by Dr. Franks Tin

Created on: January 01, 2009   Last Updated: January 02, 2009

Should murder and suicide be allowed? Any civilized individual would respond to the this question negatively, unless of course the individual happened to be a murderer himself/herself. The same question can be asked for smoking and the answers would remain the same for the smokers would say "yes" and the non-smokers "no". In fact; smoking and murder/suicide are related quite closely. Smoking can lead to lung diseases, cardiovascular diseases and many assists in other forms of diseases for both the smokers and the passive smokers. But then if it is a form of murder and suicide then why is it not considered completely illegal?

The main problem with the concept of completely banning smoking is that there is a huge amount of people who are already addicted to it, which might arise a problem of a huge unrest. Furthermore; if smoking is declared illegal then the companies supplying the cigarettes and cigars would also be considered to be illegal and many of these companies are in fact highly lucrative public limited companies and multinationals who are directly and indirectly responsible for quite a number of jobs. Jobs that are becoming harder and harder to find in these financial times and the sudden removal of them will cause chaos.

So why the ban of smoking in public places?

The ban is just a step to the complete removal of smoking. It attempts to reduce the number of smokers, especially the under aged ones, and tries to slowly decrease the number of employees employed in the sector. This will prevent a chaos when the ultimate decision is made. Furthermore; research has illustrated that even a single puff of pure cigarette smoke can lead to death which gives us an example of how dangerous passive smoking is. Fortunately, the smokers and passive smokers breath in air with the smoke and thus prevent smoking from guiding them to instant death.

So should smoking be allowed in public places?

In my opinion, it should not be permitted for smoking is a disease and diseases should be treated as soon as possible. But unfortunately, the risk of instantly removing smoking from our society is so great that it should not be practised and therefore it has to kicked out of our community in one step at a time. And the step that has been taking is a justified and a rightful one for it protects the interest of the general public and provides them with better health. Even if this idea seems to be a bit communist it is the only measure that could have been taken after the countless education programmes held by the government to encourage the citizens to stop smoking.

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