FREE ESSAY ON BAN SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES

BAN SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES

Banning smoking in public places
Before people start smoking they have a choice, but once you are a smoker that choice
goes and you then become an addict.
Smoking is the inhalation and exhalation of the fumes of burning tobacco.
The dried leaves of plants are smoked in a pipe or in cigar form, but mostly in
cigarettes.
European explores arriving in the western hemisphere observed native American smoking
leaves of the tobacco plant in pipes, and the practice was introduced onto England in the
1500's. The general attitude was that smoking relieved tension and produced no ill
effects. Epidemiologists soon noticed that lung cancer was on the increase. The public at
large was ignorant to this fact. At first the medical profession were viewed with
scepticism. It took many years for their voices to be heard. Medical science has now
proved beyond a doubt that SMOKING KILLS. 
Most smokers will tell you that it is their choice to smoke, that may be the case but
what if that smoker is a female and pregnant, what if that smoker sits in a room filled
with young children and inflicts her choice on to them. Smoking has become anti social in
the 1990,s and the non-smokers voice can now be heard loud and clear. The government has
an ongoing campaign to make mothers aware of the damage-smoking can do to the defenceless
unborn child. If a woman smokes during pregnancy the she delivers nicotine and carbon
monoxide into her babies blood stream. The baby is more likely to be born small and be
more prone to illness in the first months of it s life than the child of non-smokers.
Doctors have also said that it has been linked to cot deaths. Statistics show that the
risk of a stillborn baby or one, who dies in the first week of birth, increases with
every cigarette smoked.
People have a right to sit on a bus or in a cinema and not be the victims of passive
smoking. A report published in the 1988 showed that passive smoking (breathing in other
people's smoke) can increase a non-smoker's chance of getting cancer by 10-32%. Passive
smoking can also causes chest complaints and general ill health. Research shows that
children in the same room as smokers breathe in sidestream smoke which comes of the end
of a lighted cigarette. They also breathe in main stream smoke, which the smoker breathes
out. The pressure is now on the smoker as they are now the minority.
Non smokers want to travel to work and enjoy leisure activities in a smoke free
environment and it is their right. Why should I have to go out and have my health damaged
and my clothes ruined or made smelly by other people with a bad and dangerous habit.
Libraries and most public places have a no smoking policy. Restaurants have smoking
tables but this does not prevent the smoke or the smell reaching other tables. Government
policy has to be expanded to cover every aspect of smoking in public. It has reached the
stage were it is an offence to drink alcohol in the street this should be the same for
tobacco. Young children are easily influenced and the sight of a teenager smoking could
be the trigger to turn that child into a smoker. Much as we feel sorry for these addicts
it is them who made the initial choice. They should not be permitted to force on us.