Smoking should be banned in all National Football League stadiums. There are no advantages to smoking in the society that we live in today. It is just an expensive addiction that only hurts you and others around you. Right now, the average price of a pack of cigarettes is about $8.30 in Massachusetts (Hopper, 2011). This is a staggering amount of money seeing that 1 out of 5 adults smoke cigarettes. On average, smoking costs the US about $96 billion annually in medical costs and it costs about $97 billion from productivity loss due to a premature death caused by smoking. A survey was tallied in 2010 of about 19.3%, or 45.3 million, adults smoked cigarettes which is compared to the 20.9% of adults that smoked in 2005. (American Cancer Society. 2011).
On July 14, 2012 Gillette Stadium made the entire facility a smoke free environment. In 2002 when the stadium first opened its doors smokers had designated areas where they could smoke during the games. There were several areas around the stadium where they could go, and now they are all closed (Underhill, 2012). This was a big shock to the fans at Gillette Stadium seeing that for the past ten years they had a spot to go and now the only place where they can smoke is in the parking lot. This is a quote from one of the outraged fans, Laura Merwin: "This is so unfair. As long as there is space where non-smokers are able to avoid the smoke and it can be adequately fire-proofed it should be allowed" (Underhill, 2012). Another quote from a fan that understands the reasoning behind it, Jim Kinney: "It's very fair to ban smoking as no one can control wind direction as well as those smokers who always light up before reaching smoking areas. Smokers have no one but themselves to blame for being locked out" (Underhill, 2012).
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There are a lot of stadiums around the league now that still allow smoking in their facilities. Some of these stadiums are the M&T Bank Stadium home of the Baltimore Ravens and at the EverBank Field home of the Jacksonville Jaguars.