The Smoking Ban and the Secondhand Life

“If I decided to act like a crazed monkey, flinging feces at everyone around me wherever I went, and a glob of it hit you in the face, you probably wouldn't like it because it's a health hazard and it stinks. Would it be OK for me to say to you, "If you don't like it, go somewhere else! I have rights too!"? Duane Alan Hahn

It was one of those last summer nights that we remember for the rest of the year. Even though still warm, the breath of autumn was already felt in the cool wind. The inevitability of the coming winter was making me a bit sad.

After taking a relaxing walk in the lights of the night metropolis, my wife and I went to our favorite rock bar. The music was awesome, the live performance was just great, and the whole atmosphere was amazing! At moments like this I think to myself, “Why don’t we go out more often?!”

But there was something else unique that night that left a clear impression on me. It was natural, but we were not used to it. It was pleasant but seemed out-of-step with the night club ambience. Nobody was smoking and it was great and strange! With the introduction of the recent smoking ban in the closed public places, it became illegal to smoke in the restaurants, bars, and night clubs. It was as if all of a sudden we were transposed to the tobacco-free times of the future, to a land where people were able to enjoy themselves and the company of each other without burning dried plants in wrapped paper by dragging the smoke inside them and then blowing it in each other’s faces.

I realized: my life was not a secondhand one any more – I don’t need to be breathing residues of someone’s arrogance. I can finally enjoy such spirit-lifting experiences without smelling like an old ashtray.

The idyll was wrecked when during the performance break around half of the people stormed out from the premises, to get another dose without breaking the law. The smoking ritual was banned, or to say more precisely – pushed outside of social places. I could see the note of victimization in the faces of all those smokers who were forced OUT when they had wanted to be IN. They were behaving with the dignity of the oppressed to which their basic freedom had been denied.

With all the evidence that second-hand tobacco smoke is deadly harmful, many smokers still have the guts to claim it’s their right to be poisoning people around. According to an estimate from the recent study covering 192 countries, second-hand smoke kills 600,000 people in the world per year, out of whom around 165,000 are children. If the adults can and should stay away from the lethal smoke that their friends and relatives are exposing them to, children cannot protect themselves.

Don’t you agree that the self-proclaimed victims are actually aggressors and even criminals? Next time you see someone light up a cigarette in front of their child, just tell them, “It’s your right to harm yourself and even kill yourself, but you have no right to do that to your child or to me, as a matter of fact.”

It’s time to change people’s consciousness regarding this issue. In matters like this public opinion is slow but not impossible to modify. Twenty years ago almost nobody used car belts. With considerable governments’ efforts in building awareness of the issue an enforcing road safety measures in European Union in the past 10 years, many countries have managed to reduce the number of casualties by 50%, saving hundreds of thousands of human lives.

After the introduction of smoking bans in Scotland and England, there have been reported significant drops in heart attacks and asthma admissions to the hospitals. The positive effects on reduced cancer cases are still too early to draw as the bans are only 6 years old, but they will definitely come in the years ahead.

Generally, people are quite oblivious regarding the facts on the effects of tobacco smoking and, especially, secondhand smoke. Smokers tend to be even farther from the truth as it is not favorable to them. A recent study of a sample representative of UK population showed interesting truths about people’s ignorance on the matter: even though almost 90% of the people knew that smoking causes lung cancer, less than 13% knew that smoking causes ovarian, cervix, kidney, and bowel cancers.

Firsthand or secondhand, the cigarette smoke is deadly.

Stay away from smoking, and protect your health and the health of those dearest to you. If you are a smoker, cease smoking – it’ll be the best decision in your life. If you are not, then help others quit by aiding them in realizing that they don’t need cigarettes in their lives.

You deserve a firsthand life, filled with health, strength, and positive emotions. It’s all yours, if you make a firm step to get it.