As we were walking home after school, we met a certain man smoking in the pavement and it made me sneeze several times. I complained about smoking in public to my friends and the boys in our company disputed it. One of my friends Dave said that we ladies love ourselves so much and should keep off other people’s lives and let them smoke. He claimed that they can do it anywhere they want because it is their life and body and if it was harmful, it will affect their bodies, yet we have been taught severally that smoking is harmful to our health.
The claim is that people can smoke in public places. The support is because it is their health that will be affected and the warrant is that ladies are so proud of themselves and they should mind their business and let men smoke. I pointed out that secondhand smoke highly affects non-smokers because most of the smoke is exhaled and the people near the person smoking inhale it can cause severe health problems but Dave my friend continued arguing that people should keep distance from smokers. I decided to explain to him how it severely affects our health.
Secondhand smoke contains harmful substances and chemicals like hydrogen cynade, benzene and vinyl chloride which are known to cause cancer, coronary diseases and respiratory problems. In a numbers of studies, exposure to second hand smoke has been shown to increase the risks of heart disease and that is why smoking should be banned in public places in order to save lives. Children are the most affected by secondhand smoking since they are still at their development stage and exposing them to secondhand smoke puts them at risk of severe respiratory diseases (Rosenbaum 65).
Some smokers smoke in public arguing that it is their health, their body and they can do whatever they want with it the way Dave argues but they should also consider the people surrounding them. Their argument that it is their health is irrelevant because it affects both the smoker and the non-smoker.
Finally, we both agreed that smoking should be totally banned from public places in order to save innocent lives being lost from diseases caused by secondhand smoke. Those smoking can do it but not in public places since it is not illegal to smoke. They should consider that everyone has the right and freedom to live and breathe freely and so they should not deny people this freedom by smoking in public and contaminating the air, they can do it somewhere else.
Work Cited
Rosenbaum, Thane. Second Hand Smoke. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Print.
