Smoking

            In reading the articles, "Make fast food smoke free" from USA Today and "Don't overact to smoke" by Brennan M. Dawson I realized that both articles were making arguments about the same subject, "smoking in fast food restaurants", but the USA Today article argued that smoking should not be allowed what so ever in these public restaurants and Dawson's article argued that the cigarette smoke in the smoking sections of these restaurants do not cause harm to individual and therefore should be allowed. The USA Today article was clearly a stronger argument than Dawson's article. .
             The conclusion of the USA Today newspaper article was "Other restaurants, and not just the fast food places, should fall in line with barring smoking". The writer of this article gave several different strong reasons for why smoking should be banned from the restaurants. First being that a quarter of the customers and forty percent of the employees are under the age of 18. Also second hand smoke is a carcinogen and it is blamed for killing and estimated 44,ooo people a year. Third, He stated that the the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that second hand smoke causes up to 1 million asthma attacks and 300,000 respiratory infections that lead to 15,000 hospitalizations among children every year. The writer of the article also supports his conclusion by stating that all restaurants should protect their workers and customers and that if they don't government should step in. .
             In Dawson's "Don't overreact to smoke" article his argument made sense to me but not strongly supported. His conclusion is that "with non-smoking sections available and visits brief, there shouldn't be any problem with allowing the smoking sections affecting other patron's health. This conclusion has absolutely no support in the article. He states that "Anyone knowledgeable" would tell you that a whiff of the smoke is not likely to drift to the non-smoking side from the smoking side.