Smokers Rights Essay Research Paper Should smokers

Smokers Rights Essay, Research Paper

Should smokers continue to have the right to smoke. This is a question that has been strongly debated over the last couple of years. Smokers believe that it is there right to smoke. While non-smokers say that smoking is a hazard to everyone s health and it should be restricted. This is a difficult issue because of the strong views of each side. The facts we will examine should help us determine whether or not smoking should be eliminated. Smokers main argument is that it is their right and choice to smoke. They believe that since the Federal Government mandates smoking as legal there choice to smoke is one that should never be taken away. They also feel segregated and oppressed by the new laws that limit when and where they can smoke. They acknowledge the health risks of smoking and many feel that the benefits of smoking out weigh the risks. Most smokers agree that quitting is very difficult if not impossible. Once someone has started smoking it becomes almost a necessity of everyday life. Smokers also believe that tobacco is not a drug since the Food and Drug Administration will not regulate tobacco. Smokers believe that there are a lot of lies about tobacco. Of all the lies hammered home in the war on tobacco, none is more pervasive than the one about the 400,000 deaths attributed to smoking each year. Smokers say that there is no credible evidence that supports this figure. In 1990 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported an estimated 419,000 Americans died because of smoking. A disease was attributed to smoking if the risk from dying from it was greater for smokers than for non-smokers. However, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention included in its death toll diseases for which the relative risk to smokers was statistically insignificant. This explains how the numbers could become skewed in the favor of more deaths due to smoking than actually occurred. For instance it is reasonable to claim that a smoker s lung cancer death was smoking related, as a smoker is twenty-three more times likely to die of that disease than a non-smoker, but it is not reasonable to make the same claim for cancer of the pancreas. If you exclude the percentage of those included in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention s calculations you reduce the tobacco related deaths by thirty-nine percent or one hundred and sixty-four thousand. Another statistical trick included in the smoking body count is the failure to correct for other variables. Tobacco use is not the only difference between Americans who smoke and Americans who do not. Smokers also tend to be people who drink too much, exercise too little, eat fewer fruits and vegetables, and have less money. Each of these factors can be a cause of death from a so-called smoking related disease. Again if you constitute for these factors it would significantly reduce the number of deaths related to smoking. However the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the surgeon general treat these factors as irrelevant. Nonsmokers main argument against smoking deals with the health effects for both the smoker and non-smoker. Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. It accounts for nearly five hundred thousand deaths per year, or one in every five deaths. Cigarette smoking also contributes to a remarkable number of diseases, including coronary heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, peripheral vascular disease, peptic ulcer disease, and many more types of cancer. There are also many irreversible health effects attributed with smoking; retardation in the rate of lung development and lung function, seventy-five percent of ex-smokers show changes in DNA suggestive to tumor development, circulatory damage to the heart, brain, and legs, visual impairment and loss, vocal cord growths and hoarseness, bone mineral loss, hip fractures, and spinal arthritis, serious health consequences for children born to smoking mothers, premature facial wrinkling and graying of the skin after as few as five years of smoking. Of the forty-six million smokers in the United States, thirty-four percent try to quit each year, but less than ten percent succeed. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately eighty percent of current adult smokers began smoking before their eighteenth birthday. Each day over three thousand teenagers light up for the first time. Most teens are aware of smoking hazards, but few are worried about them. Worse is that most teen smokers become addicted quickly to nicotine. They say they want to quit but are unable to do so. Teen smokers also experience high relapse rates and debilitating withdrawal symptoms. People who smoke for as brief as ten years show a substantially higher rate of death, disease and disability. Risks to the respiratory system, especially, and risks of cancer will continue to plague the ex-smoker for years even after quitting. Smokers must not kid themselves and believe that they can smoke freely for ten to fifteen years and then is they quit that they have become healthy and risk free as if they had never smoked at all. The bottom line is that smoking is costly, both to individual smokers as well as society as a whole. Long-term studies indicate that about half of all regular cigarette smokers will eventually die from there addiction.Nonsmokers agree that they have the right to not be subject