A New Exposure: Should cigarette smoking be banned?

I think it is safe to say that we all know someone in our lives that smokes or have smoked in the past. I personally have had family members who have engaged in the activity and friends who do the same. I’m not here to tell them that they are wrong for doing so but to hopefully reassure them about the potential health hazards that come along with the activity and to answer the overall question of; should cigarette smoking be banned.

First I want to start this off by talking about some of the background that comes along with smoking and then get to the question at hand. As stated by the CDC, cigarettes kill 480,000 people every year and that number continues to rise as the activity becomes more popular. Also stated in a different article, which I thought was really moving about cigarettes was that;

"They kill more people than cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and all other illegal drugs combined."

That is truly unbelievable to grasp the amount of people that die every year. To gain hold of how many people that is, imagine losing the entire city of Sacramento, California. There are around 475,000 people living there. It is unimaginable to loose that many people every year.

Looking up facts on the hazards of smoking is a scary thing. We know its bad, we know that the chemicals that are placed inside of them are bad, but yet people continue to smoke. Some of the few most notable ones are:

Chemicals inside cigarettes

•      Cyanhydric Acid (was used in gas chambers)
•      Methanol (used as rocket fuel)
•      Arsenic (lethal poison)
•      Nicotine (used as a herbicide and insecticide)
•      DDT (insecticide)
•      Carbon Monoxide (found in exhaust fumes)
•      Vinyl Chloride (used in plastic materials)

With all those chemicals being mixed together the lead to a very unhealthy mix of complications that can come along with it. Some of the major diseases are:

•      Cardiovascular disease
•      Cancer
•      COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)

All of which can lead to and early and premature death.

Smoking has been made out to be the “cool” thing to do by a lot of Hollywood productions and work that comes out of there. As it has been made to be a popular thing to do there are lots of work to try and counteract those attempts. I will always remember this anti-smoking ad I saw on TV one day. 

The constant debate of if smoking should be banned is something that will always be around. A cool site called debate.org asks normal people their opinions on topics and the one they have going on this current issue has a split of 50-50.  

I feel personally you can’t and shouldn’t ban smoking. Yes, it is bad for you and ultimately can lead to you dying early but this is not something I feel can be contained. If we are to ban it based off the fact that it is unhealthy for us then there are a lot more things that need to be banned as well. As I do not condone the activity of smoking and would hope my loved ones wouldn’t do it as well I can only try and bring the negative aspects to light and hope they can see what this can do to you.