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View: Smoking ban allows others to breathe
While leisurely walking outdoors or sitting down to eat a meal outside, many
students may have noticed the nuisance of breathing the noxious fumes of a nearby
smoker, obliviously puffing away while students are forced to share his or her
toxic air. Recently, Calabasas, a relatively small beach community about 30 minutes
north of Los Angeles, decided to ban smoking in all public spaces, with the exception
of a few selected areas, saving the
lungs of its health-conscious citizens.
The new law prohibits smoking cigarettes where others may be exposed to the second-hand
smoke and requires smokers to smoke within the confines of a specifically designated
area or “at least 20 feet away from any path of travel, doorway or place
where people congregate,” according to the city of Calabasas Web site.
The punishment for violating this new law ranges from warnings and tickets to
lawsuits.
While many smokers may contest that the new law inhibits smokers’ ability
to relieve their stress when and where they please, this new law restores non-smokers’ ability
to breathe clean, fresh air and relieves these health-minded citizens of the
burden of worrying over their exposure to the more than 60 cancer-causing chemicals
that lurk within the smoke from tobacco products. No longer will the people of
Calabasas have to suffocate from deadly carcinogens that linger within every
puff of smoke seeping from the tip of selfish smoker’s cigarettes.
Amid the overlooked benefits of this law is the fact that children, whose developing
lungs are more susceptible to the toxic fumes of tobacco smoke than adults, will
be spared the exposure to harmful chemicals and may be less likely to start smoking
when they are older.
The image of smoking cigarettes has gained a glamorous appeal over the past century,
luring many young people into the habit of smoking. If children see the smokers
in their community as pariahs acting in an undesirable manner they may be less
likely to take up the habit than their peers who have only seen smoking as an
alternative lifestyle.
A wise person once likened smoking in public areas to peeing in a pool. Although
you may pee in your own secluded region of the pool, eventually the urine will
disperse, affecting everyone in the pool. Smoking works the same way. The contaminated
air disperses into the areas around it where other people will have to suffer
for someone else’s decision.
Although smoking outdoors is legal outside of Calabasas, smokers should have
consideration for the people in the areas immediately surrounding them.
Exposing others to the extremely harmful substances in tobacco products is absolutely
detestable. General respect for others should be a primary concern that everyone
needs to consider before acting in a way that directly affects others.
Hopefully all us breathers outside of Calabasas can eventually have the opportunity
to stroll the streets of our cities without coughing because of the noxious vapors
emitted from the butt of a cigarette.
Efforts like those in Calabasas, if done elsewhere in our Golden State and abroad,
will finally help stomp out smoking once and for all. California’s laws
prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars is a strong step in the right direction,
but more is needed.
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