by Elizabeth Elia

Created on: September 03, 2011

There are some things in life that you have to decide for yourself, some that you have to speak up about, and some that you just have to ignore. You may not always see it, but sometimes acting out of personal want can cause others much emotional or physical distress. Do I think smoking should be illegal? No. I think that is for each individual person to decide. We live in America, a democracy, where these types of things are your rights and liberties to choose between. You always have a choice. No matter the circumstance, there always is a choice. And like every action, there is always a reaction.

Many people say that smoking is a ‘nasty habit’ and is ‘offensive’. But in America, everyone has their habits, both good and bad, and that’s okay. Just so long as it doesn’t impeach onto others rights. For example: drinking. It’s legal, if you’re over twenty- one years of age, even though at this age it still kills brain cells, and they won’t grow back. Excessive drinking causes people to act foolish, and thus do stupid things. Such as getting in a car and driving. Did you know that one person is killed every half hour because of drunk driving?  And every other minute a person is ‘seriously injured in an alcohol related crash.’? Also, drinking can be addictive. People that ‘get drunk’ have often been known to be violent, aggressive, foolish, arrogant, emotional, and to forget things that happened when drunk. That sounds way worse than smoking.

Smoking ‘increases the smoker’s risk of death and illness from a wide variety of diseases.’ That’s horrible, true. Yet I don’t see how choosing to do something that is harmful to your own individual life harms anyone else. Sure, maybe your friend dies of lung cancer. That’s horrible; and that was their choice. If a law passes restricting smoking, that will open a floodgate of other laws restricting many other things. And in time, we will find that America’s People have lost their right of choosing, whether it is for something as simple as a smoke at the end of a particularly rough day at work. In the end, we will realize that everyone is always fighting over the big issues (like insurance, and, of course, money), but almost no one is fighting for the small things that don’t really actually matter, but define us. It’s like that song you can’t stop listening to: you love it. You don’t

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