c


 

Do you feel eye irritation and sore throat? Look around, it might be because someone is smoking

next to you. And why bother even thinking about it when you don¶t smoke? One might say, poor

tobacco addicts, they kill themselves consciously« Actually, it is poor you, who are exposed to

second hand smoke without consent. Environmental tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 mostly

unpleasant chemicals, ranging from arsenic, cadmium, benzene, chromium, beryllium, carbon

ammonia, monoxide, cyanide, hydrogen, to formaldehyde.1 Of these, 50 are known to cause

cancer, while at least 250 are generally harmful to health.2 This way, people wake up one day on

a hospital bed, living the irony of a lung disease, caused by a cigarette they didn¶t hold. So where

is the fairness? What should be done?

It started with billboards promoting a healthy way of life, health campaigns and by

imposing huge taxes on tobacco products. So what is the next step for the government to take? A

reasonable solution would be to introduce a law that would at least restrict the smoking in public

areas. And yes, more and more countries seem to adopt such laws. However, the enforcement of

such laws costs governments a lot of public money; accommodating non-smokers can be an

economic burden and many businesses encounter great difficulties after such political decisions.

More than that, it has been proven that such laws create incentives for the employers to avoid

smoking employees. These would seem to be a proof of discrimination against smoking

employees, or a clear violation against their privacy rights and autonomy, however, such an

action would actually have a significant impact on the health care costs. For example only in

U.S. such a regulation can reduce with $50 billion the direct health care costs, $7 billion the

direct morbidity costs, and $40 billion the lost future earnings from premature deaths.3 But is it

ok, for such a decision to be taken by the government and not by the smoking people? Actually it
is, and it is called ³Legal paternalism´. This term comes from the Latin word ?
meaningto

act like a father or to treat someone like a child.4 So, in this context Government would have the

role of a father who does what is best for his child (the smoking society).

J. S. Mill would apply his famous harm principle and argue that a person is sovereign on

his body and mind as long as he does not harm anyone else. However the key words in this

phrase are not ³sovereign on his body and mind´ but´ à

à



à

à

 ´. So here we have another reason why smoking in public areas should be banned, as there is

no doubt about the harm it produces to the exposed people. Only in U.S. there are registered

almost 3,400 annual lung cancer deaths, and approximately between 22,700 to 69,600 annual

heart disease deaths amongst adult nonsmokers, caused by passive smoking.5This numbers not

only should thrill us but it also should encourage us in urgently taking a rational decision. In the

end, this is a battle held by the ³smokers¶ claim to the rights to smoke vis-à-vis non-smokers¶

rights to a tobacco smoke-free environment.´6 Claim that according to Taiwo A. Oriola is not

supported by any legal law, but contrary, ³laws prohibiting smoking in enclosed public spaces do

not impinge smokers¶ rights, and they are morally and legally justifiable.´7

Life is too precious for us to not consider such problems as smoking in public areas. It is

the time to get rid of the ignorance concerning such subjects, to get rid of the selfishness that

seems to predominate among us, and it is the time to start leaving as an equal, rational society. A

law prohibiting smoking in enclosed public spaces would represent a first step in this direction.

p
1.
Tobacco Advisory Group of the Royal College of Physicians, ¢ 
  
 

 
 

(London: Royal College of Physicians, 2005), at 3.
2.
p Id.
3.
p See Winokur, ? note 20, at 666.
4.
p J. Hospers, ³Libertarianism and Legal Paternalism,´ J
 
 
, IV, no. 3 (Summer 1980): 255-265, at 255-256.
5.
p See Bosky, ? note 4, at 848.
Oriola, Taiwo A. "Ethical and Legal Analyses of Policy Prohibiting Tobacco Smoking in Enclosed Public Spaces." Journal of Law,
6.
p
Medicine and Ethics 37.4 (2009): 828-840. E-Journals. EBSCO. Web. 24 Mar. 2010.
Id.
p
7.