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The right to smoke cigarettes became a debatable issue the day the Surgeon General enforced a health warning on cigarette packages. Prior to that, smoking in public had been accepted as a social code of behaviour, and even though many people still preferred to not smoke, it was never a concern to be brought into light.

While the warning on the cigarette packages cautioning that smoking may be hazardous to your health, no specific inferences were documented at that time to support the speculation. However, many private and publicly funded research teams elected to study the effects that smoking cigarettes had on the body, and their findings were conclusive.

The average cigarette has up to 700 chemical additives, many of which are considered to be toxic. A lit cigarette reaches a temperature of almost 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it releases thousands of chemical compounds. These include carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, carcinogens and mutagens, all of which are inhaled by the smoker.

Nicotine, an ingredient found naturally in tobacco, has no colour or odour, but is the addictive agent found in the cigarettes that compels the smoker to need more. When inhaled, nicotine rides on the back of tiny tar particles in the smoke, and within seconds of being inhaled into the lungs, the nicotine enters the blood stream and is spread to the brain and all areas of the body.

Nicotine raises the heart rate and the blood pressure, giving the smoker the sensation of being more alert yet more relaxed at the same time. As the effects of the drug begin to wear off some thirty minutes later, the body becomes tired and edgy and craves for more.

Meanwhile, the tar begins to accumulate on the bronchial tubes leading to the lungs. The hot smoke burns the tiny cilia that normally trap invasions from getting to the lungs, and the level of carbon monoxide in the lungs increases, allowing the poisonous gases to be quickly absorbed into the bloodstream.

Some of the noted results of cigarette smoking are: it is painfully addictive; the heart must work much harder than it should; the body becomes weak causing even small physical tasks to become major endurances; there are increased levels of carbon monoxide in the bloodstream that can impair vision, perception of time and coordination. But the deadliest of all is that it has now become the main cause of death every year through lung and related cancers.

Second hand smoke is equally dangerous. It does not lose any of its attributes once it has been exhaled. The danger the crime is that innocent people who inhale the second hand smoke will suffer all the same consequences as the smoker.

Should cigarette smokers be allowed to smoke in their cars with their children? No, this act must be banned. Children do not deserve the horrific penalties that will come to them because their irresponsible parent or caretaker has no concern for their life.

And this is not Big Brother stepping in and telling us how to act. It's sad when it has to come down to that, to having a high authority make it law because we are not mature enough and responsible enough to account for our actions when we know how deadly the consequences of smoking cigarettes is.

It's not a matter of being forced to follow a social protocol against your own will; it's a matter of preserving the most precious existence in the world, and that is life!

Learn more about this author, Ronnie Dauber.
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