Florida. Ten O’clock AM. A middle aged man from the
Northeast, not so much different than any of our parents, stands up in front of
over two hundred people. The light shines in from the stained glass
windows and glistens against his tear stained face. His thoughts divert
from the task at hand and refocus on his father--leaning back in his chair, the
smell of his cigar meandering down the hall to his son’s bedroom. It is
ironic to think that the smell he associated with comfort as a child is now one
of hurt, pain, and death. As he clears his throat to speak, embarrassed
that he is crying in front of his children, he begins to give his father’s
eulogy.
California. Six O’clock AM. An older man, someone’s
father, someone’s grandfather, watches the sun rise with his wife. He
grabs her hand, unable to grasp it tightly like he used to. He uses his
free arm to pull himself up in his hospital bed. She helps him and
proceeds to hug him. He tries to talk to her yet feels as though he is
breathing out of the straws they place in the drinks he would go and have with
his friends at the bar after work. He knows he will never have the strength
to grab his wife and lift her off her feet again. He will never be able
to hold her, to protect her. He knows that those nights at the bar, those
innocent puffs on his cigarettes to relieve a long day’s work, are killing him.
New York. Eight O'clock PM. A young boy lays with his
girlfriend as they talk about their families. His mind falls on the
grandmother she will never meet. The girlfriend sees his eyebrows become
tighter and listens to his sighs. He speaks with such sorrow, such love,
yet such resentment. He asks his girlfriend to explain to him how anyone
could choose to die a slow and painful death--one that wrenches one’s body and
one’s mind. Over two years later, he continues to reach out for some
answer, for some sense of closure yet finds none. The girlfriend is
speechless. She says she doesn’t know.
And in Boston it is 3:00 PM. School is out. A group
of high school girls gather for their first opportunity to smoke after a day of
biology and algebra. They hold their cigarettes like they have been
smoking for years. The one that wants to be a doctor digs in her backpack
for another lighter while her friend, who aspires to be a singer, tries to blow
“O’s” in the air. Two girls stand isolated from the others.
Although they do not smoke, they take deep inhales of smoke filled air,
relieved to finally be out to enjoy the “fresh” spring afternoon. One
talks about how she thinks she is getting asthma. The other comments as
to how that is a strange thing for a teenager to develop. Sit back and
try to picture it: where will these girls be in sixty years? Will they be
doctors and singers? Will they be asthmatics? Bed ridden from
emphysema? Dead?
Our health teachers, parents, and school nurses beat into our
brains that smoking is bad. As a child I can remember my friends walking
up to absolute strangers who were smoking and saying, “Pewwweee,” and shaking
their fingers at them like their teachers and parents had taught them.
Yet, I don’t think I did. With an extended family who smoked heavily and
I did not understand it was bad. One day, I was five, I pulled out a
pretzel from the container for a snack and joined my parents in the living
room. It was one of those long ones that look almost like a big cigar. As
my father smoked a cigarette, I mimicked him. I inhaled on my bitten
pretzel and tiny crumbs entered my small throat. I coughed but quickly
recovered and smiled at my parents holding my pretzel between my fingers like
my father. My mom had a panic stricken look across her face. My
parents were on a plane to Canyon Ranch within two weeks for a rapid program to
quit smoking. I have now recognized my mother and grandmother’s identical
wheezing asthma, my grandfather’s pacemaker and pig valve, and have become one
of those children advocating the end of smoking.
How could a simple cylindrical object we see on a daily basis
could have such a grand effect on a person’s life? As someone tries
cigarettes as a teenager it baffles me as to why there is always someone else
there saying, “It’s no big deal. You’re just having one,” yet never
anyone there to remind that novice that one could turn into two and two could
turn into a smoke filled rest of your life. There is never anyone there
to rattle off the endless list of diseases acquired as a result of smoking or
the exposure to smoke. I wish there was someone there to say, “This is
how many months and years of your life you are taking off with every inhale.”
Yet, with that all said, smoking has become far from a part of
our daily lives. To the great relief of many families of victims, health
advocates, and others, smoking is not what it was during our parents childhood
or even our own childhood. New York has followed the examples of Boston
and Connecticut and made progress in the regulation of smoking. As
individual victories are won, momentum grows for eventual state bans of smoking
across the United States. In Nassau County, no longer are you asked if you
prefer smoking or non-smoking in restaurants and now, in Nassau County as well
as New York City smoking is prohibited in restaurants, public buildings, as
well as directly in front of said buildings. Bypassing the huddled
smokers in front of offices or holding your breath as you pass through a smoke
filled bar will grow to be a forgotten toil of our past.
Without a doubt, the primary justification of these bans on
smoking is the health risk. Finally, after years of denial, tobacco
companies are admitting that their product does indeed cause cancer among many
other illnesses. Mouth and throat cancer, deterioration of the esophagus,
gum decay, emphysema, lung cancer, asthma: these are all sickness which the
average sixth grader could describe to you as a result of smoking. Many
argue that it is a person’s right to choose whether or not to smoke. Yet
this choice alone is questioned since many begin smoking when they are under
eighteen. How much validity is there to a choice, possibly uninformed,
which is made by a minor? Regardless, our country’s Republicans, tobacco
companies, and smokers would say it is a person’s right to choose to smoke.
Yet what about the rights of an innocent bystander, one who is choosing, the
same the way the cigarette smoker is choosing, to remain smoke free? This
person receives no rights in a bar where you can barely see the person next to
you as a result of the smoke. A person who does not use tobacco inhales
the smoke wafting over from a smoking section in a restaurant. Where are
this person’s rights?
Many might further comment that the fraction of people truly
affected by secondhand smoke is almost insignificant. I would beg to
differ. As Boston prepared to institute their smoking bans, they, like
New York, had, used the risk of secondhand smoke to support their proposal.
Their documentation, printed in Newsday, indicated that, over 1,000
deaths in Massachusetts each year result from exposure to secondhand smoke.
This caused immense public health costs as well as great Medicare and Medicaid
expenditures. This is in addition to the cost of those who suffer from
illnesses related to smoking who actually smoke. When we hear of the terrible
maladies acquired by smoke, we instantly think of the smokers who choose to do
this to themselves. What about those who do not?
I am sure that even the most coldhearted Cruella Deville is
somewhat moved thinking of the heartache and grief of so many people across the
United States due to smoke. Therefore, it baffles me as to how anyone
could say, “I support a person’s right to smoke. I support a person’s
right to infect our nation’s air and give someone else along with myself a
terminal illness.” When people are asked, “Are you in support of the
bans?” I have heard many respond saying, “No, they are an infraction on
our civil liberties.” I must admit, upon hearing about the bans, I did get a
sense of a violation of rights almost like a wakeup call to the nation to
beware of George Orwell’s 1984 way of life. I pondered this
justification and was left with the following question: Where does it say
we, as Americans, have the right to smoke cigarettes? I am not entirely
familiar with each specific clause of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights
but I certainly do not think that Jay or Madison had the legalization of free
cigarette smoking in mind when they were drafting the Federalist papers.
Some might respond, “What about the right to privacy?” A
key clause in our nation’s founding documents and used to justify abortion
rights, a citizen’s right to privacy and to smoke, if they wish, challenges the
boundary lines of said privacy. When I think of privacy, I instantly
think of the phrase, “privacy of one’s own home.” Smoking bans do not by
any means restrict tobacco smoking on one’s own private property.
Although some might contend that that might be an eventual step, New York’s
current restrictions are far from it. There is a huge difference between
smoking in your backyard and smoking in a restaurant. That difference is
the people you are affecting. One cannot compare smoking on your back
porch with no one around to over twenty people smoking in a crowded bar or
club, all breathing the same air. It reminds me of an airplane. The
same way the opposition believes that it is a person’s right to smoke if they
want to and where they want to, no questions asked, what about the right to the
maintenance of your health? While there are obvious health risks
associated from the exposure to smoke, as we examine how a person’s rights to
their health are addressed in our legal documents the illnesses them self
become almost a non-issue. Although not specifically accounted for, one’s
health is one of those inalienable rights focused on by philosophers such as
John Locke, whose ideas inspired much of our Declaration of Independence.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “...the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,” I would not be surprised if somewhere he envisioned the right to
remain healthy or at least not to pursue said happiness and life at the expense
of others. If we have the right to our health, there should be no
question that the risks of smoking are sufficient enough to institute
restrictions regarding it.
Another influential group who opposes the smoking bans are
restaurant and club owners. While some argue that it should be individual
citizens fined rather than owners, others are more adamant and refuse to
endorse the bans at all. After having already faced a great downturn in
business due to the economy, many customers are choosing not to attend many of
New York’s hot spots because they cannot smoke. Here lies another, almost
moral, issue which the smoking bans challenge: where are our state’s and our nation’s
priorities? Do they lie in the success of our clubs and our restaurants
or the safety of our children and our livelihood? Yet, is our livelihood
threatened by the growing decline of this sector of our economy? Could it
be threatened by any potential interferences within the Tobacco industry?
This is the controversy surrounding these bans. This is precisely why
nicotine is even legal in our 21st century society which has such great
knowledge of addiction and disease. Cigarettes remain legal and probably
will not be deemed illegal until way past our life times due to two things:
fear and money. Often our fear of not achieving success and prosperity
overpowers our apprehensions regarding diseases which we think do not affect us
or our loved ones. If only avoiding these diseases and exposure to
cigarette smoke were as easy as that simple removal of the concern from our
frame of mind. If everyone acted this way towards every issue, where
would our country be today?