By: Michael Slane
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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.
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