Argumentative Essay about Smoking Ban

Abstract With the development of global economy, citizens' life condition has significant improvement in various countries. in case of this, these countries contribute to control the air pollution and improve the environment in order to offer a better surrounding for its people to live. Then, they try to limit the sales and production of cigarettes, even totally banning it; which some people disagree with this. Based on a journalist, Bill Wirtz’s article that five reasons why the government should stop banning smokes, I applied several thoughts about his opinions. Should we completely ban the production and sale of cigarettes or not? Should we completely ban the production and sale of cigarettes? Have you ever heart that someone who smokes more than fifty years but dead on the age of 100? I have heart this and even saw this by myself. He is my grandfather’s friend who smokes a least half a box of cigarettes a day even when he was 90 years old; his death just because of he is too old to continue living on. It’s easy to find that there will always be someone smoke in public areas in the past, and it seems that it has been a common behavior around people. This misbehavior was improved because of the federal laws that governments and people generally realize the huge damage of cigarettes. Although the situation has improved, the problem continues. Furthermore, a lot of research show that the smoking age is becoming earlier than before, which means plenty of people start smoking at the age of 15, even earlier. So that many political scientists believe that it’s time to stop producing and sales cigarettes instead of just limitations. Background/Context: Problem Continues After the 1800s, the produce and sale of cigarettes have a significant increase, which leads to a huge profit for the factories and countries. however, when more smoker occurs, more problem exists. It damages people’s health a lot, which causes cancer and kinds of diseases when people smoke much. In the middle of the 1900s, the western countries realize the severity if they still didn’t control the produce and sales of cigarettes. So, they adapted some laws to limit the Tabaco industries. Then, the tobacco industry has re-focused its promotional efforts onto the less developed countries. The often-weak regulatory environment in these countries has further encouraged the industry to target populations in these nations (Brandt, 2007). More and more Tabaco factories come into the local market to desire huge profits and costs, which leads to the problem spread over the worldwide. During earlier 2000s, some developing country realize the necessities of air pollution and health destroy due to cigarettes, they also adapted some laws to limit the sales and production of cigarettes. However, no one wants to give up such a huge profit, they try to make a profitable contract for both sides, the government, and the factories. Finally, the problem did not get any solutions, it continues. Appeals Ethos A report made by Dr. Robert shows that smoking in the twentieth century killed only 100 million people, whereas a billion could perish in our century unless we reverse course, and even if present rates of consumption drop steadily to zero by 2100, there will still be about 300 million tobacco deaths this century (Robert, 2013). We could certainly sure that although less people smoke than previous years, as long as the issue retains, the problem will remain at all times. Because of this kind of problem, plenty of people’s death will lead to a huge number of families destroy. In the case stands, we could imagine that a man’s dead could hurt his family a lot, not only on their wealthy, but also on mental. In another word, if the governments do not take any control on the sales and production of cigarettes, the problem would be more seriously and might destroy people’s confidence toward to the society and country, they will try to escape this kind of country. Then, a confused and failure social system would happen. By the way, more and more people would die, not only because of smokes but also second-hand smokes. So, how can we do not take any measure to limit the cigarettes? Logos According to the National Medical Institution’s research, it attains a result that both active and passive smoking are damaging to human health and have associated economic costs (Ekpu, V. U., & Brown, A. K. (2015). It’s known that smoking is bad to our body, it might cause cancer and some unreasonable disease; it would also cause death somehow. Due to that a lot of people death, which would reduce the labor market and cost a lot of money to cure their disease. Also, the government would spend a lot on the health institution to establish a comparative healthy system. According to the top right graph, it’s easily to know that the deaths that caused by smoking has the most proportion over these six comparative causes and the number of deaths that smoking caused is more than the sum of rest five factors. How terrible it is! However, this graph just shows the causes by percentage in America, I believe that other countries must have the same data as the United States have, even much more than it. Under such a terrible situation, we could picture how much money that the government spent to control the cigarettes recent years. By the way, the data the graph shows were after the implementation of smoke bans, which would be horrible if we stop banning cigarettes. Figure 1. HIV-AIDS Survey Report: Suicide in America. (2014) Pathos Smoking is not just suicide, it is murder! As we know that people who smoke second-hand smoke tend to suffer more damage to the body than smokers, especially the families who always stay with smokers. In the United States, smoking is not allowed indoors, such as schools, homes or in some public places; and it is only allowed to smoke at specific locations. Some people who do not want to hurt their loves, then they try to stop smoking. This results that when there's a total smoking ban in the home, smokers are more likely to reduce tobacco consumption and attempt to quit than when they're allowed to smoke in some parts of the house (Ellis, 2013). Figure 2. Smoking is Murder! (2011) In general, cigarettes not only cause great harm to the body of the smoker but also adversely affect people around the smoker. The common sense that smoking is a bad habit has been printed in the minds of many people. However, with the progress of the times, the physical and mental health of adolescents is more susceptible to the bad habits of society. This is reflected in the fact that the average age of smoking in the society is earlier than before. When I was in junior high school in China, I found that many middle school students had already started to learn to smoke. However, they are not ashamed of this, but very proud of this instead; their values are influenced by the people around them at a very young age. And those people who can influence the youngers at this age are obviously their parents, the people they are closest to. From this, we can see the importance of sales and production controls on cigarettes. All of the previous content states that completely ban the production and sale of cigarettes is the best choice for our government and our citizens. However, there are also some people disagree with this and even think that the government should lift restrictions on smoking. A young Voices Advocate said in his article that “Most fundamentally, the debate about smoking bans should center on private property rights. Whether you should be allowed to smoke in a bar should be determined by the owner of that bar, not by busybody bureaucrats who think they know how to live everyone’s lives for them (Bill, 2017).” Besides this, he also lists another four reasons why government should end smoking bans. he believes that smoking is not only personal properties but also do not have so much damage on human body and a most people who read this agree with his opinions. It’s true that everyone has their own rights to do what they want, but this must base on the regulator and laws, also social responsibilities. We can never do something that just benefit ourselves but hurt others. Smoking itself is not a misbehavior or a bad thing, but when we use it and have a bad influence on others, it is. Conclusion With the development of global economy, people's living standards in various countries have been greatly improved. In today's society, it is not the food problem or other problem that poses a greater threat to human health, but personal living habits, especially smoking. The measures are taken by the government always do not meet the requirements of all, but it is a good policy as long as it meets the requirements of most people. For cigarettes, a completely ban is not realistic, but it is possible to minimize the demand and supply of cigarettes by increasing tobacco taxes, while also reducing the number of smokers to a considerable extent (Sharbaugh,2018). Every misbehavior disappears starts at the decline of its user; add a tax on cigarettes will help a lot to reduce smokers. Another effective measure is to let young parents know the profound impact of their behavior on their children while deeply admonishing the harmful effects of youth smoking. This can effectively prevent young students from being affected by bad behavior habits at an early stage, and at the same time, there is a corresponding reduction in the total number of smokers. Reference Artifact Link: Wirtz, Bill. (2017). Five Reasons to End Government Smoking Bans. FEE. Retrieved from https://fee.org/articles/five-reasons-to-end-government-smoking-bans/#disqus_thread Source: 1. Brandt AM. (2007). The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America. Basic Books. New York, 2007. Retrieved from https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/31899/uncategorized/a-brief-history-of-smoking/ 2. Ekpu, V. U., & Brown, A. K. (2015). The Economic Impact of Smoking and of Reducing Smoking Prevalence: Review of Evidence. Tobacco use insights, 8, 1-35. doi:10.4137/TUI.S15628. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4502793/ 3. Ellis, Marie. (2013). Total smoking bans effectively help smokers quit, study shows. Medical News Today. Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270463.php 4. Proctor, N. Robert. (2013). Why ban the sale of cigarettes? The case for abolition. PMC, i27–i30. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632991/ 5. Sharbaugh, M. S., Althouse, A. D., Thoma, F. W., Lee, J. S., Figueredo, V. M., & Mulukutla, S. R. (2018). Impact of cigarette taxes on smoking prevalence from 2001-2015: A report using the Behavioral and Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). PLoS ONE, 13(9), 1–10. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.uky.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0204416 6. Image: 7. Figure 1. Whalen, Mark. (2011). How to Quit Smoking. PassMark Publishing Co. Retrieved from http://www.presmark.com/htmlfile/Comparison.html 8. Figure 2. Caffarena, Paulino. (2011). Smoking is Murder! Armenian MedMedia. Retrieved from http://www.health.am/ab/more/smoking-is-murder/