Smoking should be banned

Ok, 1. Pro said about "The government has right to limit what people do to their bodies" is silly thing. Like what I said before, this is personal right. Banning smoking may infringe on a person's individual right to behave as he pleases. In addition, basing this prohibition on health reasons may be hypocritical when other substances that may pose similar or greater threats to health, such as alcohol and fattening foods, are allowed. Another reason to oppose the current campaign against smokers is because it violates the legitimate rights of smokers. John Stuart Mill, in a slender book published in 1859 titled On Liberty, wrote: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. This is the basic premise of libertarianism, the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers. Mill statement is directly applicable to the controversy over smoking. Quite simply, a just government does not have the authority to ban smoking on private property or to tell smokers to quit or to punish them if they do not. Smokers are adults, not children, and they deserve to have their informed choices respected by others. If we pass laws forcing smokers to change their behavior "for their own good, we need to ask: Where do we stop? Do we pass laws against smoking in private homes? Against frying food indoors (which also releases known carcinogens into the air)? Eating the wrong kinds of food? Eating too much? Weighing too much? Drinking too much (and not just when driving)? Exercising too little? Should we ban other risky behavior, such as skydiving, bungee-jumping, or riding motorcycles? How about drinking more than one cup of coffee each day? So, if government has right to limit what people do to their bodies, directly government will too much interfere. They will limit what food that should we eat maybe worst, government will handle the time to us sleep for our healthy. Can you imagine how suck is that? Pro failed broke my arguments about smoker's rights. 2. Second-hand Smoke Is second-hand smoke a rationale for higher taxes on tobacco or smoking bans? The research used to justify government regulation of second-hand smoke has been powerfully challenged by critics, including Congress own research bureau. According to the EPA, the risk ratio for forty years of exposure to a pack-a-day smoker is just 1.19. Epidemiologists as a rule are skeptical of any relative risks lower than 3 and dismiss as random ratios less than 1.3. An important report on second-smoke appeared in the May 12, 2003 issue of the British Medical Journal. Two epidemiologists, James Enstrom at UCLA and Geoffrey Kabat at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, analyzed data collected by the American Cancer Society from more than 100,000 Californians from 1959 through 1997. "The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, the researchers wrote, although they do not rule out a small effect. "The association between tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed. "It is generally considered that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is roughly equivalent to smoking one cigarette per day, according to Enstrom and Kabat. "If so, a small increase in lung cancer is possible, but the commonly reported 30 percent increase in heart disease risk--the purported cause of almost all the deaths attributed to secondhand smoke -- is highly implausible. 3. Business Smoking bans have had severe negative effects on restaurants, bars, and nightclubs in cities where such bans have been enacted. Smokers choose to stay home or visit with friends who allow smoking in their homes, or spend less time (and less money) in bars and nightclubs before leaving. Smoking bans can also move noisy and potentially dangerous crowds onto sidewalks, and divert police resources from battling more serious crime. Smoking bans violate the private property rights of individuals. The owners of bars, restaurants, and other businesses should be free to decide whether to allow smoking in their establishments and what kinds of accommodations to make for nonsmokers. Their customers should decide how important it is to be able to smoke or to experience a smoke-free environment. People often include smoking to the list of pleasurable activities they enjoy when dining out or visiting a bar. Banning smoking at these establishments may make people less likely to visit, which can hurt the business owners if smokers make up a large percentage of their customers. On the other hand, potential patrons who may have avoided a location because smoking was allowed may now visit a business because of the lack of irritating smoke. 4. Taxing Smokers Cigarettes are already the most heavily taxed commodity in the U.S. The federal excise tax is $1.01 a pack and the national average state excise tax is about $1.36 per pack, for a total of $2.37 per pack. Some cities and states impose far higher taxes. The combined state-local tax rate in Chicago is $6.16 per pack, and in New York City it is $5.85 per pack. Cigarette taxes also are an inefficient and unreliable way to raise funds for government. Excise taxes require relatively high rates to raise funds, creating opportunities and incentives for evasion and the transfer of economic activity to states with lower taxes. Dramatic price hikes and extreme taxes on cigarettes are threatening to create a stampede of tax evasion, black-market transactions, counterfeiting, and even use of lethal violence against convenience store clerks and truck drivers. Recent tax hikes adopted by New York, Cook County, Illinois, and elsewhere threaten to take us to a neoprohibitionist era with all the crime, expenses, and loss of respect for law enforcement that accompanied Prohibition. Excise taxes are also regressive. People with low incomes not only pay a higher percentage of their incomes on cigarette taxes than do wealthier people, they even pay more in absolute terms. Persons earning less than $10,000 paid an average of $81 a year in tobacco taxes, versus $49 for those who make $50,000 or more. This was before recent massive tax hikes! Finally, excise taxes require regular rate increases to keep pace with inflation, whereas income, sales, and property taxes all rise with inflation or economic growth. Because of their narrow bases, excise taxes are unstable revenue generators. 5. Solution In April 2014, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published a report summarizing a survey of more than 19,000 past and present users of electronic cigarettes "" the largest survey of its kind to date. Here is what the survey found: Electronic cigarettes helped 81% of the survey respondents quit smoking. Among those who had not quit entirely, one-third were non-daily smokers, and the rest had decreased consumption from 20 cigarettes to 4 per day. Smokers primarily begin using electronic cigarettes for harm reduction and to reduce second-hand smoke exposure to family members. Electronic cigarettes appear to be effective even in highly-dependent smokers. Side effects are minor and reported health benefits are substantial. Unfortunately, some public health organizations and lobbying groups have made a business out of opposing smoking. If electronic cigarettes solve many of the problems that come from smoking tobacco, their """business” may be hurt. This conflict of interest means they will be among the last to admit that electronic cigarettes are a safe alternative for smokers. So, government should not banned smoking. If they worry about people healthy, smoker can choose to use electronic cigarettes. But still,government can't force them to stop smoking. That is their right to choose.