This house would not ban smoking #3

INTRODUCTION Human beings ban activities and object that cause grave harm to the society and individuals. There are laws to ensure members of society do not harm others and these laws are regulated so the purpose of their existence is actually served. This debate comes from this notion, that no one should harm others. Harmful substances such as cocaine and heroin are prohibited since they can ruin lives of people and weaken the fabric of the society. Other than those two, there is endless list of so-called “illegal drugs”. This debate will focus on if cigarette – a substance seen everywhere – should join the league of “illegal drugs”. The definition of ban in this debate would be if cigarette should be removed completely. In this debate, I will Pro the motion that “This house would not ban smoking”, where I will defend cigarettes. The setting of the debate would not matter because the main essence of this debate would remain identical anywhere. My opponent is free to challenge this place setting though. ARGUMENT Though I am not a smoker myself, I firmly oppose the notion of banning smoking due to three reasons: that they are unenforceable, that they limit citizen’s freedom and cigarette industry brings practical benefits. Argument 1: Unenforceable Nature of the Motion There are about 43.5 million smokers in the US solely. In the same country, 21.5% of men and 17.3% of women are smokers [1]. Cigarette is undeniable everywhere in modern society. Just about every convenient stores, newsletter kiosks and supermarkets sell tobacco. Cigarette industry is an industry that has a size of few hundreds of billion dollars. In some occasions, cigarettes are also handmade with rolling paper and cigarette leaves. From these factors, we can already see that cigarettes are easily acquired and easily made as well. When cigarette is so abundant in quantity, it is very unrealistic to enforce a cigarette ban. Passing of the ban would primarily be unrealistic. Giant tobacco companies worth billions and billions would oppose the ban with every resource they can afford. For the sake of argument, let’s assume tobacco companies decided to forsake their lucrative business and became philanthropists by miracle. Even then, we face predicament of having to sabotage all tobacco farms and infrastructures. When that happens, incredible amount of stockpile of this new illegal drug would have to be disposed and be taken care of. These few things are already unlikely to happen. But even under assumption that they happen, the ban would still have to be regulated. Are we saying we are going to place police officers in public places to follow track of cigarette smoke and arresting smokers? Again, for the sake of argument, let us imagine we live in world with cops chasing for cigarette smoke and tobacco companies became nice enough to forsake their multibillion corporations. Cigarette ban would still be ineffective since it will open up a black market. India bans cigarette from other international brands and this action enforced by Indian Government was admitted by the government (Tobacco Institute of Indian States [2]) to only result in an exponential increase of these banned cigarettes being smuggled in. Banning cigarette is fundamentally unenforceable and purposeless. Even by miracle, if total ban of cigarette actualized, the ban would not serve its purpose since market of contraband will emerge as seen in similar case of India. Argument 2: Individual Freedom The argument behind the ban of smoking is that cigarettes cause harms. Nevertheless, every single smoker is well aware of danger of cigarette. In many countries, cigarette companies are required to leave a warning message on their cigarette pack regarding the danger of smoking. Often, they are also required to illustrate the message with gore pictures of victims of excessive smoking. These are some mild examples. It is understandable why this idea of banning cigarette emerged. But it is evident that harm of cigarette is being well-informed to smokers themselves as well. Already, smokers are restricted in many ways so that they do not harm others. By law, smoking in airplane is forbidden. Many public bathrooms have “no smoking” signs. Most restaurants forbid smoking too. Freedom of smokers is already restricted to a level so that they cannot cause grave damage to others. Any further actions against smokers would be persecuting and demeaning the freedom of about 20% of a nation in the case of USA. It is a choice of lifestyle and a personal freedom. Law can prevent smokers from harming others. But law cannot step further and stop responsible adults from harming themselves. Attempting to help smokers from harming themselves can be done with a better alternative of “educating” which also fits the principle of democracy. If a government truly aims to protect smoker, they should consider something that is against the spirit of democracy and is unenforceable in the first place but consider campaign against smoking. The purpose of banning cigarette seems aimless. Argument 3: Practical reasons to not ban smoking The fundamental purpose of banning smoking seems to be missing. Not only this, there are also practical harms of banning cigarette. As shown above, cigarette industry is a gigantic industry that brings billions of profit to tobacco companies. Top 6 tobacco companies in US added up together generated about $346.2 billion of market revenue and they profited about $35.1 billion in 2010 [3]. Banning cigarette would place cigarette companies out of business and would also place countless employers of a huge industry out of work. Harm of cigarette companies going bankrupt is not only limited to personal loss of employers. Thriving tobacco industry resulted in astronomical amount of tax revenue. When an industry that thrives collapses, annual tax revenue of about $17 billion will disappear. As soon as total ban on smoking comes into action, all the tobacco companies will disappear along with $17 billion of tax revenue. CONCLUSION Banning cigarette is unrealistic. Adding on to that, there are issues with individual rights and freedom of banning smoking if this ban is to be passed. But on top of such a problematic action, there are also practical harms caused by such action. These problems that total ban on smoking carries are too significant and destructive to be seen as collateral damages to solve a social problem. In fact, total ban is not even the best answer if there is a problem to address. All in all, I am proud to oppose a ban that demeans freedom, hurts a country’s economy and is ineffective. REFERENCES [1] http://www.cdc.gov...; [2] http://www.financialexpress.com...; [3] http://www.worldlungfoundation.org...;