Introduction

I choose this topic as smoking is a global problem that doesn’t only affect smokers but non-smokers too. I want to research in why smoking haven’t been banned yet, what smoking causes to smokers as well as non-smokers and what can be done to solve this problem. I also want to know what could be the possible scenarios if smoking is banned and if it will bring more solutions than problems.

The health problems of Smoking

The cons of smoking are primarily the health problems they bring. Smoking can cause lung cancer, heart diseases, bronchitis, and etc. Cigarettes contain 400 toxic substances and the most damaging of them are: tar which cause you lung cancer, nicotine that will increase your cholesterol level and cause you addiction to cigarettes and carbon monoxide which reduces the oxygen levels of your body. Smoking can reduce your life expectancy by 8 or 7 years and on average each cigarette you smoke shortens your life by about 11 minutes.

But why haven't smoking been banned as an illegal drug?

This is because of the right people have to make decisions including the one of damaging their own body. Never the less, it is a problem for many governments as passive smoking is attempting at other people health. The cloud of smoke that a smoker exhale is far more dangerous than the one that is directly inhale by smokers. For an infant which his age is below 2 years passive smoking can cause him respiratory infections and even death. Passive smoking on children causes them a high risk of getting asthma, bronchitis or to develop allergies. Passive smoking on adults causes them an increased risk of lung cancer.
Another reason why smoking isn’t banned is because of the money that the government make on tobacco taxes. But tobacco also is a cost for the government as it has to spend a lot of money on the large number of people who have smoking related problems and diseases.

Tobacco companies employ thousands of people in poor countries as India and if smoking is banned all this people would be unemployed as cigarettes wouldn’t be produced any more at least legally.

Benefits of Smoking

According to some sources smoking has some benefits too. According to them if you smoke it will help you deal with stress and anxiety problems because of the nicotine that is a chemical which for a short period of time will stop these feelings and make you feel relaxed. It lowers the Parkinson disease risk and contrary to popular believe it decrease your cha may also lower the risk of gum disease. It also decrease the risk of a rare skin cancer and it decreases too the risk of breast cancer. Smoking also decreases your chances of gaining Alzheimer disease.


I don’t think all of this may be completely true, and I'm not sure if all of the information referring to smoking benefits can be trusted, but I think some is true. Nicotine must have some therapeutic benefits as many legal and illegal drugs have but certainly the problems smoking cause outnumber its therapeutic benefits by far. If this wasn’t true then health organization would encourage us to smoke instead of encouraging no to do so.

What may happen if cigarettes are banned

If cigarettes are illegal it may not change too much the situation as people that smoke may continue smoking but what would change is that they will be doing illegally. This could bring many problems as smokers would be treated as criminals and a lot of the world population may be imprisoned. The other risk is that there will be black market violence and mafias could be created to distribute cigarettes through the population and many illegal clubs for smokers may be created as well. We know this could happen as we’ve seen it in the past in the Al Capone era with the prohibition of the alcohol. Many nicotine addicts would be imprisoned too instead of treated and lots of lives may be ruined.
But, if cigarettes are illegal then many health problems caused for smoke may be reduced as there are many people which respects law and don’t do anything illegal. At least it will solve the problem of second hand smoking as people who doesn’t want to smoke will never encounter the problem that there are people smoking as the smokers would be doing illegally on places for only people who want to smoke.

By education, taxation and regulation there have been a great reduce of smokers and it may be beneficial that we continue fighting cigarette smoking by this. Another option would be that smokers are only allowed to smoke in their house. In this way the second hand smoking would be reduced greatly without having to imprison and criminalizing smokers.

In the future people will continue smoking but I think that the number of smokers will be reduced. The number of smokers may be reduced in many countries and some day the smokers may be completely eradicated. Or it could turn out that there will always be smokers in the future and that we will not able to solve this problem totally. Either ways I do think that we will surely solve it partially.

Statistics and Data

“Worldwide, between 80,000 and 100,000 kids start smoking every day. Approximately one quarter of children alive in the Western Pacific Region* will die from smoking.” (http://quitsmoking.about.com/cs/antismoking/a/statistics.htm).

Around a third of all the global adult population smokes and 1 of 10 smokers will die because of a smoking disease. This statistics may be worst for the years to come if the trend continues.


Having said this we can see why it is so important to try people to stop smoking. Smoking is one of the things in the world that kills most people and as a global community it concerns us all to try to stop this problem in the best way we can.

This graph show how many people die because of smoking compared to how many people died because of  Aids, alchohol, etc. We can see that it is very high compared to the others, it helps us understand how serious is this theme.
Source: (https://www.msu.edu/user/dompiert/navigation/in_memory_of_dad/pages/smoking_facts.htm)

Global Perspective

On 2002 it was found the 1/3 of the world population smokes and 1 in 5 teenagers aged from 13 to 15 also smokes. Also, every 8 seconds someone dies because of smoking according to statistics. 10 million cigarettes are sold every minute. According to this statistics the tobacco is a huge problem in our society. Cigarettes have killed so much people that statistics show that cigarettes have killed 12 times the British people that were killed by World War II. 80 thousand to 100 thousand kids start smoking every day. This is a huge problem as we can see. Studies have also shown that cigarettes publicity affect a lot teenagers and incite them to start smoking.

Peru National Perspective of Smoking

In Peru, on the 30 of March of 2010 Peru’s congress approved the law of banning smoking in public places. This included workshops, hotels, restaurants, casinos, etc. Businesses owners will be given a year for their businesses to be adapted to this new law. This law was done in favour of the well-being of Peruvians health. The law will also require putting warning signs for consumers on both sides. This law was approved by 60 votes in favour, 4 votes against and 13 blank votes. It already have a law which indicate public spaces to have smoking areas but now smoking areas won’t exist anymore. But there isn’t any law in here that evade people from smoking in their properties or on open spaces, in fact I don’t know of any country that does.


I think many of the warnings doesn’t affect the decision of the smokers as they already have the addiction in their system, what really is decreasing the number of smokers are the laws that are making it more and more difficult to smoke like the law of not smoking in any public place or the one that avoid people from buying single cigarettes.

Personal Perspective

On my opinion smoking shouldn’t be banned as it will be a too extreme way of dealing with the smoking situation. I think it will bring more problems than solutions and instead of improving the situation of this problem it would just worsen it. I think that the solution to this problem would be to continue doing what governments have already been doing. And this is to reduce publicity on smoking, making cigarettes brands put warnings in their packages, making laws about public smoking, etc. In this way, the number of smokers will be reduced and reduced and someday there may be no smokers at all.

Possible course of action

A way to reduce the number of smokers in the future may be to keep implementing laws and keep restricting the use of cigarettes. In this way, the number of smokers will decrease slowly but efficiently because banning cigarettes may be a too extreme way of dealing with this situation. The number of smokers will decrease slowly but will decrease without having to imprison smokers as it will be if we ban smoking. This may be the only way of dealing with this theme because the course of action of banning smoking could bring more problems than solutions and the prohibition laws can seem like shortening the liberty of people.

Bibliography

http://www.writefix.com/argument/smokingbannedno.htm

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/smokehealth.htm
http://asthmalungdisease.suite101.com/article.cfm/benefits_of_smoking
http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/pressroom/pressrelease/pr102606c.cfm
http://www.forces.org/evidence/evid/therap.htm
http://www.peruviantimes.com/peru-congress-passes-law-banning-smoking-in-public-places/305490
http://quitsmoking.about.com/cs/antismoking/a/statistics.htm
https://www.msu.edu/user/dompiert/navigation/in_memory_of_dad/pages/smoking_facts.htm