By Andrea Banda
Assistant Opinions Editor
Two weeks ago I sat down on a bench outside the Southwest Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, waiting for my roommate to pick me up from my weekend trip home. Two people sat down on the same bench shortly there after. I cringed when minutes later the smell of smoke wafted through the air into my face. Another minute later I heard the flick of a lighter and the smoke completely surrounded me. When my roommate arrived, she said she could smell smoke in my hair and clothes. You would have thought I had smoked half a pack myself.
New York City is currently in turmoil over whether the city should ban smoking from
all public places. Restaurant, nightclub and bar owners are in a frenzy as they fear loss of profits from the large number of smokers who frequent their establishments.
This proposal is startling many, as it not only will prohibit smoking
in restaurants, but will ban smoking from all public places. Baseball
games, parks and concerts will say “adios” to cigarettes. It’s about time.
There have been countless times when I’ve gone to restaurants, bowling alleys and
stood outside of shopping malls back home in New Mexico and come home smelling as if I was an avid smoker. There is nothing more annoying and disgusting than passing by someone smoking and eventually smelling as though I doused myself with cigarette-scented perfume.
I was more than glad to hear that California passed legislature to prohibit smoking nn restaurants when I made the move to Pepperdine. I now enjoy walking into a restaurant without someone saying “smoking or non?” and then walking me through the smoking section to one of the ten non-smoking tables.
Yes, it is every person’s choice to smoke, but when it affects the health and quality of air available to other people, something needs to be done. If people want to damage their own lungs, then by all means let them do it. But when they breathe their lung-blackening toxic air in someone else’s face or anywhere near it, they are endangering more than just their own health.
Smokers argue that this right is the same as chewing gum or drinking a soda. I agree that all are indeed individual choices, but smoking isn’t as harmless as something like chewing gum or drinking a soda. The latter two don’t affect the health of other people.
It doesn’t take a medical degree to know that cigarette smoke is hazardous to everyone’s health, both for smokers and those exposed to the exhaled stench of their cigarettes. Second-hand smoke not only affects healthy people, but people with asthma and other breathing ailments have increased difficulty breathing when they are exposed to cigarette smoke.
But the tobacco business is too obsessed with the profit involved with cigarettes to be concerned with something as important as people’s health. And transition frankly, life shouldn’t always be about the money. Applause should be given to state governments that are finally taking a stand to ban smoking from places like restaurants and soon hopefully all public places. Governments exist to represent the people and their interests, and they are doing a commendable job in protecting the public from the hazards of tobacco smoke.
In addition to tobacco companies, New York restaurant, bar and club owners need to wise up and seriously consider the benefits of this law to the greater good. As well as benefiting the health of the public, perhaps this new law will likely encourage more non-smokers to patronize smoke-free establishments. I understand that owners are concerned with profit loss, but all they need to do is the simple math — more people would equal more money. And one of the best advantages will be that non-smokers will no longer have to worry about smelling like an ash tray.
Just because smoking would be banned from public places doesn’t mean that smokers will boycott them. Smokers will still need and want to eat, drink and entertain themselves in restaurants, bars and nightclubs. I highly doubt that a smoker would avoid going to a baseball game because he has to abstain from smoking for a few hours. If he is so addicted that he can’t wait, then he can and most likely will go to his car to do so.
And who knows, maybe this law will even help smokers kick the habit. Fewer opportunities to smoke will hopefully decrease their desire to light up, which in the end, benefits us all.
October 31, 2002
