ELTHAM HIGH SCHOOL ANTHOLOGY
Alsop Lane
Benn Mitchell Harries 2013
Should Smoking be Legal in Public Places
General introduction: it is unclear when cigarettes first came to Australia they might have even been aboard the ships of the first fleet, but since they have been here they have been ruining lives. In my first point I will be covering how smoking affects a smoker their family and people in the general vicinity. In my second point I will talk about how some diseases are connected with smoking. In my final point I will talk about how much smoking costs families.
Contention: Smoking this poison shouldn’t be allowed in public places
First body paragraph: the reason smoking shouldn’t be permitted in public places is because smoking destroys your body and the people around you.
Think of a cigarette as a vile of poison that you are slowly consuming, that is corroding your body slowly but surely. But this poison isn’t just harming you the smoker, it is harming every person who breaths in this toxin. People who have never smoked a cigarette in their life can die from diseases related to second hand smoke inhalation. The cigarette contains over four thousand chemicals fifty one of which are carcinogenic (in other words they are a substance that produces cancer cells). Cancer changes you completely it destroys lives. Should people really have to go through this situation just because they are in the same area as a smoker? Think of burying a loved one because of their smoking habit unlike someone in a car crash. The way I see it is not a question of if they will die but a question of when this is the bleak future for someone who smokes. This isn’t fair on anyone especially on those who never purposely smoked. Smoking should be illegal in public places.
Contention: public places and the people residing in them should not be polluted by cigarettes and their by-products.
Second body paragraph: smoking is bad enough but the health risks of them are even worse.
The question I’m asking is why. Why should we let smokers poison other people by lighting up next to people who have no intention to smoke that person may as well have one of those death sticks in their mouth because they get everything pathogen the smoker gets and the diseases and problems along with them such as: Tar which coats the lungs, the amount of mucus is increased in the lungs because the smoke and tar irritate the lungs causing this reaction. Another one is Carbon monoxide large doses are fatal, these same fumes are found in the exhaust of a car it replaces the oxygen in the blood staving vital organs of the oxygen they need for proper function. Cancer in the mouth, lungs, nose, pancreas, throat, kidneys and so on. Emphysema and Chronic Bronchitis are just some of the lung diseases you can get from smoking. Heart disease in the form of heart attacks and strokes. Smoking also leads to bad circulation of the blood which can lead to gangrene and amputation of the infected limb. These are horrible things to live with or die by and these could have been avoided if you hadn’t started smoking or quit before exposing yourself and others to enough of this toxin to reach the point of no return.
Contention: public places are filled with living breathing people why should they have to breathe this deadly killer.
Third body paragraph: the cost of smoking isn’t just your life but can cost you a lot of money that could ultimately go towards a child’s education or for some people just basic necessities.
The cost of a pack of cigarettes is approximately twenty dollars a pack in Australia and the most commonly bought pack contains twenty five cigarettes. So say a smoker smoked a pack a week (bear in mind this is a low amount of packs for a common smoker)in one month the total is eighty dollars for one hundred cigarettes in twelve months this comes to nine hundred and sixty dollars for one thousand two hundred cigarettes if this smoker kept this pattern going for fifteen years the grand total would come to fourteen thousand four hundred dollars for eighteen thousand cigarettes this is only a fraction of the amount that would accumulate over this smokers lifetime but these figures are still crippling to the smoker physically and financially and these costs are going to increase dramatically because this habit will continue for years after and they will most likely get a disease from the toxins in the fore mentioned cigarettes and then that will create hospital bills and if the smoker dies there are funeral costs on top of that. Smoking costs more than just money it can cost lives, opportunities, loved ones and even the lives of total strangers this is why smoking shouldn’t be allowed in public places.
In conclusion smoking is a habit that claims everything, your health and that of others, it can cost huge amounts of money that could be otherwise spent and can eventually go on to claim your life and this is why smoking in public places should be illegal so that the casualties of smoking are reduced.