Every person that breathes the smoke of tobacco products is at risk for tobacco-related illnesses. Even though smoking is not as publicized by the media as much as illegal drugs, cigarettes are just as bad. Smoking cigarettes leads to the use of other drugs that are more harmful to the person than cigarettes. If smoking was not dangerous, then why is there a commercial on television telling the viewer that the tobacco companies kill 1000 people everyday? The statistics on the number of people that die each year in the United States from tobacco or tobacco-related illness is astonishing. Over four hundred thousand people die each year from smoking (American Thoracic Society 19). Also, a person age twenty-five that is a heavy smoker has a life expectancy that is twenty-five percent less than a person that does not smoke (American Thoracic Society 19). more For something that is not a hazard to people's health, they sure do account for a lot of deaths that occur each year. I do not see how my opponent can contend that secondhand smoke is not a heath hazard to the rest of the community. Secondhand smoke affects everyone because it goes into the air. We (nonsmokers) can not protect ourselves from other people's cigarette smoke. Everyone breaths, therefore, if you are sitting next to someone that smokes, you are probably getting a some smoke in your lungs. This happens because when smoke goes into the air, it disappears into the oxygen. As you breath in oxygen, you also breath in a minimal amount of the cigarette smoke. In 1986, a surgeon general's report was released that stated smoke from tobacco products can cause cancer in healthy non-smoking adults. It has been proven that secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer and other tobacco-related illnesses in people that do not smoke. Yet the tobacco companies continue to deny that the smoke of cigarettes cause these illnesses to non-users of tobacco.
