disease. At each of these three levels we must determine whether the harm is sufficiently significant and determine if the right to smoke should be curtailed. Arguments Against Smoking in Public Places Annoyance. Smoke is annoying when one would simply prefer not to breathe it. This is an offense to, or intrusion upon, the nonsmoker, rather than an obvious harm, so it is unlikely that we are going to get a straightforward application of the harm principle. We must therefore be very careful to examine specific features of the situations in which this offense arises; only in this way will we be able to determine if annoyance is sufficient to militate against the moral right to smoke. Consider a nonsmoker in his own home. Here the rights of property ownership and autonomy give weight to ones preferences beyond what they might otherwise enjoy. Should someone be smoking in a nonsmokers home, the smoker surely must respect the nonsmokers preference to be free from secondhand smoke. In this respect, smoking is no different from other activities one simply does not want performed in ones own home. But suppose that the smoker is a friend, a business associate, or a superior. Because of these relationships, the nonsmoker may, as a matter of course, be made to feel some pressure to acquiesce to the smokers desire to smoke. For example, if it is his boss, he may be made to feel that his job or working conditions will be jeopardized if he sticks to his guns and refuses to allow smoking in his home. If it is a friend, he may feel that the friendship will be strained if he insists on his right to be free from secondhand smoke. Social pressures of this sort are significant features of many actual situations and should be given moral weight. The nonsmoking homeowner has the ethical (and legal) right to stipulate policy in his or her home, and an offender should not be allowed to exert pressure, knowingly or otherwise, on the homeowner. (Torr 2000, p. 43-51) Each nonsmoking individual is affected by every smoker with whom he comes into contact. This includes smoke in the workplace, restaurants, bars, and other public forums. The level of annoyance can be much greater than any smoker might realize since it is not an individual smoker, but a team of smokers with which the nonsmoker must contend; and as a team, smokers constitute a powerful collective source of annoyance. Whether an annoyance can reach the level of moral status depends on just how annoyed one can get. If one is sufficiently annoyed at the presence of secondhand smoke, then it might very well be a moral issue, and it is hard to see how the smoker is in a position to challenge this. Smoking in Public Places free essay sample This an essay about how people’s bad habits can get them banned from public places, aka smoking. This essay’s issue is about smoking banned in most of all public places. There is no point in endangering your health and also someone else’s in these public places. Individual Project 5 You are harming other people while you smoke around them. There is no need of risking your life for one little cigarette. The whole idea of people letting smoke in public places nd endangering other people’s health is foolish and cannot be supported by any evidence. It is not right for smokers to be endangering someone else’s life and getting away with it. Smoking should be stopped because it wastes a lot of money, and is very addictive. Also, it is bad for the smoker’s health to smoke tobacco because of the very bad chemicals in the tobacco. We will write a custom essay sample on Smoking in Public Places or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Smoking is not right and we should all quit before we get a bad habit of it. The numbers of smokers are not declining only increasing. When I say that smoking is bad for everyone, I mean everyone including people who do not smoke. Children are more in a risk to get asthma by consuming the smoke of a cigarette gives off because they breathe more rapidly than adults do. It’s not just kids either, but non-smoking food service workers are more likely to get cancer than in any other workplace. Smoking has a huge effect in people and this is a matter that needs to be handled seriously. A leading cause of asthma that leads to high hospitalization for children is in-fact second- hand smoking. When people come in contact with second-hand smoke people may experience headaches, respiratory illness, including asthma, pneumonia and bronchitis. Tobacco is made with extremely harmful substances, such as pesticides, carbon monoxide and nicotine that is a drug. If the ingredients inside tobacco are burned they are even more deadly and harmful. Some ingredients in a â€Å"puff† include: benzene, toluene, formaldehyde, acetone, and ammonia. These are harmful substances like formaldehyde is a preservative for dead bodies, ammonia in fertilizers, pesticides, and detergents and toluene in gasoline, and anti-freeze. More than 40 chemicals cause heart disease lung disease, and cancer in people. Smoking is harmful to your body, it is known that millions in America, but 40,000 Canadians will die from smoking this year, and it is the leading cause of diseases and deaths, which could easily be prevented. Smoking has become, the number one known death in both American and Canadians, and the number of smokers are only increasing by the day. Smoking can cause more deaths than alcohol, suicides, AIDS, elicit drugs, car accidents, and murders put together. A powerful ingredient called nicotine causes most of this. Even though smokers want to quit, can’t because of the addiction to nicotine. Another argument I have against public smoking is health. If you continue to consume obacco you will lose, a healthy heart, healthy lungs, healthy body, control, up to 15 years average health, and many more. Smoking causes a lot of harmful things in you and outside of your body. Some affects are: irregular heart beat, make your heart work harder by narrowing vessels so its harder to pump blood, raises blood level which makes heart pump harder by narrowing vessels so ità ¢â‚¬â„¢s harder to pump up blood, raises blood level which makes the heart pump harder than normal, decreases the amount of oxygen in your body so the heart has to work harder to get oxygen to the body. Smoking in Public Places free essay sample All research carried out in the past 50 years has proved that smoking is harmful for passive and active smokers alike. A ban on smoking in all public places with immediate effect is therefore the only reasonable option. † Did you ever deeply inhale the cold cloud of smoke of someone standing in a public place? Every one of us faces these situations to a greater or lesser extent. No matter if it happens indoors or outdoors, non- smokers never benefit from it. The question is, why smokers are allowed to wallow in vice wherever they like, regardless of the people, especially children and also the environment, around them. Smoking demands thousands of lives annually and risks the lives of second- hand smokers unintentionally. Therefore the state would do well to react to this issue and ban smoking in all public places with immediate effect. Cigarettes contain more than 4000 chemical compounds with at least 400 toxic substances which can have a harmful or even lethal outcome for smokers and several aftermaths for the state and its’ population. We will write a custom essay sample on Smoking in Public Places or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The most dangerous and damaging product is tar, which is the most frequent cause of cancer. Nicotine is addictive and increases cholesterol levels in the body. Carbon dioxide reduces oxygen in the blood which can lead to several organic disorders and a high blood pressure. Components of the gas can cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. Smoking also contributes to diseases like asthma, macular degeneration, bad breath, ulcers and impotence. Health insurance funds face all these sicknesses and pay a lot for therapies and preventions of recrudescences of the smoking population and so spent more money on them as on non- smokers. In the end charges for health insurances rise for everyone, smokers like non- smokers. Smoking not only harms those who smoke themselves, but those who get exposed to the dangerous fume. Babies who are born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are twice as likely to be born prematurely and with a lower birth weight. Those are the ones who should be protected most. But there is not only a risk from smoking pregnant women. The side-stream smoke between two puffs is much more dangerous than the directly inhaled smoke. It is proven that children who grow up in a smokers’ household or who get exposed to smoke have a higher risk to get asthma or bronchitis. They also are more vulnerable to develop allergies. For adult passive smokers the risk to suffer from pulmonary disorders and lung cancer increases. An increased risk of heart disease is not yet conclusive but seems to have a relation to second- hand smoking. Another disturbing factor for non- smokers is, that wherever they face smokers in public and get exposed to smoke, their clothes and hair smell displeasing and the scent is noticeable for hours. The biggest problem with effects on the whole world is the destruction of the environment. Air pollution should not be underestimated.