The Third Opinion. (Should smoking be banned in public places?)

Member Name: imagin8or

Product:	Should smoking be banned in public places?
Date:	08/07/01 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Far fewer kids take it up, fewer people wanting to give up because they made a mistake

Disadvantages: Some smokers won't like it, more hackers?

I've read these opinions, and I have a third opinion, different to the others. I'll start out straight. I'm a non-smoker, and what some people call an anti-smoker. Wait, this is going to be a deliberated argument, not a knee jerker.

I would like to make a prime distinction between public and private smoking. So far all the arguments I've read centre on the goodness or badness of smoking. That's not the issue. We all know its bad. The difference between public smoking and private smoking is influence. If you get completely slaughtered in your own home with your mates on the night of the big match, no problem. If you start dancing down the road waking up everyone who doesn't support Walshamstow on Tyne Athletic, big problem. The whole deal is in public perception.

If you read the opinions written by smokers, they're either ex-smokers, or people who wish they hadn't to begin with. I can guess how it feels when you wish you didn't hve to smoke and for all your good intentions to give up, everyone treats you like dirt anyway. That's the kind of thing that gets people's back up. That's not where I want to go. I think we can all agree that if you smoke it's bad for you, and that for all the world if tobacco didn't exist, life would be better, if only in Speakers' Corner.

So smoking is a bad thing. But it exists, and that's just part of life. People who smoke are addicted to it, so we can't just start pulling the cigarettes out of their mouths. They have a right not to be harrassed, at any rate. But we'd prefer it if we could prevent more people from starting to smoke without alienating those who do already. And the sensible way to do that is to keep it out of public places. There are many things in life that people like to do, that other people don't like. We just accept them and confine them to their own homes. If we confine smoking to private property whose owner does
n't mind, I think that we can move smoking's reputation from the hated to ignored. And that's a good thing. If you were a smoker, but noone knew, no problem. No prejudice, no "smoker's rights" arguments, no old women spraying smoking youths with fire extinguishers.

I know this won't be the easiest way for smokers, and that may be a slight problem for it, but we need to deal with the problem. With so many young people lighting up, the obvious fact of the matter is that it's considered a grown up thing to do, as kids don't smoke and adults visibly do. But if you take away the ability to smoke in public, fewer kids will take it up for the wrong reasons - peer pressure etc - and then regret it later. At the moment, lots of kids take it up to look adult and cool, then give it up when they either can't afford it or realise they'd rather not endanger their health. This way, kids would have to light up at home, and since most kids who smoke do so against their parents wishes, they're less likely to have a chance to smoke full stop. Thus it doesn't become such an addiction and it's easier to give up. If you are a smoker, and regret taking it up, think whether you would have been able to take it up, and whether you'd frankly have bothered, if you could only do so at home or in designated areas of a few pubs and restaurants.

I concur that smokers have their rights to smoke, and also that non-smokers do too to not be smoked 'on', and in this situation, we have a conflict of rights to which there's no clear resolution, other than that I have suggested. If you are a smoker, and proud of it, and you don't regret taking up smoking at all, please comment on this opinion and tell us all. If you don't see any of those, we'll assume you agree.

I think that the only way to prevent people getting addicted to the dreaded weed and spending all their money firstly on the governm
ent, then on the tobacco companies, then on the pharmaceuticals to rid themselves of it is to confine smoking to private property. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe they'll all take up hacking instead.

I'll await the flaming, email address to be found on my profile ;).

Summary: