by Linda Corby

Created on: February 16, 2010

Yes smoking should be allowed in public places, it is still a legal activity and the Government has no qualms about taxing  people for the cigarettes they purchase.

Once you start excluding any sector of society from any of the standard benefits available to the rest of society you are in fact condoning people behaving in a racist type manner to that sector, any form of apartheid is wrong, segregation of someone or a group of people because of the colour of their skin, their size, age, or the fact that they happen to smoke, which is after all in fact still a legal activity, is morally and ethically wrong.  If anyone should be punished financially to cover any health costs caused by smoking it should be the tobacco companies, especially for those who started smoking back in the days when no health warning was put on the cigarette packets, they should in my opinion be awarded some kind of compensation for the damage that has been done to them, and not stigmatized by others or excluded from health treatments.

How ridicules can one get. To start with the majority of heavy smokers started smoking well before any warnings where printed on any cigarette packets, I know because I was one of them. I have given up smoking but it sure as heck wasn’t an easy thing to do, many Doctors say that it is a harder habit to break than a heroin addiction is!

I would never have started smoking in the first place if there had been danger warnings on the packets back then as there are now, and all too many smokers agree with me about this.

 The taxes collected off smokers when buying their cigarettes over the period of time that they smoke, easily cover any medical expenses that they incur, in fact when one works it out smokers are or have in the past  paid more than their fair share in taxes, if all smokers quit instantly the Government would have a big hole in their tax collection box, and I very much doubt that all the taxes that come from cigarettes goes anywhere near the health services pot, just like I very much doubt that all the taxes collected via road offenses or parking fines goes into the road repair etc pot.

Although I do not now smoke myself I still feel it is wrong to penalise smokers by making health services unavailable to them at any future date, they are after all paying more that their fair share of taxes in the first place to cover their treatment should they become ill!  It is a slippery slope to take, because obese people will be next in line to be excluded from medical assistance, followed closely by many others, in the end it will include the exclusion of the aged or and even the disabled. It is not fair to penalize those who took up a legal habit before the risks of doing so were known.

The ban on smoking in pubs in the UK has only resulted in the loss of pubs, so just how many people have been put out of work because of the smoking ban in pubs, a heck of a lot and this is only one example of how the smoking ban has effected the none smokers as well as the smokers.

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