Bryce E.
4th of February, 2014
Smoking: The Game No One Wins
Within the last several years, health issues toward smoking have become a very popular issue. All over the nation, college students are having to deal with secondhand smoke any time they want to go out and socialize with their friends in a bar. Secondhand smoke can be very detrimental to anybody that it encounters. It is associated with an increased risk for lung cancer and coronary heart disease in nonsmoking adults (TIPS). For years communities have been working to get smoking out of their workplaces, restaurants, and now they are pushing to ban smoking from bars. If you are a non-smoker, this is a very positive movement. It is never very much fun when you go into a bar to hang out with some friends and the whole place is covered with smoke. The whole next day, on top of maybe having a slight hangover, you will probably be coughing up a lung. Where is the fun in that?
This law has already been passed in many places all over the United States. Only a select few are against what is trying to be done. When these laws were being debated at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, some bar and restaurant owners showed up to voice their opinions. They called it extremist, draconian and overly broad, saying it would cause the loss of jobs and the loss of city liquor taxes. They also said the law would set an uneven playing field because it allows smoking at restaurants with outdoor patios (Cooper). Of course, you might upset a few customers, but are people going to quit coming? Troja, a manager at Johnny’s Tavern in Lawrence, does not foresee the ordinance chasing customers away. “When it comes down to it,” he said, “they’re not going to stop going to their favorite tavern just because they can’t smoke there” (Cooper, par.7).
An estimated 1,700 cities across the country restrict smoking, but only 74 have smoking bans that, like in...