by J.K Citrus

Created on: September 15, 2008

Should weapons be allowed at school? Should we allow drinking and driving? Should drugs be legal? The answer to all of these questions is plain and simple. No. Of course not! If all of these things shouldn't be allowed, then why should there be an exception made for smoking?

By smoking in public places, where children can see you, you are setting a terrible example for them. If they see adults smoking anywhere they go, what kind of a message are they receiving? "Smoking is okay, everyone is doing it?" That shouldn't be the case. If we can embed that smoking is bad in children's minds now, then we are on the right track. Kids are our world's future generations. They are the ones that are going to be dealing with environmental and health issues years from now. But, how can we go about doing this if they go to a store, or the library and they see a cigarette sticking out of the mouths of lots of people? No smoking presentations and guest speakers just aren't going to cut it if they see their idols smoking. They are eventually going to question why we are telling them it is bad when we are doing it!

Smoking can kill you, it's a simple and powerful fact, but it seems that many people don't recognize this. Drinking and driving, weapons and drugs also cause numerous deaths, therefore they are banned. People know they are not good at all, and mostly stay away from them, but smoking isn't always labeled as bad immediately. What many people don't know is that on average more people die from tobacco than the total of various death causes combined. Many deaths can't be prevented, so when you have a choice between life and death, you are lucky, and why would you make the wrong decision?

If after all of this, people STILL choose to smoke, okay. However unintelligent, this was their choice, but then why would they want to affect other people with it? Why not smoke in a private place but try to force other people, who decided to refuse the cigarette to breathe in their smoke?

We don't want innocent people in our world dying and getting sick because of smoke, so why would we allow smoking in public places? In places where toddlers, children, and the rest of our non smoking population live, play, and learn? In safe places that they would now be inhaling second hand smoke? How fair is it to take away that big decision of smoking or not smoking? How fair is it that people who get to make that choice, and make the wrong one, force it upon innocent people to take the consequences with them? Make the right choice and don't encourage smoking in public places.

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