Smoking effects on public health

¶ … Social Ethics of Smoking

Cigarette smoking has long been known to be associated with serious medical issues, including heart diseases, emphysema, respiratory and circulatory problems, as well as cancers of lung, throat, and tissues of the mouth. According to most medical authorities, cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of preventable death, exceeding those from vehicular accidents, drug abuse of all forms, and criminal violence, combined.

In the last decade, increased attention has also been focused on the risks of second- hand smoke, after numerous studies implicating second-hand smoke in various respiratory diseases and lung cancer among individuals who have never smoked, but were exposed over the long-term to the smoke from others. This is particularly troubling in the case of children of smokers, and recent legislation in several states has prohibited smoking in vehicles containing children for that reason. Anti-smoking legislation has steadily increased, in general, as the evidence of the dangers of second-hand smoke becomes more convincing.

In many respects, smoking in public areas should be prohibited, because nobody has the right to expose anybody else to the risks of smoking without their consent. Many smokers resent these increasing limitations on their freedom, as long as smoking is legal.

What they fail to understand is that many types of conduct are perfectly legal to pursue in private, but illegal to do so in public, precisely because the moral and legal right to engage in risky activities does not include exposing others to those risks. Listening to music is perfectly legal, but restricted in certain public areas, merely because others may not wish to listen to it. Music is a completely benign activity that does not cause any diseases, but it is restricted in some public areas simply because it can be annoying to others. Nudity presents no risk to others either, and is perfectly legal in private, but restricted in public for similar reasons. Surely, if relatively harmless things like playing music and being naked can be prohibited in public, then anything actually capable of causing serious disease to non- participants should be, even more so.

In some respects, there are good reasons for outlawing cigarette smoking altogether, the exact same way smoking marijuana is already illegal. Like cigarettes, marijuana is only harmful to the smoker or to others who breath in second-hand smoke. Nevertheless, it is illegal to smoke marijuana, even in absolute private in one's own home. It is difficult to understand why smoking one type of vegetation should be perfectly legal, (even in public where others are exposed to its harms), while it is illegal to smoke another type of vegetation, even in private.

If anything, the manner in which typical cigarette smokers consume 10 or 20 or even 30 or 40 cigarettes every day is much more harmful to the smoker than the typical way most marijuana smokers use marijuana infrequently, or even daily. One obvious difference between marijuana and tobacco is that the former can impair one's judgment and therefore become dangerous when combined with driving. However, this is equally true of alcohol consumption, which is only prohibited in association with driving, but permissible in private.