Should Smoking Be Banned?

Nathan Hankinson

Argument Essay

Luongo 3rd

6 December 2012

Should Smoking be Banned

Smokers should just erase themselves from this earth. The health defects of smoking causes people who smoke to usually die earlier than people who are smoke-free. Smoking should be banned because it causes cancer(s), affects not just the primary smoker, and has many long-term health risks.

Smoking not only kills the people who smoke, it also affects many and kills even more people who just simply breathe it in every day. Secondhand smoke is a major, rising problem not only in the United States, but around the world. It is affecting the lives of nonsmoking individuals who choose to be healthy by not smoking but the smoke in the air tends to choose otherwise. “A new study in 192 countries found that smoking causes more than 443,000 deaths a year” (“Deaths from…”), which is equivalent to wiping out almost half of Rhode Island at once. Getting rid of smoking at once will dramatically decrease the amount of deaths from smoking, but there still may be deaths from cigarette smoke causes because of the process of illegally buying and or selling cigarettes post-ban. Other than smoking cigarettes directly, “exposure to secondhand smoke causes nearly 50,000 deaths each year among adults in the United States” (“Tobacco-related”) alone. If you put it into perspective, that is a completely filled Citizen’s Bank Park (Philadelphia Phillies Stadium) of adults that chose the right thing to do in life by not smoking, yet they were still killed by it because of smokers around them.

Smoking harmful to both the smoker and the people who are near him/her, but it’s also considered a public nuisance to many. There are a large amount of human beings, not just adults, which are almost constantly annoyed and discomforted by the sight and smell of smoke when they are in a public place. It’s not just an annoyance because it’s been proven that “involuntary smoking involves exposure to the same numerous carcinogens and toxic substances that are present in tobacco smoke produced by active smoking” (“Involuntary…”). Also, “secondhand smoke is a ‘toxic