Cigarettes

Subject:  Should cigarettes be illegal?

        Cigarette use became widespread in the late 1800’s when James Bonsack created the first cigarette-making machine (History).  However, it was not until fairly recently that people discovered just how harmful smoking cigarettes could actually be to ones health.  Some see smoking cigarettes as a choice and believe banning them would be unethical while others evaluate potential risks and can’t see any benefit in their widespread use.

           According to the World Health Organization, “every 8 seconds someone dies from tobacco use” (Smokers).  However, it is a common misconception that smoking is only linked to lung cancer and heart disease.  In reality, smoking can also lead to stomach ulcers, psoriasis, deformed sperm, and hair loss.  One does not have to be a smoker to absorb the effects of cigarette smoke.  Environmental tobacco smoke (second hand smoke), contains “7,000 chemical compounds…more than 250 of these chemicals are harmful…69 are known to cause cancer”(Secondhand).  In fact there are, about 46,000 deaths from heart disease in people who are non-smokers, and “3.400 lung cancer deaths in non-smoking adults”(Secondhand).  Smoking cigarettes does not only negatively effect ones health, but also ones wallet.  In the United States, the costs of extra medical care due to second hand smoke is more than $10 billion per year (Smoking).

        The illegalization of cigarettes would have major economical effects.  According to the “Tobacco Atlas”, the profits in the tobacco industry are greater than ever.  They estimate that revenues from “the global tobacco industry are likely to approach a half trillion dollars annually”(New).  Also, there are over 800,000 people working in the U.S. tobacco industry and over 136,000 farms (History).  Banning cigarettes would leave hundreds of thousands of people unemployed across the U.S.  However, the effects of banning cigarette smoke would not only correlate to the economy but could also lead to the rise of black markets.  In a study done in U.S. prisons, when a location changed its cigarette policy it was shown that the emergence of black markets were prevalent.  This could foreshadow what may happen if cigarettes are banned everywhere in the U.S. (Smoke).

        In reality and based upon the facts, making cigarettes illegal would cause public disarray.  Discouraging one from smoking is much more attainable, and introducing new policies either to the general public or in the work force could successfully bring this idea into fruition.  Wal-Mart has recently imposed higher premiums on workers who are known smokers.  They reached this decision because “tobacco users generally consume about 25 percent more healthcare services than nontobacco users”(Abelson).  However, Wal-Mart did not stop there.  The company has started offering an anti-smoking program this year to aid employees in the process, and since then more than 13,000 employees enrolled.  Another way to discourage an individual from smoking is by using cigarette alternatives.  In Italy, Riccardo Polosa recruited 40 hard-core smokers and gave them each an e-cigarette.  The e-cigarette provides the smoker with small puffs of nicotine “without the noxious substances found in cigarettes smoke”(Tierney).  After six months, over half of the smokers cut their cigarette consumption by 50 percent and “nearly a quarter had stopped altogether”(Tierney).  Creating alternative ways to encourage smokers from picking up a cigarette does work, and with a little effort, the success seen by Wal-Mart and the creation of the e-cigarette could be a start to a smoke-free future.

Works Cited

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