A topic of recent discussion is smoking in public places. Today most public places, such as restaurants, libraries, stores, and schools have prohibited smoking within their facilities, occasionally setting aside a small area for those who choose to smoke. Is this approach appropriate, or even constitutional? To understand this issue one must first understand the risk factors involved with smoking and realize that the adverse effects of smoking not only affect the smoker, but also those around him/her. It is because smoking disregards the rights of others that legislation has been made against it in so many public areas.
Since the 1950's, the Surgeon General, as well as many private organizations, has conducted research and issued warnings regarding the use of tobacco products. In 1986 a paper by Joseph Califano of the U.S. News and World Report stated that each year approximately five thousand U.S. citizens die as a result of secondhand smoke (65). More recent studies show that these numbers may be wholly and recklessly inaccurate. New studies by the Surgeon General show that cigarette smoke is one of the main causes of lung cancer and, more significantly, of Cardiovascular Disease.
While one may think of lung cancer as the major detrimental effect of smoking, consider this. According to the Surgeon General's report in 1983, coronary heart disease accounted for approximately thirty percert of all U.S. deaths, which is higher than the death toll for all cancers within the U.S. Investigations show that of all the risk factors for coronary heart disease, smoking is by far the most prevalent. The impact of this report is obvious. "Cigarette smoking should be considered the most important of the known modifiable risk factors for coronary heart disease in the United States" (Cardiovascular Disease: iii-iv). Therefore, because the consequences of cigarette smoke carry on to those in the surrounding area, the prohibition of smoking in public places is absolutely warranted.
