essay about cigarettes should be banned

• Tobacco Smoking Trend in Australia Words: 1590
• Cigarette Smoking Cessation Methods Words: 925
• Why Should Smoking Be Illegal? Words: 1679
• Discussion: Smoking and Health Risks Words: 1240
• Harmful Effects of Smoking: Why to Quit Smoking? Words: 1920
• Smoking Should Be Banned in Public Places Words: 952
• Problems of Smoking in Public Places Words: 1318
• Ban on Smoking in the Workplace Words: 1310
• Is Smoking Cigarettes Just for Fun or a Death Sentence? Words: 883
• Smoking-Related Harmful Health Effects Words: 1920

Should Smoking Be Illegal?

Should smoking be banned? What are the pros and cons of banning cigarettes in public places? If you’re writing an argumentative essay or persuasive speech on why smoking should be banned, check out this sample.

Smoking Should Be Banned: Essay Introduction

Reasons why smoking should be banned, why smoking should not be banned: essay arguments, why smoking should be banned essay conclusion.

Smoking involves burning a substance to take in its smoke into the lungs. These substances are commonly tobacco or cannabis. Combustion releases the active substances in them, like nicotine, which are absorbed through the lungs.

A widespread technique through which this is done is via smoking manufactured cigarettes or hand-rolling the tobacco ready for smoking. Almost 1 billion people in the majority of all human societies practice smoking. Complications directly associated with smoking claim the lives of half of all the persons involved in smoking tobacco or marijuana for a long time.

Smoking is an addiction because tobacco contains nicotine, which is very addictive. The nicotine makes it difficult for a smoker to quit. Therefore, a person will become used to nicotine such that he/she has to smoke to feel normal. Consequently, I think smoking should be banned for some reason.

One reason why smoking should be banned is that it has got several health effects. It harms almost every organ of the body. Cigarette smoking causes 87% of lung cancer deaths and is also responsible for many other cancer and health problems. 

Apart from this, infant deaths that occur in pregnant women are attributed to smoking. Similarly, people who stay near smokers become secondary smokers, who may breathe in the smoke and get the same health problems as smokers. Although not widely smoked, cannabis also has health problems, and withdrawal symptoms include depression, insomnia, frustration, anger, anxiety, concentration difficulties, and restlessness.

Besides causing emphysema, smoking also affects the digestive organs and the blood circulatory systems, especially heart arteries. Women have a higher risk of heart attack than men, exacerbating with time as one smokes. Smoking also affects the mouth, whereby the teeth become discolored, the lips blacken and always stay dry, and the breath smells bad.

Cigarette and tobacco products are costly. People who smoke are therefore forced to spend their money on these products, which badly wastes the income they would have otherwise spent on other things. Therefore, I think that smoking should be forbidden to reduce the costs of treating diseases related to smoking and the number of deaths caused by smoking-related illnesses.

However, tobacco and cigarette manufacturing nations would lose a lot if smoking was to be banned. I, therefore, think that it should not be banned. Some nations largely depend on exporting cigarettes and tobacco products to get revenue.

This revenue typically boosts the economy of such nations. If smoking were banned, they would incur significant losses since tobacco companies are multi-billion organizations. Apart from these, millions of people will be jobless due to the ban.

The process by which tobacco and cigarette products reach consumers is very complex, and it involves a chain process with several people involved in it. Banning smoking, therefore, means these people will lose their jobs, which most may depend on for their livelihoods.

In conclusion, the ban on smoking is a tough step to be undertaken, especially when the number of worldwide users is billions. Although it burdens nations enormously in treating smoking-related diseases, it may take a long time before a ban can work. Attempts by some nations to do this have often been met with failures.

Cite this paper

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2020, January 12). Should Smoking Be Illegal? https://studycorgi.com/should-smoking-be-banned/

"Should Smoking Be Illegal?" StudyCorgi , 12 Jan. 2020, studycorgi.com/should-smoking-be-banned/.

StudyCorgi . (2020) 'Should Smoking Be Illegal'. 12 January.

1. StudyCorgi . "Should Smoking Be Illegal?" January 12, 2020. https://studycorgi.com/should-smoking-be-banned/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "Should Smoking Be Illegal?" January 12, 2020. https://studycorgi.com/should-smoking-be-banned/.

StudyCorgi . 2020. "Should Smoking Be Illegal?" January 12, 2020. https://studycorgi.com/should-smoking-be-banned/.

This paper, “Should Smoking Be Illegal?”, was written and voluntary submitted to our free essay database by a straight-A student. Please ensure you properly reference the paper if you're using it to write your assignment.

Before publication, the StudyCorgi editorial team proofread and checked the paper to make sure it meets the highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, fact accuracy, copyright issues, and inclusive language. Last updated: November 8, 2023 .

If you are the author of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal . Please use the “ Donate your paper ” form to submit an essay.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• BMJ Open Access

Why ban the sale of cigarettes? The case for abolition

The cigarette is the deadliest artefact in the history of human civilisation. Most of the richer countries of the globe, however, are making progress in reducing both smoking rates and overall consumption. Many different methods have been proposed to steepen this downward slope, including increased taxation, bans on advertising, promotion of cessation, and expansion of smoke-free spaces. One option that deserves more attention is the enactment of local or national bans on the sale of cigarettes. There are precedents: 15 US states enacted bans on the sale of cigarettes from 1890 to 1927, for instance, and such laws are still fully within the power of local communities and state governments. Apart from reducing human suffering, abolishing the sale of cigarettes would result in savings in the realm of healthcare costs, increased labour productivity, lessened harms from fires, reduced consumption of scarce physical resources, and a smaller global carbon footprint. Abolition would also put a halt to one of the principal sources of corruption in modern civilisation, and would effectively eliminate one of the historical forces behind global warming denial and environmental obfuscation. The primary reason for abolition, however, is that smokers themselves dislike the fact they smoke. Smoking is not a recreational drug, and abolishing cigarettes would therefore enlarge rather than restrict human liberties. Abolition would also help cigarette makers fulfil their repeated promises to ‘cease production’ if cigarettes were ever found to be causing harm.

Six reasons to ban

The cigarette is the deadliest object in the history of human civilisation. Cigarettes kill about 6 million people every year, a number that will grow before it shrinks. Smoking in the twentieth century killed only 100 million people, whereas a billion could perish in our century unless we reverse course. 1 Even if present rates of consumption drop steadily to zero by 2100, we will still have about 300 million tobacco deaths this century.

The cigarette is also a defective product, meaning not just dangerous but unreasonably dangerous, killing half its long-term users. And addictive by design. It is fully within the power of the Food and Drug Administration in the US, for instance, to require that the nicotine in cigarettes be reduced to subcompensable, subaddictive levels. 2 3 This is not hard from a manufacturing point of view: the nicotine alkaloid is water soluble, and denicotinised cigarettes were already being made in the 19th century. 4 Philip Morris in the 1980s set up an entire factory to make its Next brand cigarettes, using supercritical fluid extraction techniques to achieve a 97% reduction in nicotine content, which is what would be required for a 0.1% nicotine cigarette, down from present values of about 2%. 5 Keep in mind that we're talking about nicotine content in the rod as opposed to deliveries measured by the ‘FTC method’, which cannot capture how people actually smoke. 5

Cigarettes are also defective because they have been engineered to produce an inhalable smoke. Tobacco smoke was rarely inhaled prior to the nineteenth century; it was too harsh, too alkaline. Smoke first became inhalable with the invention of flue curing , a technique by which the tobacco leaf is heated during fermentation, preserving the sugars naturally present in the unprocessed leaf. Sugars when they burn produce acids, which lower the pH of the resulting smoke, making it less harsh, more inhalable. There is a certain irony here, since these ‘milder’ cigarettes were actually far more deadly, allowing smoke to be drawn deep into the lungs. The world's present epidemic of lung cancer is almost entirely due to the use of low pH flue-cured tobacco in cigarettes, an industry-wide practice that could be reversed at any time. Regulatory agencies should mandate a significant reduction in rod-content nicotine, but they should also require that no cigarette be sold with a smoke pH lower than 8. Those two mandates alone would do more for public health than any previous law in history. 5

Death and product defect are two reasons to abolish the sale of cigarettes, but there are others. A third is the financial burden on public and private treasuries, principally from the costs of treating illnesses due to smoking. Cigarette use also results in financial losses from diminished labor productivity, and in many parts of the world makes the poor even poorer. 6

A fourth reason is that the cigarette industry is a powerful corrupting force in human civilisation. Big tobacco has corrupted science by sponsoring ‘decoy’ or ‘distraction research’, 5 but it has also corrupted popular media, insofar as newspapers and magazines dependent on tobacco advertising for revenues have been reluctant to publish critiques of cigarettes. 7 The industry has corrupted even the information environment of its own workforce, as when Philip Morris paid its insurance provider (CIGNA) to censor the health information sent to corporate employees. 8 Tobacco companies have bullied, corrupted or exploited countless other institutions: the American Medical Association, the American Law Institute, sports organisations, fire-fighting bodies, Hollywood, the US Congress—even the US presidency and US military. President Lyndon Johnson refused to endorse the 1964 Surgeon General's report, for instance, fearing alienation of the tobacco-friendly South. Cigarette makers managed even to thwart the US Navy's efforts to go smoke-free. In 1986, the Navy had announced a goal of creating a smoke-free Navy by the year 2000; tobacco-friendly congressmen were pressured to thwart that plan, and a law was passed requiring that all ships sell cigarettes and allow smoking. The result: American submarines were not smoke-free until 2011. 9  

Cigarettes are also, though, a significant cause of harm to the natural environment. Cigarette manufacturing consumes scarce resources in growing, curing, rolling, flavouring, packaging, transport, advertising and legal defence, but also causes harms from massive pesticide use and deforestation. Many Manhattans of savannah woodlands are lost every year to obtain the charcoal used for flue curing. Cigarette manufacturing also produces non-trivial greenhouse gas emissions, principally from the fossil fuels used for curing and transport, fires from careless disposal of butts, and increased medical costs from maladies caused by smoking 5 (China produces 40 percent of the world's cigarettes, for example, and uses mainly coal to cure its tobacco leaf). And cigarette makers have provided substantial funding and institutional support for global climate change deniers, causing further harm. 10 Cigarettes are not sustainable in a world of global warming; indeed they are one of its overlooked and easily preventable causes.

But the sixth and most important reason for abolition is the fact that smokers themselves do not like their habit. This is a key point: smoking is not a recreational drug; most smokers do not like the fact they smoke and wish they could quit. This means that cigarettes are very different from alcohol or even marijuana. Only about 10–15% of people who drink liquor ever become alcoholics, versus addiction rates of 80% or 90% for people who smoke. 11 As an influential Canadian tobacco executive once confessed: smoking is not like drinking, it is rather like being an alcoholic. 12

The spectre of prohibition

An objection commonly raised is: Hasn't prohibition already been tried and failed? Won't this just encourage smuggling, organised crime, and yet another failed war on drugs? That has been the argument of the industry for decades; bans are ridiculed as impractical or tyrannical. (First they come for your cigarettes.…) 13

The freedom objection is weak, however, given how people actually experience addiction. Most smokers ‘enjoy’ smoking only in the sense that it relieves the pains of withdrawal; they need nicotine to feel normal. People who say they enjoy cigarettes are rather rare—so rare that the industry used to call them ‘enjoyers’. 14 Surveys show that most smokers want to quit but cannot; they also regret having started. 15 Tobacco industry executives have long grasped the point: Imperial Tobacco's Robert Bexon in 1984 confided to his Canadian cotobacconists that ‘If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week’. 12 American cigarette makers have been quietly celebrating addiction since the 1950s, when one expressed how ‘fortunate for us’ it was that cigarettes ‘are a habit they can't break’. 16

Another objection commonly raised to any call for a ban is that this will encourage smuggling, or even organised crime. But that is rather like blaming theft on fat wallets. Smuggling is already rampant in the cigarette world, as a result of pricing disparities and the tolerance of contraband or even its encouragement by cigarette manufacturers. Luk Joossens and Rob Cunningham have shown how cigarette manufacturers have used smuggling to undermine monopolies or gain entry into new markets or evade taxation. 17 18 And demand for contraband should diminish, once the addicted overcome their addiction—a situation very different from prohibition of alcohol, where drinking was a more recreational drug. And of course, even a ban on the sale of cigarettes will not eliminate all smoking—nor should that be our goal, since people should still be free to grow their own for personal use. Possession should not be criminalised; the goal should only be a ban on sales. Enforcement, therefore, should be a trivial matter, as is proper in a liberal society.

Cigarette smoking itself, though, is less an expression of freedom than the robbery of it. And so long as we allow the companies to cast themselves as defenders of liberty, the table is unfairly tilted. We have to recognise that smoking compromises freedom, and that retiring cigarettes would enlarge human liberties.

Of course it could well be that product regulation, combined with taxation, denormalisation, and ‘smoke-free’ legislation, will be enough to dramatically lower or even eliminate cigarette use—over some period of decades. Here, though, I think we fail to realise how much power governments already have to act more decisively. From 1890 to 1927 the sale of cigarettes was banned virtually overnight in 15 different US states; and in Austin v. Tennessee (1900) the US Supreme Court upheld the right of states to enact such bans. 19 Those laws all eventually disappeared from industry pressure and the lure of tax revenues. 20 None was deemed unconstitutional, however, and some localities retained bans into the 1930s, just as some counties still today ban the sale of alcohol. Bhutan in 2004 became the first nation recently to ban the sale of cigarettes, and we may see other countries taking this step, especially once smoking prevalence rates start dropping into single digits.

Helping the industry fulfil its promises

One last rationale for a ban: abolition would fulfil a promise made repeatedly by the industry itself. Time and again, cigarette makers have insisted that if cigarettes were ever found to be causing harm they would stop making them:

• In March 1954, George Weissman, head of marketing at Philip Morris, announced that his company would ‘stop business tomorrow’ if ‘we had any thought or knowledge that in any way we were selling a product harmful to consumers’. 21
• In 1972, James C Bowling, vice president for public relations at Philip Morris, asserted publicly, and in no uncertain terms, that ‘If our product is harmful…we'll stop making it’. 22
• Helmut Wakeham, vice president for research at Philip Morris, in 1976 stated publicly that ‘if the company as a whole believed that cigarettes were really harmful, we would not be in the business. We are a very moralistic company’. 23
• RJ Reynolds president Gerald H Long, in a 1986 interview asserted that if he ever ‘saw or thought there were any evidence whatsoever that conclusively proved that, in some way, tobacco was harmful to people, and I believed it in my heart and my soul, then I would get out of the business’. 24
• Philip Morris CEO Geoffrey Bible in 1997, when asked (under oath) what he would do with his company if cigarettes were ever found to be causing cancer, said: ‘I'd probably…shut it down instantly to get a better hold on things’. 25 Bible was asked about this in Minnesota v. Philip Morris (2 March 1998) and reaffirmed that if even one person were ever found to have died from smoking he would ‘reassess’ his duties as CEO. 26

The clearest expression of such an opinion, however, was by Lorillard's president, Curtis H Judge, in an April 1984 deposition, where he was asked why he regarded Lorillard's position on smoking and health as important:

A: Because if we are marketing a product that we know causes cancer, I'd get out of the business…I wouldn't be associated with marketing a product like that.

A: If cigarettes caused cancer, I wouldn't be involved with them…I wouldn't sell a product that caused cancer.

Q: …Because you don't want to kill people? … Is that the reason?

Q: …If it was proven to you that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer, do you think cigarettes should be marketed?

A: No…No one should sell a product that is a proven cause of lung cancer. 27

Note that these are all public assurances , including several made under oath. All follow a script drawn up by the industry's public relations advisors during the earliest stages of the conspiracy: On 14 December 1953, Hill and Knowlton had proposed to RJ Reynolds that the cigarette maker reassure the public that it ‘would never market a product which is in any way harmful’. Reynolds was also advised to make it clear that

If the Company felt that its product were now causing cancer or any other disease, it would immediately cease production of it. 28

To this recommendation was added ‘Until such time as these charges or irresponsible statements are ever proven, the Company will continue to produce and market cigarettes’.

What is remarkable is that we never find the companies saying privately that they would stop making cigarettes—with two significant exceptions. In August 1947, in an internal document outlining plans to study ‘vascular and cardiac effects’ of smoking, Philip Morris's director of research, Willard Greenwald, made precisely this claim: ‘We certainly do not want any person to smoke if it is dangerous to his health’. 29 Greenwald had made a similar statement in 1939, reassuring his president, OH Chalkley, that ‘under no circumstances would we want anyone to smoke Philip Morris cigarettes were smoking definitely deleterious to his health’. 30 There is no reason to believe he was lying: he is writing long before Wynder's mouse painting experiments of 1953, and prior even to the epidemiology of 1950. Prior to obtaining proof of harm, Philip Morris seems honestly not to have wanted to sell a deadly product.

Abolition is not such a radical idea; it would really just help the industry fulfil its long-standing promises to the public. The cigarette, as presently constituted, is simply too dangerous—and destructive and unloved—to be sold.

Summary points

• The cigarette is the deadliest object in the history of human civilisation. It is also a defective product, a financial burden on cash-strapped societies, an important source of political and scientific corruption, and a cause of both global warming and global warming denial.
• Tobacco manufacturers have a long history of promising to stop the production of cigarettes, should they ever be proven harmful.
• The most important reason to ban the sale of cigarettes, however, is that most smokers do not even like the fact they smoke; cigarettes are not a recreational drug.
• It is not in principle difficult to end the sale of cigarettes; most communities–even small towns–could do this virtually overnight. We actually have more power than we realize to put an end this, the world's leading cause of death and disease.

Competing interests: The author has served as an expert witness for plaintiffs in tobacco litigation.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Open Access: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Argumentative Essay on Banning Cigarettes: Do You Support It?

No more second-hand smoking!

It is a well-known fact that second-hand smoking is one of the cancer causes. Second-hand smokers receive the same amount of harmful nicotine and other chemicals as the real smokers. Once smoking is banned, the amount of people who suffer from second-hand smoking will be reduced. Make sure to support your viewpoint with the statement that second-hand smoking reduction will also minimize the risk of cancer.

Cigarettes banning will help smokers to quit

Each smoking ban leads to a decrease in the number of cigarettes. With every banning law more and more smokers make a decision to quit altogether. In accordance with the information provided by the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center representatives, the number the brain receptors that are longing for nicotine increase from the inhalation of tobacco. Once the number of receptors begins to decrease the need to have “just one more cigarette” decreases too, which, in turn, results in no smoking. All the bans also give smokers one more reason to quit smoking for it is really inconvenient to spend hours searching for a place where smoking is allowed.

No more heart attacks!

In accordance with the Journal of the American Heart Association, the cities where smoking in public places is banned have less heart attacks in comparison with the areas where smoking is allowed everywhere. Make sure to give enough space for statistics within your essay. It is recommended to mention that almost 225 000 cases of heart attacks (per year) can be prevented by means of smoking bans. Provide real-life examples of the fact that smoking bans tend to lower the risk of heart attacks not only among smokers, but also among the people who do not have this habit.

Our statistics

Log in using your username and password

• Search More Search for this keyword Advanced search
• Latest content
• Current issue
• JME Commentaries
• BMJ Journals

You are here

• Volume 42, Issue 5
• The case for banning cigarettes
• Article Text
• Article info
• Citation Tools
• Rapid Responses
• Article metrics

• Kalle Grill 1 ,
• Kristin Voigt 2 , 3
• 1 Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies , University of Umeå , Umea , Sweden
• 2 Ethox Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, UK
• 3 Institute for Health and Social Policy & Department of Philosophy, McGill University, Canada
• Correspondence to Dr Kristin Voigt, Ethox Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Old Road Campus, Oxford OX3 7LF; kristin.voigt{at}ethox.ox.ac.uk

Lifelong smokers lose on average a decade of life vis-à-vis non-smokers. Globally, tobacco causes about 5–6 million deaths annually. One billion tobacco-related deaths are predicted for the 21st century, with about half occurring before the age of 70. In this paper, we consider a complete ban on the sale of cigarettes and find that such a ban, if effective, would be justified. As with many policy decisions, the argument for such a ban requires a weighing of the pros and cons and how they impact on different individuals, both current and future. The weightiest factor supporting a ban, we argue, is the often substantial well-being losses many individuals suffer because of smoking. These harms, moreover, disproportionally affect the disadvantaged. The potential gains in well-being and equality, we argue, outweigh the limits a ban places on individuals’ freedom, its failure to respect some individuals’ autonomous choice and the likelihood that it may, in individual cases, reduce well-being.

• Population Policy
• Public Health Ethics
• Public Policy

https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2015-102682

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request permissions.

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Introduction

Lifelong smokers lose on average a decade of life vis-à-vis non-smokers. Globally, tobacco causes about 5–6 million deaths annually. 1 This number is expected to grow: a total of one billion deaths are predicted during the 21st century, with about half occurring before the age of 70. 1 , 2 It is against this background that we will argue for a complete ban on the sale of cigarettes. While our argument focuses on tobacco cigarettes, which in many countries are by far the most popular tobacco product and in the aggregate the most harmful, we think it could be extended to include other forms of combustible tobacco as well.

As with many policy decisions, the argument for a ban requires a weighing of its pros and cons, including its impact on different individuals, both current and future. The weightiest factor supporting a ban, we argue, is the often substantial well-being losses many individuals suffer as a result of smoking. These harms, moreover, disproportionately affect the disadvantaged. The potential gains in well-being and equality, we argue, outweigh the limits a ban places on individuals’ freedom, its failure to respect some individuals’ autonomous choice and the likelihood that it may, in individual cases, reduce well-being.

The idea of a complete ban on the sale of cigarettes is not new. Bans were in place in 15 US states from 1890 to 1927, and Bhutan has had a ban since 2004. 3 Bans on the sale of (at least some) tobacco products have also been endorsed by members of the international tobacco control community. 3–6

In order to bring into focus the fundamental normative issues surrounding a ban on sales, we will simplify our discussion in two ways. First, we assume that a ban would be effective. In the real world, of course, any all-things-considered judgement must be informed by an assessment of a ban's likely effectiveness in different contexts, with due consideration of problems such as smuggled cigarettes and black markets. Second, we focus on a complete ban on sales, comparing this only to the status quo and not to the full range of policy alternatives. i We believe that the necessary debate about different policy instruments in various contexts will be greatly facilitated by consideration of the principled argument for a perfectly effective ban, which is what our paper seeks to provide.

We discuss smoking as a global problem, although most real bans would likely be implemented domestically and our argument might have to be adapted to reflect the situation of individual countries or regions. In rich countries, factors such as the greater availability of cessation resources and information about the risks of smoking make a ban less warranted than in countries where much of the population may be unaware of the risks associated with smoking. We therefore focus our discussion on rich countries in order to tackle the most challenging case for our position. This should not detract from the fact that the majority of death and disease a global ban would prevent will occur in low-income and middle-income countries.

We begin by considering the impact of smoking on health and well-being (section ‘Health and well-being’) and the egalitarian effects of a ban (section ‘Equality’), both of which will be central to our argument. We then discuss how individual freedom and autonomy are affected by a ban in the section ‘Freedom and autonomy’. The sections ‘Voluntariness’, ‘Irrationality’ and ‘Preferences and endorsement’ consider three putative aspects of smoking choices that have been emphasised in the literature: non-voluntariness, irrationality and inconsistency with smokers’ endorsed preferences. These aspects do strengthen the argument for a ban, but their role is different from what is often proposed. In  ‘Banning cigarettes: pros and cons’, we bring together these various considerations and explain why overall they speak in favour of a ban. The final section concludes by briefly commenting on how e-cigarettes could help address some of the problems and opposition facing a ban on conventional cigarettes.

Health and well-being

The health risk of smoking naturally varies with the extent of tobacco use. Long-time smokers face significantly increased health risks, including higher risks of lung and other cancers, cardiovascular disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Significant differences in mortality rates between smokers and never-smokers become apparent from middle age onwards. 8 Studies suggest a 10-year to 11-year difference between the lifespans of long-term and never-smokers. 8 , 9 In addition, smoking is implicated in causing many non-fatal conditions that can substantially lower individuals’ quality of life, ranging from asthma, tuberculosis, digestive problems and gum disease to vision problems, reduced fertility as well as impotence. 10

While heavy tobacco use is of course more harmful than light use, even light use, when long term, yields substantial health risks, in some respects approximating those of long-term heavy use. For example, ischaemic heart disease risk is similar in light, intermittent and heavy smokers. 11 With respect to lung cancer, for men smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day, the risk is three times that of never-smokers; for women, it is five times as high. 12

Conversely, cessation—which an effective ban would ensure—is associated with substantial health benefits. While for those who quit before their 30s excess mortality is reduced almost to the level of never-smokers, even those who quit at the ages of 40, 50 and 60 gain about 9, 6 and 3 years of life expectancy, respectively. 8 , 9

We believe that a comprehensive argument for a ban should look beyond health to overall well-being: improving health outcomes would not be worthwhile if this left people worse off overall. Many health risks are quite reasonably considered worth taking by the individuals concerned because of the benefits they bring in other, non-health areas of their lives.

While there may be disagreement in specific instances, on most accounts of well-being both the premature mortality and various diseases associated with smoking will reduce lifetime well-being. On hedonist views, the pain and frustration associated with non-fatal diseases typically decrease well-being with no countervailing benefit. Regarding mortality, life is, with some tragic exceptions, on balance a positive experience, and so more life is better. On preferentist or desire-based views, more of a person's most important preferences will typically be satisfied, and fewer frustrated, if she lives longer and has better health. A longer and healthier life also advances typical objective list entries such as developing and sustaining human relationships, and various moral and rational pursuits. Even if one refrains from specifying the nature of well-being, in line with liberal neutrality, long life and good health are all-purpose means that contribute to the pursuit of almost any life plan.

Importantly, we do not deny that smoking can also promote well-being in certain respects; in fact, we will emphasise below that it can do so and consider the possibility that there may be individuals for whom smoking leads to an overall gain in well-being. However, in the aggregate, the negative well-being effects of smoking are likely much larger than its positive effects.

Smoking also contributes to inequality. Most obviously, smokers are, to varying degrees, worse off than non-smokers because of the health risks and the monetary costs associated with smoking. Less obviously, because of the denormalisation of smoking, smokers are increasingly stigmatised and discriminated against. 13 , 14

What makes smoking particularly problematic from the point of view of equality is that it disproportionately harms people who are disadvantaged in other regards. In many rich countries, smoking rates are significantly higher among low-income groups. In the UK, for example, smoking prevalence in routine or manual occupations is 30% while in managerial and professional occupations it is 16%. 15 Among the most deprived groups, smoking rates reach >70%; among homeless people sleeping rough, 90% are smokers. 16

Of course, not all disadvantaged people smoke, and not all smokers are disadvantaged, socio-economically or otherwise. In the aggregate, however, a ban could help reduce inequalities in health outcomes. Studies suggest that, in Europe, smoking could be the largest single contributor to socio-economic inequalities in health, particularly among men. 17 In the UK, tobacco is considered the cause of about half of the socioeconomic status difference in death rates. 18

Many factors may contribute to unequal smoking rates. Smoking norms vary substantially across different groups. 19 In deprived communities, smoking often plays an important social role. 20 Support with cessation, including nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), counselling and medical advice, may also be more accessible for those from better-off groups. Further, the tobacco industry has specifically targeted disadvantaged populations, for example by placing its advertising disproportionately in low-income and ethnic minority neighbourhoods 21 , 22 and devising marketing strategies with particular appeal to the homeless and those with mental health problems. 23 These factors may help explain differences in cessation rates: studies suggest that across social groups smokers make similar numbers of cessation attempts but those in better-off groups are more likely to succeed. 24 It is an ongoing concern that many tobacco control strategies have greater effects on cessation rates among better-off groups vis-à-vis disadvantaged groups; 25 ii an effective ban would enforce cessation equally across social groups, avoiding these inegalitarian effects.

The idea that a ban would enhance equality in health outcomes assumes that those who quit as a result of a ban will substitute smoking with something less harmful to their health. The fact that, as we noted above, cessation is associated with such substantially improved health outcomes suggests that those who quit do so in ways that are overall beneficial for their health. It is not implausible that many of those who would quit as a result of a ban (many of whom, as we note below, are very motivated to quit) would see similarly improved health prospect. However, much will depend on how exactly a ban is phased in and the extent to which it is accompanied by measures to help smokers quit.

Our assessment of a ban should be based on its likely effects not only on health inequalities but on inequalities more broadly conceived. One important concern is that, while unequal smoking rates across different socio-economic groups mean that the health loss averted by a ban should be much greater among disadvantaged groups, a ban could also impose additional burdens on these smokers. As Gostin emphasises, a complete ban would leave many highly addicted smokers in withdrawal and distress, 26 many of them from vulnerable populations, including the poor, prisoners and the homeless, as well as those with mental health problems, for whom the immediate effects of quitting might be more complicated and/or more difficult to deal with. 27

More generally, being disadvantaged—be it socio-economically or in other ways—may also affect people's ability to respond or adapt to a ban. Different ways of ‘phasing in’ a ban might help address these concerns, as could the availability of suitable substitutes, such as e-cigarettes. For example, a ban could be accompanied by free NRT for those on low incomes, prison populations or those in mental health institutions.

For some smokers, the burdens imposed by a ban may be so significant that they will not be compensated for by the benefits cessation would bring; smokers in their 80s or 90s might be a case in point. Limited licensing schemes might be a suitable strategy for this group. Importantly, as we explain in more detail below, these concerns arise in relation to the current generation of smokers and will have much less significance with respect to future generations, who—because of the ban—would not become smokers in the first place. We return to this issue in the  section ‘Banning cigarettes: pros and cons’.

Freedom and autonomy

An important concern about our proposal is that a ban would pose an undue restriction on individual freedom and autonomy. Regarding freedom, we accept that any restriction of the available opportunities reduces freedom of choice. iii However, more freedom is not always better, nor is it always preferred. The disvalue of a particular restriction on freedom depends both on the interest people have in using the opportunity that is being removed, and on the interest people have in having or keeping the opportunity as an opportunity , whether or not they use it. Even non-smokers may have an interest in having the opportunity to smoke: this might be quite a specific interest (eg, in resisting temptation) or a more general interest in having a wide range of options.

Autonomy we understand here as self-direction, involving both an internal and an external aspect. Internal autonomy is the absence of internal obstacles to self-rule, such as ignorance, poor self-confidence or sense of self-worth, incoherent desires or preferences, and various psychological conditions such as clinical depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. External autonomy is the absence of external obstacles to self-rule, most obviously various malign influences from others to manipulate one's deliberations and so undermine one's independence. iv So understood, a ban will not necessarily reduce autonomy. Quite to the contrary, to the extent that a ban frees many smokers of a debilitating addiction, it strengthens their internal autonomy.

A ban may fail to respect individual autonomy. Respecting autonomy, we propose, requires abstaining from frustrating the choices of relatively autonomous people. We accept that there are strong reasons to respect autonomy in this sense. While significant shortfalls from full autonomy reduce our reasons to respect choices, they do not fully eliminate such reasons; interference still requires some justification. v Indeed, since people are typically quite prone to make choices that are far from fully autonomous, we think that almost any choice should warrant some respect. Note that one may choose something even if one does not find the freedom to do so important, or indeed even if one would prefer not to have this freedom. Such choices indicate some sort of inner conflict, but it may still be disrespectful of others to interfere with them.

Freedom and respect for autonomy, as we have described them, can pull in different directions when it comes to evaluating a ban on cigarettes. An autonomous smoker may choose to restrict her own freedom to smoke. For example, she may engage her partner in keeping their shared home free of cigarettes. If someone prevents her from making this arrangement, this protects her freedom to smoke but fails to respect her autonomy. Similarly, smokers may try to engage their government in keeping their society free of cigarettes (in fact, many smokers would welcome a ban imposed by the government; we return to this issue in the section  ‘Preferences and endorsement’); for these smokers, a ban, by restricting their freedom, will respect their autonomy.

Respect for autonomy can also part ways with well-being considerations. A person may autonomously choose to smoke because she does not care about her future well-being or because she falsely believes that a shorter and less healthy life will not decrease her well-being (eg, because she believes, at 21, that she will never want to live past the age of 40 anyway). We have reason both to respect this choice and to protect this person's lifetime well-being.

The next three sections address three related considerations that have been taken to strengthen the case for a ban: the degree to which smoking choices are less than fully voluntary, the limited rationality of these choices and the fact that many smokers do not endorse their smoking choices. Sometimes, these factors are explicitly invoked in relation to freedom or autonomy, sometimes they are invoked as arguments in their own right. As will become apparent, we believe that these considerations can indeed play an important role in the argument for a ban; however, their role has been overstated in the literature and must be qualified in various respects.

Voluntariness

The most comprehensive philosophical argument for strict regulation of smoking (though not explicitly a complete ban on cigarettes) has arguably been put forth by Robert Goodin, especially in his 1989 book, No Smoking: The Ethical Issues . One of Goodin's central arguments for tobacco regulation starts from the idea that because smokers typically have not fully appreciated the risks of smoking, and because smoking is addictive, the associated risks are not voluntarily assumed. This, in Goodin's argument, makes interference with smoking choices much less problematic than interference with other kinds of choices.

Goodin proposes that people are often not sufficiently informed about the consequences of smoking. Being sufficiently informed, on his account, requires not only being able to state the relevant probabilities about risks but also to ‘appreciate them in an emotionally genuine manner’ (ref. 33 , p. 24, citing Gerald Dworkin 34 ). Goodin does not seem to believe that being uninformed completely removes any reasons against regulation, but rather that the less informed a choice is, the less reason we have to abstain from frustrating it (ref. 33 , p. 21).

We share Goodin's concern that smokers must know the risks associated with smoking if we are to fully respect their choice to smoke. Knowledge of the risks of smoking is now well spread in developed countries, but much less so in many developing countries, 35 making the concern about involuntarily incurred risk highly relevant in these countries. This is important not least because 82% of the world's smokers currently live in low-income and middle-income countries. 36

However, Goodin's claim that in order to be sufficiently informed we must also have an emotionally genuine appreciation of these risks amounts to a very strong requirement. It may be very difficult for a 20-year-old to appreciate, ‘in an emotionally genuine manner’, the suffering she might endure as a victim of emphysema 40 years later, especially if she lacks experience of major illness in herself or those close to her. Such a demanding requirement may be more reasonable for choices with immediate effects, but one of the problems with smoking is precisely that people typically start young and suffer the consequences much later. Goodin's criterion of what counts as informed choice may turn out to be too high a bar to clear for most of the choices people make, including our most important choices, such as whether and with whom to have children. On Goodin’s account, we have strong reasons to interfere with such choices if we believe them to be unwise. It is beyond the scope of this article to fully engage with Goodin's arguments on its own terms. However, we believe that the best argument for a tobacco ban does not depend on such a controversial interpretation of informed choice. We think that the argument for a ban can succeed even if we accept that we have strong reasons to respect the choices smokers make, even if they do not fully appreciate the risks of smoking.

The second factor Goodin emphasises is the addictiveness of smoking. He argues that while it is not impossible to overcome addictions, what matters normatively is whether the addictiveness makes it ‘unreasonably costly’ (ref. 33 , p. 25) to do so: if the addiction is so strong “that even someone with ‘normal and reasonable self-control’ would succumb to it, we have little compunction in saying that the addict's free will was sufficiently impaired that his apparent consent counts for naught” (ref. 33 , pp. 25–6, citing Gary Watson 37 ). This condition, Goodin argues, is met in the case of smoking. Thus, a smoker's continuing to smoke cannot be taken as consent to the risks involved. Further, many smokers become addicted below the age of consent and so, Goodin argues, they cannot be taken to have consented to the risk of becoming addicted to nicotine.

While we share some of Goodin's concerns about the implications of addiction, the heterogeneity of smokers means that his argument applies to fewer smokers than Goodin suggests. Consider first the matter of age. It is often claimed that the quota of smokers who become addicted below the age of 21 is extremely high; Goodin puts this number at 95%. However, these numbers are typically based on studies that ask respondents at what age they first started smoking. This question may lead them to focus on their first ever cigarette, which need not indicate the beginning of addiction. Studies that instead ask respondents when they started smoking regularly indicate that the number of smokers who took up smoking as minors is substantially smaller. Surveys of UK smokers indicate that 55–66% start before the age of 18 (ref. 38 , p. 42, ref. 39 , p. 11).

Even regular smoking, however, is not necessarily a good indicator of addiction. Some adolescents may be able to maintain intermittent smoking without developing dependence. 40 Among adults, too, not all smokers become dependent. One study finds that almost 40% of daily smokers fail to meet the criteria of nicotine dependence (though they may exhibit individual symptoms of addiction, such as difficulties abstaining from cigarettes). 41 While there is disagreement about how to define addiction and what proportion of smokers meet the required criteria, there may be a significant proportion of smokers to whom this part of Goodin's argument does not apply.

Furthermore, it is not clear that addiction fully undermines the voluntariness of smoking in all regards. Even if addiction makes it ‘unreasonably costly’ to abstain from one's next cigarette, there may still be scope for devising a longer-term cessation strategy. This kind of long-term planning is arguably less susceptible to the forces of addiction. The addictiveness of tobacco may of course still thwart any cessation attempts smokers do make (we return to this below); but Goodin's argument, by not addressing this issue, proceeds too quickly.

Finally, irrespective of the degree to which addictiveness undermines the voluntariness of smoking, we are more concerned than Goodin that we have some reason to abstain from frustrating even those choices that are substantially non-voluntary. As John Christman notes, “I might know that a person is to some degree under the sway of external pressures that are severely limiting her ability to govern her life and make independent choices. But as long as she has not lost the basic ability to reflectively consider her options and make choices, if I intervene against her will (for her own good), I show less respect for her as a person than if I allow her to make her own mistakes”. 42

Our scepticism about Goodin’s argument should not be taken to imply that we think addictiveness is irrelevant. It is certainly true that many smokers are addicted and have become addicted in their youth; we agree that we have less reason to respect these smokers’ choice to smoke. Moreover, the addictiveness of smoking is often an intermediary cause in people becoming long-term smokers and thus facing substantial health risks. However, the lack of consent argument may apply to a smaller proportion of smokers than Goodin suggests.

More generally, we think that the broader concern here—whether or not smokers voluntarily accept the risks of smoking—should play a somewhat different role in the argument. On the one hand, as we have said, the degree of voluntariness affects the degree to which the choices involved are autonomous and so to what degree we have reason to respect them. At the same time, though, even if risks were accepted in a fully voluntary manner, this does not mean that the resulting harm is not undesirable or that we should not seek to prevent it.

Harms can be undesirable even if they result from risks that are voluntarily assumed. If, for example, I risk my health by donating a kidney to a relative, this does not detract from the undesirability of any ensuing harms. There may be an exception for harms that are actively sought out: a person may want to die, or want to amputate an arm, where this is not merely instrumental to some aim that can be reached in less harmful ways. However, when a person simply accepts a risk of what is for her an undesirable outcome, this is clearly not by itself a reason to disregard the risk or outcome.

Jason Hanna makes a persuasive argument against tying the justifiability of paternalism to voluntarily assumed risks. 43 Hanna gives the example of a reckless hiker who voluntarily abstains from gathering information on which bridges in the area are dangerous. Later on, the hiker unknowingly starts to cross a dangerous bridge, not because he wants to court danger but simply to finish his hike. If respect for autonomy precludes from moral consideration voluntarily assumed risks, then a bystander has no reason to intervene, which seems an unacceptable conclusion (ref. 43 , pp. 424–5). Similarly, we cannot conclude that we should abstain from intervening with smoking simply because smokers have voluntarily assumed the health risks.

Irrationality

A further concern in the normative debate about smoking and about how governments ought to respond to it is that smoking choices are in some sense irrational. This is the argument Sarah Conly pursues in her recent book, Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism , where she argues that we should often disregard, at least to some extent, smokers’ apparent preference for smoking. Goodin takes similar considerations to bolster his argument from lack of consent. The argument from irrationality can start from either impairments in the decision-making of smokers (in particular, cognitive biases) or, relatedly, from a discrepancy between smokers’ own goals and their choices.

Invoking impairment, Goodin argues that intervention into the choice to smoke is especially warranted if smokers’ false beliefs are caused by cognitive biases. Goodin points to evidence that smokers are subject to three biases, which are now most often called optimistic bias (‘wishful thinking’), the availability heuristic (‘anchoring’) and hyperbolic or temporal discounting (‘time discounting’). 33 As is more thoroughly researched and more widely appreciated now than when Goodin wrote his book, these biases are quite general, and not particular to smokers. 44 Therefore, either of two conclusions are possible: either the charge that smoking choices in particular are impaired loses its force or the charge is expanded to very many decisions we make. The latter option is the one pursued by Conly.

Conly cites a wide range of research in behavioural psychology and concludes: “We generally suffer from many flaws in instrumental reasoning that interfere with our ability to make effective and efficient choices” (ref. 45 , p. 23). The same conclusion has motivated Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein to promote what they call libertarian paternalism—benevolent structuring of choice situations that does not significantly affect the outcomes of the various options in the choice set. 46 , 47 Conly argues that libertarian paternalist measures are insufficient to ensure that people's choices promote their well-being and that we have no good reason to abstain from coercive measures. Her argument, however, is thoroughly consequentialist and does not give a role to respect for autonomy as we understand it. Instead, she assumes that we have reason to respect autonomy only if this is an effective means of promoting some other goal: “the basic premise of liberalism […] is that we are basically rational, prudent creatures who may thus, and should thus, direct themselves autonomously” (ref. 45 , p. 30). Conly rejects this premise and draws the conclusion that “when it comes to respect for autonomy, we can see that our belief that autonomous actions should not be interfered with was based on a mistake” (ref. 45 , p. 192).

Since we believe that there is reason to respect an agent's choices, even when these choices do not promote the agent's well-being, we find the argument from irrationality unpersuasive. Behavioural research may have proven that poor instrumental rationality is a general aspect of human decision-making. This, however, does not necessarily undermine our reasons to respect choices that are about as autonomous as choices typically are. What would be more relevant is if smokers in particular were prone to irrationality. There is some evidence that addiction causes behaviour that may be deemed irrational, though this is disputed. vi

We now turn from the proposal that poor instrumental rationality is an impairment to the more consequentialist observation that poor instrumental rationality, impaired or not, is prone to create a discrepancy between goals and actions. It is clear that people make choices that do not further their own well-being. What has been open to interpretation and debate is whether this means that people fail to effectively promote their goals or whether, instead, they might have goals other than furthering their own well-being. The extensive study of cognitive biases has given us some reason to favour the first interpretation: if people are under the constant influence of cognitive bias, we can expect that they will not effectively further their own goals. Therefore, the fact that they do not promote their own well-being need not indicate that this is not their goal.

Conly argues that “[w]hat we need to do is to help one another avoid mistakes so that we may all end up where we want to be ” (ref. 45 , p. 2, emphasis added). Where we want to be, Conly assumes, there are no cigarettes. She describes smoking as a “bad course[] of action” (ref. 45 , p. 8) and an instance of people “choos[ing] poorly” (ref. 45 , p. 9). Smokers, she says, “spend a disproportionate amount of their income on a habit that will probably leave them in worse health and possibly shorten their life without bestowing compensating benefits ” (ref. 45 , p. 33, emphasis added). Goodin similarly argues that “what is involved here is a weak form of paternalism, working within the individual's own theory of the good and merely imposing upon him better means of achieving his own ends ” (ref. 50 , p. 23, emphasis added).

While we agree that we should be concerned about a possible discrepancy between smokers’ goals and their choices, Conly's argument does not give sufficient weight to the fact that many people find smoking pleasurable and enjoy the taste or the buzz and relaxing effects that come from nicotine. As summarised in a recent study, “nicotine induces pleasure and reduces stress and anxiety. Smokers use it to modulate levels of arousal and to control mood. Smoking improves concentration, reaction time, and performance of certain tasks” (ref. 51 , p. 2298). The behavioural components of smoking may also be experienced as relaxing. 52 It is certainly not obvious that the net effect of smoking on well-being is necessarily negative. While Conly briefly discusses pleasure in the context of tobacco and acknowledges the pleasure addicted smokers experience from cigarettes (mainly the pleasure of alleviating withdrawal symptoms) (ref. 45 , pp. 170–1), she dismisses too quickly the possibility that those who smoke but are not addicted can derive substantial pleasure from cigarettes. vii This is particularly important because, as we noted above, a significant portion of smokers may not in fact be addicted.

Could these pleasures indeed outweigh the risks and so make smoking consistent with the goal of furthering one's own well-being? This, we think, can vary, depending primarily on an individual's level of tobacco consumption. Consider lung cancer, which is one of the most severe conditions associated with smoking (though, of course, not the only one; lung cancer causes less than half of the excess mortality among smokers). 8 For heavy, life-long smokers, studies estimate the risk of developing lung cancer over the course of one's life to be up to 25% compared with 0.2–1% for never-smokers. 54 For these smokers, it seems plausible to claim that the benefits could not possibly outweigh the risks. However, this is much less clear at lower levels of consumption. Though smoking 1–4 cigarettes a day, as noted above, increases the risk of lung cancer by 3–5 times, 12 this must be seen in relation to the very low risk for never-smokers. Further, while the literature emphasises that there is no ‘safe’ or ‘risk-free’ level of tobacco consumption, those who quit before age 30 appear to avoid almost all of the excess mortality risk associated with continued smoking. 8 , 9 , 55 Given that smoking can further such goals as pleasure, manifesting a romantic nonchalance and social belonging, these risks seem potentially quite acceptable. viii Moreover, given that the cost of cessation is typically higher than the cost of not starting, it may be more rational to keep smoking than to start.

Further, even when the harms of long-time smoking and the limited benefits it brings combine to make smoking apparently irrational for the typical smoker, it does not follow that we should completely disregard these choices. Some limited irrationality is common and should not automatically undermine respect for individuals’ choices. At the same time, outright irrationality, caused by smoking-specific cognitive failures or simply inferred from severe lack of goal orientation, may remove or significantly weaken our reasons to respect choice. To the extent that smokers display such irrationality, this strengthens the case for a ban. However, the degree to which this concern applies to individual smokers will vary and we should be cautious in giving it too much weight in our argument.

While the irrationality of smoking has played an important role in arguments for tight tobacco control, we have emphasised two broad concerns in this section: first, smoking choices may be more rational than is often assumed and, second, even irrational choices warrant more respect than is typically allowed in the literature on smoking. Our argument for a ban on cigarettes focuses instead on the well-being losses it would avert; that people may be irrational and not secure these benefits for themselves in the absence of a ban is an additional consideration in its favour but should play a much smaller role in the argument than it does for Goodin and Conly.

Preferences and endorsement

A further factor supporting the case for a ban is that smokers often do not endorse their preference for smoking: They have a preference to smoke but also a preference about that preference : they would prefer not to have it. In a 1991 article, Goodin argues that public policy “can hardly be said to be paternalistic in any morally offensive respect [if] the preferences which it overrides are ones which people themselves wish they did not have” (ref. 56 , p. 48). For Goodin, the fact that smokers typically go through many failed cessation attempts shows that their preference for smoking is often not endorsed. The preference for quitting, on the other hand, typically has second-order endorsement (ref. 56 , pp. 47–48).

Studies indeed suggest that the majority of smokers want to quit. US data puts this proportion at 70%, 57 UK data at 64% of smokers. 39 Further, in a study with participants from Canada, the USA, the UK and Australia, about 90% of smokers agreed with the statement, “If you had to do it over again, you would not have started smoking”. 58 This indicates that many smokers themselves do not find smoking consistent with their goals, lending support both to concerns about irrationality and non-voluntariness, which we discussed above. It also indicates, more directly, that many smokers are unhappy with their smoking.

However, if (endorsed) preferences are to guide policy decisions, then a policy designed to prevent smokers from smoking may also need to be evaluated based on smokers’ preferences about that policy : it is quite possible that I would prefer not to prefer to smoke, but that I also prefer that the government not prevent my smoking. In fact, Goodin seems to assume that smokers will themselves be opposed to regulation (ref. 56 , p. 42). It is not clear why, on his account, such preferences about policy would not tell against a ban.

Looking at preferences about a ban, a somewhat different picture emerges. Many smokers would welcome a ban, though not a majority. Studies from the USA, England, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the Australian state of Victoria suggest that among current smokers about 25–38% would support the introduction of a ban over the next 10 years or so. 59–63

Where does this leave the argument for a ban? Though Goodin’s treatment is not sufficiently sensitive to vast individual variations, the high degree to which smokers want and try to quit certainly weakens those reasons against a ban that are based on respect for autonomy and the value of freedom: it is arguably more important to respect choices that are endorsed by the chooser, and people generally have a greater interest in preserving options that they would like to make use of. We must also consider smokers’ preferences about the ban. As noted, studies from several countries indicate that about a third of them support such a proposal; for these smokers, respect for autonomy actually tells in favour of a ban.

Importantly, people will not have equal ‘stakes’ in this decision. On the one hand, those supporting the ban may be heavy smokers who find themselves unable to quit, seeking to free themselves of a substantial burden on their health, well-being and finances. On the other hand, those who are not addicted and enjoy the occasional cigarette may find that a ban removes a source of pleasure for them. Non-smokers, too, may value the opportunity to smoke; as we noted above, people can value opportunities even if they have no intention of making use of them. However, if—as seems likely—very few non-smokers actually have any intention of using this option, their interest in keeping it open should weigh much less heavily in decisions about tobacco control. Simply ‘adding up’ these different preferences may, therefore, not be an appropriate way to give them the respect they are due. ix

Banning cigarettes: pros and cons

It is time to bring together the various strands of our argument and consider how they inform the desirability or otherwise of a ban on the sale of cigarettes. Much of the literature on strict tobacco regulation focuses on various ways in which smoking choices are significantly less than fully autonomous—involuntariness, irrationality and lack of endorsement of smoking choices are the most prominent considerations in the literature, as we discussed in the preceding sections. We agree that these factors are crucial; however, contrary to how they are viewed by other proponents of strict tobacco regulation (such as Conly and Goodin), these factors do not by themselves establish that a cigarette ban is justified, for two reasons: first, many smokers and/or smoking choices do not in fact meet the identified criterion: a significant proportion of smokers may not be addicted, not all smoking choices reflect an irrational assessment of benefits and risks, and so on. Second, when smoking choices do fall short of requirements of autonomy in these ways, interference with these choices becomes more acceptable but it does not become wholly unproblematic. As we discussed above, the primary concern for us is the well-being loss that is associated with cigarettes. We accept that a ban would interfere with some (reasonably) autonomous choices as well as restrict individual freedom, but these negative implications are far outweighed by the well-being gains a ban would imply for both current and future generations.

What speaks against a ban is, first, its negative effects on freedom, in terms of the loss of a valued opportunity to smoke and, second, its failure to respect the autonomy of the many smokers who apparently choose to smoke. With respect to the first concern, we noted that non-smokers have an interest in keeping the option of smoking open and a cigarette ban will involve a restriction of their freedom, even if they have no intention of consuming cigarettes. While it is important to acknowledge this point, we must also emphasise that this is a fairly minimal cost, especially relative to what is at stake for smokers.

The degree to which smokers value the freedom to smoke is likely to vary. Indeed, about a third would favour a ban, which indicates that they do not value the opportunity to smoke very highly, or at least that this value is outweighed by other considerations. Furthermore, it seems that the majority of smokers plan to quit and wish they had never started. Therefore, the freedom to smoke may be unimportant for many—possibly the majority of—smokers.

Regarding autonomy, we noted that by removing a source of addiction a ban would contribute to many current smokers’ internal autonomy. This is, of course, a strong reason in favour of a ban. At the same time, a ban fails to respect the choices of the many people who currently smoke, especially those who wish to continue. We have discussed how lack of voluntariness, irrationality and lack of endorsement may mean that many smoking choices warrant less respect than choices typically warrant. Of these facts, lack of voluntariness due to early smoking initiation and due to addiction, lack of second-order endorsement of the preference to smoke and a positive preference for a ban strike us as the most significant. However, many choices to smoke are not burdened by any of these factors, and even when they are, they warrant some respect.

These concerns with freedom and autonomy must be weighed against what we considered the two main considerations supporting a ban: first, the well-being gained by averting substantial health losses that many individuals would otherwise face. This includes averting the expected increase from the current 5–6 million annual premature deaths from tobacco, many of which occur in middle age, and eventually reducing this number to zero, as well as avoiding many non-fatal but severe health conditions. Second, the positive effects on equality achieved by removing a source of poor health that disproportionately affects those who are already disadvantaged.

We recognised that some smokers’ well-being might be negatively affected by a ban. This is most likely for two kinds of smokers. First, those who enjoy smoking and only smoke occasionally and thus face much smaller health risks that are outweighed by the pleasures they gain—think, for example, of people who like to smoke a cigar a few times a year. Second, those who, despite substantial cigarette use, will not see substantial benefits from cessation, for example, because they are very old or fatally ill. Cessation support and limited licensing schemes may help this latter group but do not necessarily address this concern fully. While these burdens should not be downplayed, it must be noted that a ban would lower well-being for only a small minority of people and only for the current generation.

The group that stands to gain the most from a ban, on the other hand, are lifelong heavy smokers for whom the pleasures of smoking are not worth the risks and who, because of tobacco's addictive properties, find it extremely difficult or even impossible to effectively act on their preference not to smoke. These smokers are often among the most disadvantaged in society in other regards. Significant well-being gains can also be expected for those who smoke less, and even much less—as we noted above, even low levels of tobacco consumption can be associated with significant health risks.

As far as the current generation is concerned, then, four factors speak in favour of a ban: first, very large benefits in aggregate well-being. Second, reduced inequality in well-being because the benefits accrue largely to the disadvantaged. Third, improvements in internal autonomy for those who would prefer not to smoke. Fourth, respect for the autonomy of that proportion of the smoking population who want a ban (the evidence we cited suggests that this is about a third). These considerations stand against three opposing considerations: first, diminished well-being for those smokers whose well-being is improved by smoking (which we consider to be a small number of smokers). Second, a reduction in freedom that, as we argued, should be given less weight where non-smokers are concerned, and which is unimportant to many smokers (at least to those who want a ban and perhaps also to many who do not but who do not want to smoke). Third, a ban will fail to respect the autonomy of current smokers—though some of our reasons for such respect are weakened by lack of voluntariness, irrationality and lack of endorsement. This failure of respect is arguably greatest with regard to that proportion of smokers who do not favour a ban (about two-thirds). To us, despite the weighty considerations opposing a ban, the balance is very much in its favour.

Consider now all those potential future people who have not yet faced the choice of whether or not to smoke. With an effective ban, these people will not be tempted by the presence of cigarettes. They will not encounter social settings where smoking is advantageous. They may simply regard smoking a historical curiosity. While their freedom is restricted by a ban, it seems likely that the lost option will be quite insignificant to most of them. Some future people might have improved their well-being by smoking, some will surely oppose the ban and some will think they would have liked to smoke. For some of them, the choice to smoke may have been rational and/or endorsed. We expect, however, that this group will form a small minority and a significantly smaller section of the population than is the subsection of the present population who smoke and oppose a ban. For future people, therefore, the arguments against a ban are much weaker than for current people. The arguments for a ban, on the other hand, are just as strong: well-being and equality will be promoted by preventing the harms of smoking, for future people as for current people. With respect to future generations, therefore, the case for a ban seems even more clear-cut than for the current generation.

Some of these future people, it should be noted, are already alive, in the form of children who are too young to have faced the choice of whether or not to smoke. Especially in poor countries, this group is not as large as one would like since children encounter smoking very early. Still, >600 million people are below the age of five. x This group will supply many of the 10 million annually who are expected to face premature death from smoking from 2050 and on. For them, as well as for future people, the case for a ban seems overwhelming.

For those who consider freedom and/or respect for autonomy more important than we do, or promotion of autonomy and/or well-being and/or equality less important, taking a more long-term perspective is likely to shift the balance of reasons to favour a ban. Indeed, it seems to us merely a matter of how long a perspective one takes. If we consider all the people who will be born in this present century, it is hard to see how prevention of the more than one billion expected premature deaths and the substantial individual suffering that comes with it could be outweighed by respect for the choice of some present (and some future would-be) smokers and concern for the restrictions on freedom involved.

One concern we might have about making the case for a cigarette ban is that of a ‘slippery slope’: once we acknowledge the possibility that cigarettes should be banned, what would stop us from banning, say, certain types of food, alcohol or risky sports? In response, it is crucial to emphasise that arguments about banning or legalising any particular substances or activities need to be made on their own terms and focus on the characteristics of the activity or substance in question. Much of the argument we present here relies on a combination of features that is specific to cigarettes and could not be easily extended to other substances—such as the high risks for long-term users and the high level of addictiveness. At the same time, we think that the broad strategy we pursued here—going beyond questions about individual freedom to consider the well-being impact of smoking on different individuals—could be helpful in discussing the status of other substances and activities.

Philosophical arguments for bans typically focus on particular features of smoking choices—that they are irrational, non-voluntary and/or unendorsed—that are taken to make it (fairly) unproblematic for policymakers to interfere. However, these arguments are too quick in two respects: first, many smoking choices do not, in fact, share the identified characteristic. Second, while irrationality, non-voluntariness and lack of endorsement may weaken our reasons for protecting choices, they certainly do not remove them entirely. Much of the opposition to bans rests precisely on the understanding that we have reason to respect people's choices, even when these choices are problematic in various respects. Our argument has sought to stake out a more nuanced position, which acknowledges and gives substantial weight to the potential of a ban to disrespect individual autonomy and restrict freedom but emphasises the well-being losses such a ban could avert.

Of course, the argument for a ban faces not only philosophical but also political opposition. However, the idea is slowly gaining traction in the tobacco control community and various ways of phasing in such a ban are being explored. What is more, electronic cigarettes and the debate surrounding them could provide a helpful entry point towards a serious discussion about a ban on conventional cigarettes. E-cigarettes deliver nicotine to users in a way that is much more similar to conventional cigarettes than other currently available nicotine delivery systems. While the jury is still out on the harmfulness of e-cigarettes to users and bystanders, 65 there is a decent chance that these devices will turn out to be much less harmful than conventional cigarettes. Appropriate regulation could help ensure that these harms remain below acceptable levels. To the extent that e-cigarettes can provide a substitute for conventional cigarettes, many of the costs associated with a ban—in terms of limiting freedom and forcing current smokers to quit—would be alleviated. At the same time, many of the concerns about e-cigarettes—for example, that they would act as a ‘gateway’ to conventional cigarettes 66 and that they would ‘renormalise’ smoking 67 —would fall away if conventional cigarettes are effectively banned.

Some readers may not agree with the weighing we have given to the different pros and cons of banning cigarettes. For these readers, a more cautious conclusion is that it is important to recognise the variety of considerations at stake, as well as the fact that the costs of a ban would diminish with respect to future generations as these would grow up without cigarettes. Our conclusion, however, is that in light of the substantial death and disease it could avert, the case for a complete and effective ban on the sale of cigarettes is very strong.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Adina Preda for helpful comments on an earlier draft. KG's work is supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (grant no. 2009-2189). KV's work is supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (grant no. 172569).

• McDaniel P ,
• Walters EH ,
• Boreham J , et al
• Reeves GK , et al
• ↵ ASH . Smoking statistics: illness and death. ash.org.uk. http://ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_107.pdf (accessed 14 May 2015 ).
• Schane RE ,
• Bjartveit K ,
• Richardson K ,
• Mackenbach J
• Hiscock R ,
• Amos A , et al
• MacAskill S ,
• MacKintosh A , et al
• Barbeau EM ,
• Naumova E , et al
• Yerger VB ,
• Przewoznik J ,
• Apollonio DE ,
• Clifford D , et al
• Schroeder SA ,
• Dworkin G ,
• Abdullah A ,
• Chaloupka F ,
• Corrao M , et al
• Fernander A ,
• Rayens MK ,
• Zhang M , et al
• ↵ USDHHS . Preventing tobacco use among youth and young adults: a report of the surgeon general . Atlanta, GA : US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion , 2012 .
• Christman J
• Sunstein CR ,
• Benowitz NL
• Fagerström K
• Brennan P ,
• Zaridze D , et al
• Ramasundarahettige C ,
• Landsman V , et al
• Hammond D ,
• Laux FL , et al
• Connolly GN ,
• Healton CG , et al
• Lam TH , et al
• Edwards R ,
• Peace J , et al
• Wakefield MA ,
• Benowitz NL ,

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

↵ i Note that many proposals are not alternatives to a ban but rather strategies for its implementation. This includes gradual phase-out schemes, such as the Tobacco Free Generation legislation currently under consideration by Tasmania’s government. 7

↵ ii A possible exception to this appears to be increased taxation. However, taxation comes with a set of egalitarian concerns of its own; see Voigt 19 for further discussion.

↵ iii This is in accordance with the mainstream liberal tradition whose proponents include Isaiah Berlin, 28 Joel Feinberg 29 and Ian Carter. 30 This is, we believe, a quite intuitive way to think about freedom.

↵ iv By defining autonomy negatively, we hope to remain somewhat neutral between various more substantial accounts. Sometimes, external autonomy is taken to require freedom (ref. 31 , p. 204). Since we consider freedom separately, we will leave this possibility to the side here.

↵ v For an extensive treatment of respect for less than fully autonomous choice, see Grill. 32

↵ vi For a range of perspectives, see Elster and Skog; 48 for a convincing case that addicts do display some particular irrationality, see Rachlin. 49

↵ vii The idea that smoking might be pleasurable typically receives little attention in the literature. For an interesting discussion of how the relationship between harm and pleasure is viewed in public health discourses about smoking, particularly in the context of e-cigarettes, see Bell and Keane. 53

↵ viii This should not detract from the concern that unfair inequalities can affect the costs and benefits associated with smoking and thereby the extent to which the risks of smoking become acceptable. For example, as we mentioned in the section ‘Equality’, social norms around smoking vary across social groups, with smoking often playing an important social role in disadvantaged communities but much less so in affluent ones; this means that not smoking can come with a cost for those in disadvantaged communities that does not exist for those in wealthier ones. That this can make the risks of smoking more acceptable in some social groups than others should be viewed as an unfair disadvantage. 19

↵ ix On respect for divergent preferences in groups, cf. discussion on group consent by Grill. 64

↵ x CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html

Linked Articles

• Mini-Symposium: Regulating smoking Ethics of tobacco harm reduction from a liberal perspective Yvette van der Eijk Journal of Medical Ethics 2015; 42 273-277 Published Online First: 26 Nov 2015. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2015-102974
• The concise argument Paternalism on Mars Dominic Wilkinson Journal of Medical Ethics 2016; 42 271-272 Published Online First: 25 Apr 2016. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2016-103598

Read the full text or download the PDF:

Other content recommended for you.

• Heterogeneity in the measurement and reporting of outcomes in studies of electronic cigarette use in adolescents: a systematic analysis of observational studies Carlos Echevarria et al., Tobacco Control, 2017
• Reducing the addictiveness of cigarettes Jack E Henningfield et al., Tobacco Control, 1998
• Public support for tobacco endgame policies in South Korea: Findings from the 2020 International Tobacco Control Korea Survey Heewon Kang et al., Tobacco Control, 2024
• Pharmaceuticalisation as the tobacco industry’s endgame Yogi Hale Hendlin et al., BMJ Global Health, 2024
• Analysis of FDA’s IQOS marketing authorisation and its policy impacts Lauren Kass Lempert et al., Tobacco Control, 2020
• Cigarettes, heated tobacco products and dual use: exhaled carbon monoxide, saliva cotinine and total tobacco consumed by Hong Kong tobacco users Xiaoyu Zhang et al., Tobacco Control, 2023
• Predictors of electronic cigarette use among Swedish teenagers: a population-based cohort study Linnea Hedman et al., BMJ Open, 2020
• Prevalence and predictors of heated tobacco product use and its relationship with attempts to quit cigarette smoking among Korean adolescents Seo Young Kang et al., Tobacco Control, 2020
• One of several ‘toys’ for smoking: young adult experiences with electronic cigarettes in New York City Emily Anne McDonald et al., Tobacco Control, 2015
• Double standards and arguments for tobacco regulation Jessica Flanigan, Journal of Medical Ethics, 2016

Log in using your username and password

• Search More Search for this keyword Advanced search
• Latest content
• Current issue
• Anniversary
• BMJ Journals

You are here

• Volume 31, Issue 2
• Prohibition no, abolition yes! Rethinking how we talk about ending the cigarette epidemic
• Article Text
• Article info
• Citation Tools
• Rapid Responses
• Article metrics

• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3324-2183 Ruth E Malone 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8910-5647 Robert N Proctor 2
• 1 Social and Behavioral Sciences , University of California, San Francisco , San Francisco , California , USA
• 2 History , Stanford University , Stanford , California , USA
• Correspondence to Professor Ruth E Malone, Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA; ruth.malone{at}ucsf.edu

As public health advocates struggle over how best to end the cigarette epidemic, one persistent obstacle to developing appropriate policies has been the lingering spectre of ‘prohibition’. A misunderstanding of the USA’s experience with the national ban on sales of alcohol more than a century ago has led even public health advocates to claim that we cannot end the sale of cigarettes because ‘prohibition does not work’: a ban on sales, we hear, would lead to crime and to black markets, among many other negatives. In this Special Communication, we show how the tobacco industry has carefully constructed and reinforced this imagined impossibility, creating a false analogy between cigarettes and alcohol. This improper analogy, with its multiple negative associations, continues to block intelligent thinking about how to end cigarette sales. Instead of prohibition, we propose abolition as a term that better captures what ending sales of the single most deadly consumer product in history will actually do: enhance human health and freedom.

• tobacco industry
• public policy
• denormalisation

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-056577

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request permissions.

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

For decades, cigarette makers have equated smoking with liberty, proclaiming a ‘right to smoke’ while hinting that any restriction on the sale of cigarettes—indeed, any effective tobacco control at all—would be an infringement of fundamental freedoms. This has been particularly true in the USA, where, for example, Philip Morris sponsored a travelling exhibit of the original Bill of Rights in the 1980s. 1 In opposing effective tobacco control, the tobacco industry often deploys the example of the USA’s 1919 prohibition of alcohol sales, claiming that any effort to rein in such a fundamental liberty would result in chaos, crime or popular revolt: ‘Prohibition failed the first time around, it won’t work now’. 2

This paper has two purposes. One is to deconstruct the tobacco industry’s use and misuse of the prohibition analogy, by showing how the analogy is used to oppose a wide range of tobacco control policies, attack tobacco control practitioners and divide the tobacco control movement. A second purpose is to encourage using the more appropriate analogy of abolition for the proposal to end the sale of cigarettes. We suggest this reframing because we recognise that language is ‘a loaded weapon’ 3 and because ending the sale of cigarettes is more accurately characterised as an enlargement of liberty, rather than its restriction. Cigarette makers have been masterful at confusing this issue, turning one of the world’s most powerful addictions into an expression of freedom. A reorientation to the language of abolition is needed, because while prohibition implies a curtailing of freedom, abolition implies liberation from a malignant practice or institution.

The prohibition analogy

Governments routinely ban or limit various types of activities deemed unsafe or harmful. Such laws may involve restrictions on personal behaviours that affect others, prohibitions on purchase of dangerous products or bans on the sale of such products. In the case of cigarettes, Big Tobacco has worked to create and perpetuate a false comparison to the USA’s experience with alcohol prohibition more than a century ago, shaping notions about consumer product safety that have become a roadblock to responsible government action.

How has the moth-eaten spectre of prohibition become such an effective way to shut down any talk of stopping cigarette sales? Why does this analogy retain such power? What do people fear when they think we cannot ban the sale of cigarettes? The prohibition analogy draws its power from several imagined negatives, including crime, crusading moralism and a deprivation of personal choice.

The spectre of a black market and organised crime

For decades, cigarette makers have warned that a ban on cigarette sales—or even on a particular additive like menthol—would lead to a black market or worse. Many of the 10 651 documents in the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents library 4 on ‘organised crime’, the 17 242 documents on ‘bootlegging’ and the 588 documents on ‘criminal gangs’ in the industry’s files sound this alarm. Philip Morris in 1996, for example, while pondering the acquisition of News Corporation (owner of Fox) from Rupert Murdoch, was also contemplating engaging ‘a noted historian to prepare a series of weekly columns about prohibition and its negative implications’, with a focus on ‘organised crime’. 5

The spectre of a moral crusade

For decades, cigarette makers have argued that any effort to limit the sale or use of cigarettes constitutes an unjustified interference in people’s lives by ‘the nanny state’, another aspect of the prohibition trope. Public health advocates by this reckoning are just busybodies trying to tell us all how to live our lives; we are ‘shower-adjusters’ (334 documents) and zealots (13 781 documents), arch-enemies of fun and freedom. 4

The spectre of loss of personal choice

Talk of prohibition also dovetails with the idea that anything that interferes with personal choice is bad. Public health scholars have long recognised the poverty of this approach when applied to cigarettes. The 1989 US Surgeon General’s report identified two principal flaws in this ‘personal choice’ argument: (1) the young age at which people start smoking and (2) the power of addiction (pp. v–vi). 6 Years before, even cigarette makers had acknowledged privately that ‘the argument revolving around “free choice”’ was being ‘negated on the grounds of addiction’. 7 Public health advocates have often called attention to how ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ are constrained by social circumstances, including marketing to disadvantaged groups and the deliberate engineering of cigarettes to be maximally addictive. 8 9

Crafting the ‘prohibition’ bogeyman

The tobacco industry has created a bogeyman by routinely characterising any rigorous tobacco control measure as ‘de facto’ or ‘the road to’ prohibition. A scarecrow image of the actual history of alcohol prohibition is created by such comparisons, which tend to be naïve and simplistic, ignoring the historical complexities surrounding such policies (including certain health benefits) 10 ( box 1 ). Cigarette makers also tend to conflate banning sales with restricting or punishing personal use, which allows them to paint advocates for banning sales as restricting personal liberties. Cigarette makers weaponize such confusions to divide the tobacco control community and to render ‘impossible’ any path leading to effective abolition.

What was prohibition?

After a vigorous campaign centred around protection of families from the deleterious effects of drink, the US Congress prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol in 1919, taking effect in 1920. 59 The policy was initially popular with many people and alcohol consumption and its adverse effects were reduced. Although consumption was never banned, and those with a stock of alcohol could drink it legally, as stocks ran low the policy became increasingly unpopular and black market sales proliferated through underground ‘speakeasies’, with protection from organised crime figures like Al Capone. 60 Prohibition was abandoned federally in 1933, though some state and local jurisdictions continued their bans, as do some even to the present day (‘dry counties’). 61

For decades, cigarette makers have used the term prohibition as a derogatory label for any kind of effective tobacco control. The Tobacco Institute’s Ann Browder in 1979, for example, claimed that smoking bans in restaurants constituted ‘piecemeal prohibition’, 11 and 30 years later industry allies cited the danger of a black market to oppose the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to remove menthol from cigarettes. 12 13 Cigarette makers have raised the spectre of prohibition to defeat efforts to ban sales to minors, and to delay restrictions on smoking in airplanes and in restaurants (p. 12). 14 The word ‘prohibition’ appears in >156 000 documents in the Truth repository, with many of these stressing the impossibility of limiting the sale or use of cigarettes. The dangers of ‘prohibition’ were always part of the talking points of the Tobacco Institute, which repeatedly warned of ‘creeping prohibition’ (299 documents), ‘backdoor prohibition’ (1105 documents) and ‘prohibition through taxation’ (110 documents). 4 This strategy dates from the earliest phases of the industry’s denial campaign: Hill and Knowlton when crafting the industry’s public relations strategy stressed the value of drawing attention to the ‘dangers of prohibition’ along with the ‘social benefits of smoking’. 15

Raising the spectre of prohibition was also part of the industry’s litigation strategy. Law firm Shook Hardy and Bacon, in a training manual for trial counsel, stressed that any effort to rein in tobacco should be labelled ‘ De Facto prohibition (p. 10)’. 16 Cigarette makers paid popular magazines to denounce prohibition: Barron’s Weekly in 1967, for example, published an attack on ‘The Federal Crusade Against Smoking’, where warnings of a cigarette-cancer link were said to be part of an elaborate effort by bureaucrats ‘to brainwash the citizenry into kicking the habit… a crusade as menacing and ugly as prohibition’. 17 Barron’s never revealed that its pro-cigarette articles were written with the aid of the Tobacco Institute, which privately bragged about its role in financing and planting those articles. 18

Cigarette makers have also hired historians to help craft the narrative of impossibility, equating prohibition with the ‘failed’ experience of alcohol in the USA. John Burnham at Ohio State, for example, was hired to testify for the industry in court, after demonstrating his willingness to write cigarette-friendly histories of (alcohol) prohibition. 19 Burnham directed Philip Morris’ ambitious Project Cosmic, the goal of which was to assemble a global team to denounce efforts to limit smoking. 20 Burnham later bragged about being the industry’s ‘mole’ in academia, 21 recruiting scholars like James Kirby Martin and Mark Lender, who had co-authored Drinking in America , published by the Free Press in 1987. Martin later testified for the industry: “We had talked about doing… a companion volume which would continue an investigation of questions of prohibition”. Martin and Lender’s project, which had the working title ‘Banned in the USA’, was abandoned when Lender developed a mouth tumour (pp. 185–6). 22

The prohibition trope has also been deployed outside the USA. In Australia, for example, the Australian Tobacco Manufacturing Industry prepared a document in 1969 echoing the Barron’s Weekly article, arguing against cigarette health warning labels and advertising bans by referencing ‘a crusade as menacingly ugly as prohibition was in the years following the first World War’. 23 The chief executive of Australian tobacco group W.D. and H.O. Wills was quoted in a 1995 media release as saying that increasing tobacco taxes ‘amounts to backdoor prohibition’. 24 25 In London, the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, a ‘smokers’ rights’ group supported by tobacco companies, in 1990 published a treatise entitled ‘A short history of 500 years of the use and prohibition of tobacco’. 26

For the industry, the USA’s experience of alcohol prohibition is always wholly negative, despite accounts suggesting that—as a measure to reduce the adverse health and social effects of alcohol consumption—it was actually effective and, at least initially, quite popular with the public. 10 27 The prohibition trope is thus based on a misreading of history and a faulty equivalence of alcohol and tobacco. 10 27 28 But it has also become a shorthand for something more sinister: the idea that governments cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the people. Simon Chapman and others have pointed out that ‘nanny state’ has saved innumerable lives through policies now mostly taken for granted. 28 29 In richer parts of the world, we assume that our water will be clean and sewage properly disposed; we live with emissions controls on factory stacks and building codes that are essentially ‘prohibitions’. 29 Powerful corporations often resist efforts to mandate such protections—think of how long it took to ban lead from the paint on children’s toys, 30 and how hard it has proved to limit greenhouse gas emissions. 31 Denouncing ‘prohibition’ in the abstract effectively serves the interests of polluting industries, by weakening trust in public health governance. Cigarette makers in the 1980s and 1990s joined with Big Oil to help create political movements like the Tea Party, figuring that if they could taint the whole idea of taxation and regulation, then sellers of gasoline and cigarettes could continue doing business as usual. 32

Big Tobacco has also worked to promote an understanding of prohibition as making criminals of people who grow or smoke tobacco. In 1984, for example, Tobacco Institute President Horace Kornegay, in a speech to Burley warehousers, castigated US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop as the ‘executioner’ of tobacco farmers. After further comparing the Surgeon General and his advisors to Hitler Youth and China’s Red Guards, Kornegay wondered what Koop’s ‘final solution’ would be for those ‘recalcitrant’ smokers who did not obey his order to quit: ‘Exile? Deportation? Concentration Camps? Death squads?’ The former North Carolina congressman labelled Koop ‘a grave threat to millions of Americans’, given his plot to bring us a world of ‘prohibition, segregation, discrimination’ and ‘antismoking apartheid’. 33

Adoption of the prohibition trope by public health advocates

Unfortunately, public health authorities have long accepted the cigarette industry’s framing of what is or is not possible, conjuring this same prohibition bogeyman. President Kennedy’s Health Education and Welfare Secretary Anthony J. Celebrezze, for example, in 1962 rejected calls for federal action against cigarettes, claiming it was ‘not the proper role of the federal government to tell citizens to stop smoking’. Celebrezze’s explanation: ‘prohibition did not work’. The Secretary’s position was perhaps influenced by the fact that he himself smoked a pack a day. 34

Even those we associate with courageous tobacco control have feared the prohibition trope. In 1969 Congressional testimony, Action on Smoking and Health founder John Banzhaf argued that cigarette sales should not be banned, because this would lead to a black market and therefore ‘will not work’ (p. 289). 35 Several past US Surgeon General reports have similarly disclaimed the possibility of prohibiting sales of cigarettes (or smoking), usually without citing any evidence. The 1984 report on chronic obstructive lung disease asserted that ‘outright prohibition’ was ‘not feasible… not an acceptable alternative’ (pp. 520, 527). 36 The editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association , in a 1986 editorial, claimed that a ban on the sale of cigarettes, however ‘tempting’ to contemplate, would ‘inevitably fail’: “We would be faced with a second Prohibition, everywhere undermining respect for law and encouraging the growth of organized crime to new and more massive proportions”. 37

Cigarette makers have been pleased—and often surprised—by how reluctant public health authorities have been to embrace the idea of a ban on sales. Some in the industry actually anticipated such a ban after the 1964 Surgeon General’s report, and Philip Morris was privately relieved that the report had left smoking on ‘an individual basis’. 38 The Tobacco Institute also appreciated the ‘moderate’ approach of the American Cancer Society, which had positioned itself intermediate between ‘prohibitionists’ and ‘accommodationists’. 39

More recently, cigarette makers have raised the spectre of prohibition to divide the tobacco control movement, specifically by contrasting the industry-preferred version of ‘harm reduction’ with ‘prohibitionists’. A 2014 Philip Morris International (PMI) strategy document 40 calls for amplifying ‘voices of “harm reduction”’ versus ‘prohibitionists’, stressing the need to ‘marginalise the policies and advocates of extreme measures as prohibitionists’. ‘Extreme measures’ for PMI included bans on menthol and other additives, policies to mandate nicotine reductions, point of sale display bans and policies to require larger graphic warnings on packaging.

Are cigarettes like beer?

A misunderstanding of alcohol prohibition from over a century ago has thus been twisted by the industry into a shorthand for conveying several ideas about tobacco products that ill-serve health and human liberty, making it hard to imagine that sales of cigarettes could ever be ended. 41 42 Part of the prohibition myth is the public health community’s ongoing, often uncritical adoption of cigarette industry framings. A great deal of public health rhetoric is unwittingly tainted: talk about ‘smoking’ (rather than cigarettes) causing cancer, for example (which blames the victim), or referring to ‘smoking and health’ rather than ‘cigarettes and death’. And why is the burden of ‘cessation’ always on the consumer and never the producer? Public health advocates use the term prohibition when talking about ending cigarette sales, because we have uncritically adopted the industry’s equation of cigarettes with beer or wine. Here is where the work of analogies is key, because if cigarettes really were like beer, then a ban on sales might well be undesirable or unworkable.

But cigarettes are not like beer. They are not like beer, because (a) cigarettes are far more deadly, and (b) most people who drink do not become addicted. For most people alcohol is a recreational drug, which is very different from the nicotine delivered in cigarette form. Only about 5%–10% of people who drink are addicted, versus >80% of people who smoke cigarettes (p. 493). 43 The fundamental argument for ending sales of cigarettes (vs prohibition of alcohol) is really twofold: cigarettes are powerfully addictive and far more injurious, and most people who smoke wish they did not. The oddity of cigarettes is that most of the demand stems from addiction, which is why medical professionals often prescribe alternative means of delivering nicotine, on a therapeutic (rather than recreational) basis. And the contrast with heroin is instructive: we do not allow retail sales of heroin and other highly addictive drugs, even in countries where their use is decriminalised. For addicted smokers, the ubiquitous retail availability of cigarettes makes quitting even more difficult. 44 45 Cigarettes are unlike beer and more like heroin, because almost everyone who smokes eventually regrets having started. 46

The abolition alternative

How can we reframe our discourse to deflate the prohibition bogeyman and make planning for the end of cigarette sales seem less onerous and more achievable? Understanding the ways in which the tobacco industry has deployed the prohibition bogeyman is a first step. But a second step is to recall that responsible governments often ban the sale of products that harm people, including many that are much less injurious than cigarettes.

In 1988, for example, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the sale of lawn darts, an outdoor game involving throwing sharp metal-tipped objects, after three deaths and several hundred injuries caused by the products. 47 Many national governments have banned the sale of lead-containing paint, dangerous pharmaceuticals and pesticides of various sorts, including some formerly in widespread use. Few would now assert that heroin, once seen as a useful therapeutic drug, should be widely available for sale in gas stations or grocery stores. 48 These are all instances in which long-accepted products and practices have been abolished.

Why is abolition a better way to think about ending the cigarette epidemic? 49 First and foremost is the fact that smoking is less an expression of liberty than its deadly robbery . Most (cigarette) smokers wish they did not smoke, 46 which means that human liberties will actually be enlarged by eliminating sales of cigarettes ( box 2 ). The industry has worked very hard to trivialise our understanding of addiction: they want us to believe that addiction is essentially desire, when addiction is more like the frustration of desire. If most people who smoke wish they did not, then ending sales of cigarettes will make it easier for smokers to regain the freedom not to smoke. Achieving this freedom is not made easier by the fact that for every McDonalds in the USA, there are 27 retail outlets for cigarettes. Ease of access sustains the epidemic.

What is abolition?

After centuries of transatlantic slave trade, President Abraham Lincoln announced the liberation of American slaves through the Emancipation Proclamation of 22 September 1862. For decades, abolitionists had struggled to end the practice of slavery, with some favouring only the abolition of the slave trade, while others called for the abolition of the entire institution. Britain had abolished its trade in slaves in 1807, for example, while still allowing possession of enslaved humans in British colonies. Abolition has also been applied to the ending of child labour or unfair taxes: the word implies the ending of an onerous institution. Key to understanding this terminologic distinction is that while ‘prohibition’ implies a loss of freedom, ‘abolition’ invokes its enlargement, as in freedom from slavery. Prohibition is more about building walls: abolition is about tearing them down.

Abolition also recalls the end of slavery and other unjust institutions. Abolition means ‘the complete ending’ of a cruel or onerous custom, carrying the rhetorical gravitas of noble work to end slavery, child labour, torture and other inhumane (but once common) practices. The language of abolition also allows public health to challenge a fundamental (and outrageous) talking point of the industry: that smoking is ‘natural’ for humans and that nothing can really be done to stop it. Humans according to this view will always want to smoke, and efforts to end sales are doomed to fail. But this is untrue: the cigarette epidemic is itself a historical creation of Big Tobacco, built and sustained by human actors. It can be ended by human action.

More accurately than prohibition, abolition reflects what ending cigarette sales would actually do: liberate humanity from the world’s most lethal consumer product, a product which has caused untold human suffering and which most users would rather do without. The normalisation of cigarettes has led to the premature deaths of >100 million people in the last century, 50 and even more in our present century. 51 Humans will always suffer from microbial epidemics, but the cigarette variant differs in being caused by transnational corporate actors being permitted to prioritise profits over human lives.

Abolition refocuses attention from the individual consumer to the corporate producer and the means by which the epidemic is spread, wholesale and retail. In coming to grips with obesity, scholars have recognised that blame cannot be placed solely on personal sloth and gluttony: the epidemic has structural, political and social causes, having to do with sugar production and marketing, corporate power and the ubiquity of sugared drinks. 52 With tobacco, too, we need to move beyond thinking of the cigarette catastrophe as the result of bad personal choices. The epidemic has corporate causes with retail and political accomplices.

In arguing for abolition, we do not envision an overnight ban on sales everywhere. We are calling for governments to develop concrete, phased plans for ending sales. Phasing out cigarette sales, challenging though it may be, is simpler and more effective than endlessly cajoling millions to eschew something sold in nearly every gas station and convenience store. Abolition is consistent with how we approach cholera or tainted meat: we go upstream, and look for points where we can stop the toxin at its source. Cigarettes are like cholera in this sense: we need to treat not just the disease but how it is caused and spread.

Abolishing the sale of cigarettes will not be easy. The tobacco industry and its allies remain powerful and there are structural, political and social barriers to be overcome. Despite these constraints, people and governments are not helpless to act.

Entirely within our power, entirely within our rights

It is important for public health advocates to appreciate how cigarette makers have used the false analogy of ‘prohibition’ to block progress in tobacco control. This means calling out the industry and its allies when the term is used, but also rejecting the prohibition trope when invoked pejoratively by public health colleagues to marginalise advocates of policies they fear will be unworkable. The public health effort to end the cigarette epidemic will be more likely to succeed by casting off the industry’s framings.

As wrong as it is to underestimate Big Tobacco’s power, it is also wrong to exaggerate it. In 2021, 148 public health organisations from across the globe called on governments to develop plans to phase out cigarette sales, and others have set out plans to dramatically reduce retail availability. 53 54 Even in the USA, where the industry remains influential at the national level, local communities and/or state governments have it entirely within their power—and legal right—to end the sale of cigarettes. There is solid legal precedent for such actions dating back over a 100 years, when the US Supreme Court in Austin vs Tennessee (1900) upheld the right of any state or local community to abolish the sale of cigarettes. From 1890 to 1927, 16 US states successfully banned the sale (and sometimes manufacture) of cigarettes, with no great outcry over deprivation of liberties—apart from protests from the usual suspects. 55 In more recent times, there have been many local attempts to end the sale of cigarettes, some of which might have succeeded if public health organisations had been less spooked by the spectre of prohibition. 56

Abolition is no longer a pipe dream. Two California cities have recently enacted ordinances ending the sale of most tobacco products, both of which went into effect in January 2021. So far no surge in black markets, no rise in criminal gangs, no reported suffering from deprivation of liberty. We can expect other cities to follow suit, forming an ever-expanding quilt of truly smoke-free communities. 57 Public health leaders need to recognise that the language of abolition could be useful in helping governments move past the prohibition trope to correct more than a century of industry-created public health injustice.

Tobacco control organisations must advocate for abolishing the sale of cigarettes, the only consumer product most users wish they did not use. We should not be comfortable in a world where the most vocal organisation calling for an end to smoking is a transnational tobacco giant engaged in yet another image makeover. 58 To paraphrase Nelson Mandela: difficult tasks often seem impossible, until they are actually done. Like abolition of apartheid or slavery, abolishing the sale of cigarettes will signal the end of our passive—and pathological—acceptance of these lethally addictive contrivances and their constraints on human freedom.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not applicable.

Ethics approval

This study does not involve human participants.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Elizabeth A. Smith and Patricia A. McDaniel for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper and assistance with references and formatting, and Carol McGruder for fruitful discussions and talks linking the tobacco endgame with abolishing slavery and apartheid. The authors also acknowledge the helpful comments of three reviewers whose insights about successive versions of the paper were appreciated.

• ↵ Truth tobacco industry documents . Available: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/ [Accessed 6 Dec 2021 ].
• US Department of Health and Human Services
• Friedman LC
• Tobacco Institute Newsletter
• Zid Abu-Shalback L
• Hill & Knowlton
• Pepples E ,
• Stevens A ,
• Clements EC
• Rasmussen N ,
• Australian Tobacco Mfg Industry
• RJ Reynolds International
• Markowitz G ,
• Wallace-Wells D
• Tucson Star
• ↵ Part 1 Cigarette Labeling and Advertising - 1969. Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce House of Representatives. 1969. Philip Morris Records . Available: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/kpkw0189
• Lundberg GD ,
• Tobacco Institute
• Philip Morris International
• American Psychiatric Association
• Wakefield M ,
• Germain D ,
• Henriksen L
• Hammond D ,
• Laux FL , et al
• United States Consumer Product Safety Commission
• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
• World Health Organization
• Action on Smoking and Health
• New Zealand Ministry of Health
• McDaniel PA ,

Twitter @MaloneRuth

Contributors Both authors conceptualised the paper and wrote and edited all versions.

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests REM ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3324-2183 , Professor Emerita, University of California, San Francisco; editor-in-chief, Tobacco Control Date: 31 July 2021. I have read and understood BMJ’s policy on declaration of interests and declare the following: personal financial interests: since 1997, I have been a faculty employee of the University of California, San Francisco. I am semi-retired and receive a pension from the University. My recall salary is provided by funds from the state of California and my research grant from the National Cancer Institute. I have received travel/accommodation expenses and consulting fees or honoraria from the US Department of Justice (for serving as a tobacco industry documents consultant for USA vs Philip Morris et al ), WHO (for serving on the Expert Panel on Tobacco Industry Interference with Tobacco Control), American Legacy Foundation (for serving on an award selection panel), Clearway Minnesota (for serving as a grant proposal reviewer), US Centers for Disease Control (for consulting on a tobacco industry documents research project), NIH (for serving as a grant proposal reviewer) and Cancer Research UK (for preparing a report on views of the idea of a tobacco 'endgame'). I own one share each of Philip Morris International, Reynolds American and Altria stock for research and advocacy purposes and have participated in tobacco control advocacy. I receive an annual honorarium and reimbursement of travel/accommodation expenses from BMJ Publishing Group Ltd (for work as editor-in-chief of Tobacco Control). I have also received travel/accommodation expenses and honoraria for speaking to various public health groups. In addition, I have received funding for reviewing documents as a potential expert witness for plaintiffs’ legal cases involving tobacco industry activities. Organisational financial interests: within the last 5 years, I have received grant funding from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (research funds derived from the state tax on cigarettes) and the California Tobacco Control Program. RNP is a tenured faculty member at Stanford University and receives a salary. He also serves as an expert for plaintiffs in tobacco litigation, where the industry has been charged with fraud, conspiracy, negligence, racketeering and/or manufacture of a deadly product.

Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Read the full text or download the PDF:

• EssayBasics.com
• Pay For Essay
• Write My Essay
• Homework Writing Help
• Essay Editing Service
• Thesis Writing Help
• Write My College Essay
• Do My Essay
• Term Paper Writing Service
• Coursework Writing Service
• Write My Research Paper
• Assignment Writing Help
• Essay Writing Help
• Call Now! (USA) Login Order now
• EssayBasics.com Call Now! (USA) Order now
• Writing Guides

Should Cigarette Smoking Be Banned? (Argumentative Essay Sample)

Should cigarette smoking be banned.

How do you feel as a nonsmoker when you happen to pass beside a smoker on a cigarette and get the smoke? Well, you will agree that the act of smoking should be prohibited. Laws have been put in place to ban tobacco use in most states of the USA. These countries have their unique regulations regarding cigarette smoking and its allowance such as an increase in taxation on cigarettes, promotion of cessation, expansion of the smoke-free space in public among others.  Public outcry is on the rise regarding due to the impacts of cigarette smoking that encompasses the health of the smoker and the public as well as rising costs of mitigating its effects felt by the public. Irrespective of such impacts, some states allow smoking of cigarettes in bars and clubs as well as setting smoking zones for the addicted smokers. However, the question that rings the mind? Do all these laws help in regulating cigarette smoking and its impacts to the public? Yes, for instance, there have been bans on cigarette smoking in flights and advertisement on televisions with reduced outlets for smoking to help the public. Cigarette smoking should be banned.

Cigarette smoking has led to increased health concerns even to the nonsmokers.  Smoking affects the health of the smokers besides controlling the addict’s habits and expenditures. On the same note, the public health concern is on the rise due to cigarette smoking.  It is supported by the evidence that has been released in the public domain by the surgeons on the impacts and the diseases related to smoking. The public continuously inhales the secondhand smoke which is dangerous.  The banning of cigarette smoking is the best option even though it is against the smokers’ rights to do whatever is good for them. However, a right for a person to do any activity is provided so long as that right does not bring harm other people. Therefore, the nearby smokers’ rights are infringed since it puts them at risk without their consents hence making them contact diseases such as lung cancer, throat diseases, and emphysema and breathing problems among others. Furthermore, children are at greater risks due to increased exposure to secondhand smoke hence they are at higher risk of infant death syndrome, middle ear infection, asthma bronchitis, and pneumonia that make their health poor.

Secondly, the public is financially burdened due to cigarette smoking.  The financial burden continues to rise with more than $ 193 billion spent on an annual basis in the USA alone.  Enterprises with the USA are on continuously losing lots of money concerning reduced productivity due to sick employees who are directly or indirectly affected by the cigarette smoke. Furthermore, costs are incurred due to cigarette smoking problems which include healthcare costs, and counseling costs, reduced wages due to increased youth exposure to cigarette smoking among others.

Even though smoking cigarette is still at high levels, it is unethical in the public domain to claim a right to a tobacco cigarette, and yet the actions cause disturbance to the public. Besides, lots of lives have been lost due to diseases such as lung cancers, bronchitis, and pneumonia among others while these kinds of infections are preventable. Thus, banning of the habit of cigarette smoking is the best ways to minimize such problems.

In conclusion, cigarette smoking should be prohibited since it is the primary cause of preventable diseases as well as premature deaths all over the world.  The cigarette smokers suffer the impacts of such acts due to their choice. However, the cost incurred by the public as well as the nonsmokers who suffer due to secondhand smoke should not be the case as these activities can be done away.

Band 5+: Some people believe that smoking cigarettes should be banned. On the other hand, there are those who disagree with this measure. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Smoking cigarettes is considered as one of the unhealthy habits affecting the quality of life of many people across the world. With an increase in the number of smokers and spread of this negative habit among youngsters, the question whether smoking should be banned has become a topic for debate. It is disagreed that smoking cigarettes should be banned.

Firstly, when cigarettes are banned by law it could lead to significant economic decline.For instance, all cigarettes which were produced at the factories will eventually need to be disposed of. Therefore, all resources which were spent on production of cigarettes will be lost.Thus, it makes clear that cigarettes are not going to be banned in the near future.

Secondly, cigarettes banned will provide mental health consequences, such as depression and personality disorder. For example, banning cigarettes means that all people who were addicted will not have an opportunity to smoke again. Therefore, it will cause massive depression because of inability to smoke. Thus, now it makes clear that banning cigarettes will provide so many bad ramifications for residents who are addicted to them.

In conclusion,the consequences of banning cigarettes can lead to challenges such as potential economic decline and mental health decline with some negative ramifications for the whole country .Therefore, it is disagreed that cigarettes should be banned on the legal level. Eventually, cigarettes should not be banned in the near future, while the government does not have an idea on how to exchange cigarettes for less negatively impacting products.

Check Your Own Essay On This Topic?

Generate a band-9 sample with your idea, overall band score, task response, coherence & cohesion, lexical resource, grammatical range & accuracy, other topics:, nowadays, distance learning programs have gained popularity, but some people argue that online courses can never be taken as good as those taken at a college or university in- person. to what extent do you agree or disagree.

Technology development has changed our way of living, as well as studying. Some people debate over online learning programs can never be better than offline courses. In this essay, I will discuss both opinions to make a conclusion. Distance-learning programs only became possible thanks to growing technology, therefore it’s continuously developing. There are a lot […]

Some say cultural traditions are destroyed when they are used as money-making attractions for tourists. Others say this is the only way to save such traditions. Discuss both views and give your opinion

While is is true that historical and cultural traditions are being seen as an idustry and governments are making money from them, it is hard to determine whether this attitude has a potential negative consequence for them or not. As far as I am concerned, this point of view can be helpful for people with […]

Many parents today organise extra classes for their children after school and at the weekends. Do you feel that this is a worthwhile thing to do or do you feel children have enough education at school?

Parents want their children to spent their time for useful stuff. And they are arranging additional lessons after their school time is over and at the weekends. In my opinion it is not worthwhile as children have enough pressure at school instead, they have better organize different recreational activities in order to make their after-school […]

Wild animals no place in the 21 st century, so protecting them is a waste of resources

Some people think wild animals do not need us, therefore they are a waste of resources. I completely disagree this opinion and strongly suggest that we should try to save wild animals in everytime. I think it is incorrect idea that wild animals have not place in the world because we have entered the 21st […]

Art classes, such as painting or drawing, are as important for children’s development as other subjects, so it should be compulsory in high school. Do you agree or disagree?

Subjects such as painting and drawing are as beneficial for children’s development as other subjects at school which is why it should be obligatory in high school. I completely disagree with this statement because not everyone likes art classes and some teenagers want to focus only on the classes they actually need in order to […]

Caring for children is an important thing of the society. It is suggested that mothers and fathers should be required to take child care training courses. Do you agree or disagree?

Nowadays, better parenting of children become an essential part that drones the attention of many people towards it. Therefore, some people believe that parents should join such classes where they can learn some basic childcare techniques. I partially agree with the above statement that I will explain in the following paragraphs. To embark with, many […]

Plans & Pricing

Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Smoking — A Research Paper on Smoking Cigarettes: Should Society Ban It

A Research Paper on Smoking Cigarettes: Should Society Ban It

• Categories: Smoking Smoking Ban Tobacco

About this sample

Words: 1030 |

Published: Dec 3, 2020

Words: 1030 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

• Randall, R. (1999, August 31). Boston University Medical Center. Retrieved from httlis://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/tobacco/history.htm Should smoking be banned?, (2017).
• How tobacco liroducts harm the environment from their manufacture to consumlition, (2018, Aliril 20). Truth Initiative. Retrieved from httlis://truthinitiative.org/news/how-tobacco-liroducts -harm-environment-their-manufacture-consumlition 10 serious effects of cigarette smoking on environment and human health, (2019).
• Conserve Energy Future. Retrieved from httlis://www.conserve-energy-future.com/serious-effects -cigarette-smoking-environment-and-human-health.lihli
• Why is smoking an issue for non-smokers?, (2012, May). World Health Organization. Retrieved from httlis://www.who.int/features/qa/60/en/
• Singer, li. (2011, November 11). liroject Syndicate. Retrieved from httlis://www.liroject -syndicate.org/commentary/should-we-ban-cigarettes
• Smoking and the environment, (2008). Smoke Free Kids. Retrieved from httli://www.smokefreekids.info/01env_main.htm

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Nursing & Health Law, Crime & Punishment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 789 words

6 pages / 2528 words

1 pages / 514 words

1 pages / 435 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Smoking

Smoking is a pervasive and harmful habit that affects millions of people worldwide. Despite the widely known health risks associated with smoking, many individuals continue to engage in this detrimental behavior. Anti-smoking [...]

Initial impressions of a person smoking Association of smoking with wealth and maturity Irony of anti-smoking education Relaxation and stress reduction Taking breaks and social interactions Life skills [...]

In the "should smoking be illegal argumentative" debate, one of the primary concerns is the well-known harmful effects of cigarettes on the human body. Many people are aware that smoking cigarettes is detrimental. Cigarettes [...]

The rise of vaping has prompted significant debates and discussions surrounding its potential harms and benefits. This essay delves into the complex issue of banning vaping, exploring the reasons behind calls for prohibition, [...]

For years there has been conflicting research whether smoking should be banned or not and it is a significant issue today. Many people have given up smoking while others still continue to smoke. Smoking is the inhalation and [...]

Vaping is not a traditional smoking. Many of us don’t even consider it as a substitute of smoking. That’s why a large chunk of non-smokers get attracted towards vaping because it’s harmless, flavored, aromatic and obviously [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Conclusion of Smoking Should Be Banned on College Campuses Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Arguments in favor of smoking in campus, arguments against smoking in campus, reconciliation of the two positions, campus smoking: conclusion of the essay, works cited.

The idea of smoking in colleges and campuses has developed a mixed reaction in the USA and in many other parts of the world such that it has posed a very hot and contentious universal debate.

Several campuses and colleges have tried to impose a total ban on smoking within their environs, some of them succeeding while others failing to do so. For instance, colleges like Santa Ana and Fullerton have managed to ban smoking completely within their environs, while others such as Huntington Beach and Golden West College still allow smoking in prescribed places such as in parking lots.

Fullerton College was the first to successfully impose a smoking ban in the year 2007 (Bates 57). Nevertheless, many colleges and campuses have not managed to follow suit because of some state laws which assert that smoking is only proscribed inside buildings and within 20 feet from entry points of buildings in all campuses. These laws continue to give students the right to smoke within certain areas of their campuses.

As aforementioned, section 7595 of the government code affirms that smoking is proscribed only in public buildings and within 20 feet from entry points of buildings in all campuses (Merrill 36).Therefore, the opponents of this subject believe that since it is the right of every citizen to do anything that is recognized as legal, it is very wrong to impose a total ban on smoking, especially in campuses.

The most important thing is to ensure that students follow the laid down rules and regulations such as the strict use of the recommended areas of smoking. In deed, it is very unfair to send students off campus to smoke.

In addition, the opponents of this argument believe that smoking should not be banned because it helps students to relax whenever they are in stressful situations. Concerning the health risks that are brought about by smoking, they assert that every mature citizen should be in a position to separate good behavior from wrong behavior.

They say that since there has been an integration of cigarette smoking topics in schools for several decades, by the time a student reaches campus, he/she must be in a position to understand the risks that cigarette smoking poses to their health and therefore they should be able to make informed decisions about smoking. They also argue that it is very unfair to impose an immediate ban on cigarette smoking in campus yet it is clearly understood that smoking is an additive activity which can not be stopped at once.

Even though campus students have the right to smoke within some prescribed areas whenever they wish to do so, as mandated by some state laws, they ought to realize the fact that cigarette smoking has got very serious and detrimental effects on human health. Smoking of cigarettes can bring about lung infections to both first-hand and second-hand smokers. Therefore, smokers need to recognize that their right to smoke may greatly infringe on the rights of their non-smoking counterparts.

It is obvious that students know the negative effects of smoking cigarettes. For instance, it is expensive for them and it may also reduce their lifetime. Generally speaking, cigarette smoking is just bad. Currently, at least forty three colleges in the USA have imposed a total ban on cigarette smoking in their campuses and this trend is increasing especially among commuter schools and community colleges (Merrill 40).

However, it is hard to impose such a ban in some colleges because of the mixed reactions that are held by different stakeholders about the issue of smoking, and the existing campus policies which give the smokers the right to smoke in prescribed areas. According to the research that was carried out by the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, 31% of college students smoke cigarettes. This figure exceeds the national general average of 25% (Longmire 15).

It is also worth to note that even though there has been an integration of cigarette smoking topics in schools for several decades, cigarette smoking has continued to attract many youths and this continues to raise a lot of alarm about their future. This is because cigarette smoking is the major contributor of the cases of lung cancer in the entire world.

Research indicates that close to eighty percent of men who die from lung cancer, and seventy five percent of women who die from the same disease do so because of smoking tobacco. Research also indicates that the risk of lung cancer increases when a person starts smoking at an early age, and with an increase in the number of cigarettes that a person smokes in a day (Robicsek 56).

Scientific research has proved that cigarette smoking is harmful to the body. The smoke that comes out of a burning cigarette is a compound mixture of several chemicals which are produced when tobacco is burned.

This smoke contains a deadly compound called tar, which consists of more than four thousand chemicals which are very poisonous, and a majority of them have been clearly identified to be the main cause of cancer. Most of these chemicals are also known to cause lung diseases and heart problems. Some of these chemicals include cyanide, benzene, methanol, ammonia, formaldehyde and acetylene (Merrill 45).

Other deadly substances that are found in cigarettes include carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide gases which are very poisonous. The most active component of a cigarette is nicotine. Nicotine is a very addictive compound. Cigarette smoking can cause several problems such as cancer, lung damage and heart infections among many other diseases.

Research also indicates that more than thirty percent of the deaths that result in the United States occur due to the use of tobacco. Cigarette smoking also causes eighty seven percent of the deaths that result due to lung cancer. Other types of tobacco-related cancers include mouth cancer, cancer of the larynx, cancer of the throat and esophagus and cancer of the bladder. There is also a very close connection between cigarette smoking and the occurrence of the cancers of the kidney, pancreas, stomach and the cervix.

Cigarette smoking can also cause lung damage which begins at the early stages of smoking. Cigarette smokers encounter many problems with their lungs as compared to non-smokers and this situation gets worse when an individual increases his/her capacity to smoke. Smoking is linked to many dangerous lung infections which are just as perilous as lung cancer. These infections include emphysema and chronic bronchitis which cause difficulties in breathing and may even cause death.

Cigarette smoking also augments the risk of heart infections which stand out as the major causes of deaths in the U.S. Out of all the risk factors of heart infections, i.e. excess cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, cigarette smoking, physical lethargy and high blood pressure, cigarette smoking remains the leading risk factor for impulsive deaths that result from heart attacks (Bates 78).

In addition, low levels of cigarette smoking which may not be able to cause lung infections are capable of damaging the heart. Therefore, second-hand smokers also stand a very high chance of getting heart infections.

As stated earlier, Section 7595 of the government code affirms that smoking is proscribed in all public buildings and within 20 feet from entry points of buildings in all campuses (Merrill 36). Even though this ruling is good, it is not sufficient because it seems to discriminate the innocent second-hand smokers who continue to suffer from cigarette smoke which pollutes the air around them.

Cigarette smoking has also very detrimental effects to the real smokers and therefore they should be able to accept this ban because it is meant for their own good. Though it is very hard to ban citizens from doing something which is legally right, smoking should be gradually banned in campuses so as to protect the non-smokers. This is because campuses are public places which consist of both smokers and non-smokers.

My stand on this issue differs significantly from my opponents who believe that smoking should be allowed in some prescribed areas in campuses. My stand is that cigarette smoking should be banned in campuses because it impacts negatively on the non-smokers. Banning of cigarette smoking in campuses would enable the non-smoking citizens to enjoy the delight of breathing unpolluted air.

Nevertheless, my stand does not include cigarette smoking in private places such as in homes. At the same time, cigarette smokers should understand that the non-smokers are not trying to be intolerant when they keep on complaining about them. Rather, they are doing it for the sake of their own health.

In conclusion, smoking should be totally banned in campuses and colleges because of its severe health risks to both smokers and non-smokers. The health risks are much more to non-smokers because they may double up especially to those who already suffer from other ailments such as heart and lung problems.

In addition, a very short exposure by a non-smoker to secondhand smoke may have abrupt severe effects on his/her cardiovascular system thus escalating the risk for lung and heart infections. This makes the non-smoker to have a higher risk of catching infections from cigarette smoke than the real smoker yet he/she is very innocent. A more effective way of reducing smoking in campuses would be to provide tobacco termination counseling programs in the campuses.

Bates, Tim & Gordon Mangan. Smoking and Raven IQ. New York: Pocket Books, 2007.

Longmire, Wilkinson, & Torok Edgar. Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Melo, Maurice. Cigarette Smoking and Reproductive Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Merrill, David. How Cigarettes are made. London: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Robicsek, Francis. Ritual Smoking in Central America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

• Comprehensive Sex Education
• Marginal Analysis of Cheating
• Ethical Problem of Smoking
• On Why One Should Stop Smoking
• Smoking Ban in the United States of America
• American History: The Problem of Education in American Culture
• Education in Afghanistan Before the Taliban
• Time Management: Lesson Pacing
• Truancy in Schools
• Drug Test for Teachers and Athletes in Schools
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, June 29). Conclusion of Smoking Should Be Banned on College Campuses Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/smoking-on-campus-should-be-banned/

"Conclusion of Smoking Should Be Banned on College Campuses Essay." IvyPanda , 29 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/smoking-on-campus-should-be-banned/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Conclusion of Smoking Should Be Banned on College Campuses Essay'. 29 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Conclusion of Smoking Should Be Banned on College Campuses Essay." June 29, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/smoking-on-campus-should-be-banned/.

1. IvyPanda . "Conclusion of Smoking Should Be Banned on College Campuses Essay." June 29, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/smoking-on-campus-should-be-banned/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Conclusion of Smoking Should Be Banned on College Campuses Essay." June 29, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/smoking-on-campus-should-be-banned/.

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Law

Argumentative Essay On Should Cigarette Smoking Be Banned In Public

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Law , Cigarettes , Smoking , Countries , Tobacco , Events , Medicine , Health

Words: 1100

Published: 02/14/2020

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

Over the last few years, people tend to notice an increasing number of “no smoking” signs in public places. Many countries the world over have imposed public policies, laws and regulations that ban smoking in public places and workplaces. Indicatively, smoking on public transport has been prohibited in South Australia in 1994 (Drug and Alcohol Services for South Australia) and gradually the rest of the world’s countries have enacted similar laws, while countries like England and Wales are considering a pilot ban of smoking within prisons, for 2014 (BBC News UK). Ireland was the first country to ban smoking in both public areas, including dinning facilities and bars, and all workplaces, in March, 2004 (WHO 110). In the U.S, it all started with a surgeon general’s report, back in 1964, where he stressed the disastrous effects of smoking (Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events; Institute of Medicine 109). Within the first year, the government passed the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 that obliged tobacco companies to label their cigarette packages with health-related warnings (Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events & Institute of Medicine 109). However, it was not until 1973 when Arizona became the first state to prohibit smoking is selected public areas, followed by Civil Aeronautics Board that created smoking and non-smoking sections in their commercial flights (Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events & Institute of Medicine 110). Those opposed support that prohibiting smoking in public places violate individuals’ right to be free to decide and it does not prevent people from smoking, as believed. Adults tend to smoke to reduce stress, due to economic, personal or familial problems (Jacobs). Smoking gives a speedy nicotine hit after only 10 seconds after nicotine enters the human body that makes people who smoke feel feelings of pleasure (Cancer Research UK). That is why people want to smoke at their workplace to relax in between breaks, or when they go out to have some fun and forget about their problems. After all, since purchasing and selling cigarettes is not banned, why should smoking them be? On the other hand, people claim economies are negatively affected by banning smoking in public areas, where most people spend practically all their day. Studies have shown that prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars affect their profitability, based on basic economic logic (Tomlin). People that usually smoke to relax and those that have linked smoking to having fun will most likely order less drinks, while out in a bar, and the same probably applies to restaurants, since smoking is also connected with eating and enjoying oneself. The reason for prohibiting smoking in public places is mainly to protect public health, particularly in relation to passive smoking. It is widely accepted that the health consequences and risks deriving from “involuntary exposure to environmental tobacco smoke emphasizes the need for stronger regulation to protect nonsmokers, particularly children” (WHO 38). Furthermore, smoke-free legislation is proven to be beneficial to current smokers, as it has helped them to reduce the annual tobacco consumption, if not completely stop smoking (WHO 38). Surveys conducted on staff working in public places portray a big success of the imposed smoke-ban measures, which admittedly were not as difficult to enforce as initially thought, especially in places where separate non-smoking areas have been created (WHO 125). The air is cleaner too. Research has shown that air quality has improved significantly, ever since the enact of the smoke-free law, with carbon dioxide levels reducing by 45%, and up to 98% in non-smoking bars and workplaces respectively (WHO 112). People have also reacted very positively towards the new smoke ban laws, by 54%, while health care givers report reduced rates of people with respiratory problems (WHO 125). However, the major concerns in implementing the prohibition of smoking in public places Whether cigarette smoking should be banned in public places or not remains a controversial issue that will most likely concern years to come. Being allowed to smoke in public gives people the freedom to choose, which is their right. On the other hand, prohibiting smoking in public places gives non-smokers the right to have clean air without having to suffer passive-smoking-related health problems. So, all in all, it is a rights issue that will need further research as to how, and if, opposing views could be bridged. However, recent facts and statistics from research and studies are encouraging. It appears that 93% of the population consider the smoke-ban law is just and good (WHO 112). What is even more encouraging is the fact that 80% of smokers also agree that the law is actually good and almost a full 100% , both smokers and non-smokers, think that workplaces are healthier now,(WHO 112). In regards those that claim economies suffer a shock from the tobacco money that are lots, it might be better to consider public health and common good on top of everything else.

Works Cited:

BBC News UK (2013). “Smoking ban considered for prisons”. Web. Sep. 19, 2013. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24170235> Cancer Research UK (n.d). “Smoking and cancer: Why do people smoke?”. Web. Sep. 18, 2013. < http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/healthyliving/smokingandtobacco/whydopeoplesmoke/smoking-and-cancer-why-do-people-smoke> Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events & Institute of Medicine (2010). “Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Effects: Making Sense of the Evidence”. The National Academies Press. <http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12649&page=110 > Drug and Alcohol Services for South Australia. “Tobacco and the Law”. Page Last Modified: 24 Sep 2012. Web. Sept.19, 2013. < http://www.dassa.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=120> Jacobs Marjorie (1995). “From the First to the Last Ash: The History, Economics & Hazards of Tobacco, A comprehensive Adult Basic Education Curriculum”. Unit 3. Web. Sep. 19, 2013. <http://healthliteracy.worlded.org/docs/tobacco/Unit3/1why_people_smoke.html> Tomlin Jonathan (2009). “The Economic Impact of Smoking Ban”. Forbes Magazine. Web. Sep. 18, 2013. < http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/04/economic-impact-bars-restaurants-opinions-contributors-smoking-ban.html> World Health Organization (2007). “THE EUROPEAN TOBACCO CONTROL REPORT 2007». Book. ISBN 978-92-890-2193-7 <http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/68117/E89842.pdf>

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 2060

This paper is created by writer with

ID 287037316

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Hunter theses, human behavior theses, luck theses, hurricane theses, birth control theses, bilingualism theses, jealousy theses, csr college essays, example of course work on global health alert, free report on field trip, essay on hate, free discrimination against immigrant populations essay example, free the determination of youngs modulus e using strain gauge technique report example, good examining bell hooks contribution to debates about gender and race in the late critical thinking example, good analyzing payback period method essay example, free we live while we see the sun essay example, example of nutrition for the older adult essay, free essay on human resource bfoq, good research paper about breach of confidentiality, good research paper on salt of the earth sociological perspectives, michael pollans big organic essay sample, example of essay on native non western cultural practices and globalization, good numerical precision case study example, free burning of the gaspee and its effects on both sides of the atlantic essay example, good research paper on research and analysis questions, free research paper about white collar crimes, good example of relation between international trade and world output essay, ohio city essays, tamiami essays, gaspard monge essays, xi jinping essays, williford essays, women in lebanon essays, sicko essays, people group essays, emotional labor essays, chukwu essays, screwtape letters essays, the principles of scientific management essays, operations group essays, roman temple essays, guldberg essays, floppy disk drives essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Smoking Should Be Banned

Checked : Soha K. , Olivia S.

Latest Update 18 Jan, 2024

Table of content

Recent medical research has shown that smoking does not only harm smokers, but also non-smokers who are nearby. That’s why a lot of people think that smoking should be banned in public places.

In my opinion, ban on smoking is the right thing.

Opponents of this ban argue against it. Firstly, they say that smoking is not against the law so people can smoke where they want. In addition, in restaurants and some other public places there are special rooms for smoking. Besides, if they banned smoking, the government would lose a lot of money from taxes on cigarettes. As a result, many tobacco companies wouldn’t have income and would go bankrupt.

There are more arguments in favor of the ban. Smoking is very dangerous for health. It causes many serious diseases such as heart attacks, asthma bronchitis and even lung cancer. As King James 1 said:” Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to brain and dangerous to the lungs.” It is a recognized fact that cigarettes kill 50000 people every year. Each cigarette shortens your life for five minutes. Tobacco kills more people each year than alcohol and drugs combined.

Apart from this, the harm of smoking for women should be especially highlighted. They give birth to children and it’s difficult to have a healthy child being a smoker.

Moreover, passive smoking is also a major concern today. Non-smokers can suffer from health problems if they spend a lot of time among people who smoke. Despite the warnings given by doctors about the ill-effect of smoking, young people continue to smoke and some of them become nicotine addicts. Cigarettes are so addictive because it takes only 7 seconds to feel the effect of the nicotine in your blood. I think many teens start smoking because they want to look more grown up than they really are. Children whose parents smoke are more likely to smoke themselves.

We Will Write an Essay for You Quickly

All things considered, smoking should be banned in all public places- schools, hospitals, restaurants, bars, trains and others. I believe it would be a great idea to ban all kinds of advertising of tobacco on TV, the Internet and other social media. Another suggestion is to double taxes on tobacco and raise the price on cigarettes. What is more, it is necessary to launch a campaign against children smoking. Much can be done by explaining to children that they ruin their health by smoking.

I agree with Brooke Shields’ words: “Smoking kills. If you are killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life”. To my mind, world would be a better place without cigarettes.

Looking for a Skilled Essay Writer?

• University of South Florida Master of Arts (MA), Humanities

No reviews yet, be the first to write your comment

Write your review

Thanks for review.

It will be published after moderation

Latest News

What happens in the brain when learning?

10 min read

20 Jan, 2024

How Relativism Promotes Pluralism and Tolerance

Everything you need to know about short-term memory

After Iowa abortion ruling, should voters boot Justice David May? Rekha Basu weighs in.

Opponents of same-sex marriage waged ideological warfare against the courts in 2010. this time, kim reynolds, lawmakers and justices are responsible for the ideological warfare..

• Rekha Basu is a longtime syndicated columnist, editorial writer, reporter and author of the book, “Finding Your Voice.”
• She retired in 2022 as a Des Moines Register columnist.

In 2010, a group of evangelical political activists, furious over the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling for same-sex marriage, plotted revenge. Led by Bob Vander Plaats of the The Family Leader, they formed the ironically named “Iowans for Freedom.”

Funded partly by out-of-state money, it campaigned against three of the Supreme Court justices who happened to be up for retention elections. And it succeeded in unseating three fine ones:  Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices Michael Streit and David Baker .

Fast forward to this year, when a reconstituted Iowa Supreme Court, a majority hand-picked by Iowa’s anti-abortion Gov. Kim Reynolds, turns back the clock 50 years with a 4-3 ruling effectively outlawing abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy. In doing so, the justices overturned their own court's precedent, deciding that abortion laws should not be assessed under the strict-scrutiny standard previously invoked .

And now, in response, some women are taking a cue from what Iowans for Freedom accomplished in 2010. They’re encouraging others to turn the page on the November ballot — literally — to the side where judicial retention votes are, and vote against Justice David May . He’s the only one who voted for the six-week ban who’s up this year.

So, how could anyone who opposed the 2010 campaign support the same tactic? Comparisons between the two efforts get complicated. Retention elections used to be mostly pro forma shows of support for sitting judges appointed on a nonpartisan basis, who were doing their jobs properly. In 2010, same-sex marriage opponents couldn’t accept that their religious-based agenda had lost in a court of law bound by the Iowa Constitution. So it used the elections to wage ideological warfare. 

This time the ideological warfare has been waged by the governor, state lawmakers and the court’s new majority, by tampering with the once nonpartisan, constitutionally based process. Reynolds, an outspoken abortion opponent, called a special one-day session of the Legislature last summer to vote on the ban. Six weeks is before most women even know if they’re pregnant. Iowa’s Republican-led Legislature complied by passing it, though a nearly identical 2018 law had been permanently blocked . Reynolds had over the years appointed four new justices, including May, who could reliably be predicted to vote as they did.

More: Kim Reynolds picked this Legislature, and it steamrolled an extreme path for Iowa

The victims now will be untold numbers of pregnant women and girls, and children born to people ill-equipped to care for them.

“The ideological bias of this court does not reflect the will of most Iowans, and I’m not sure how far it follows the constitution,” said Des Moines’ Lea DeLong, the reproductive rights advocate who penned a letter making the case for opposing May’s retention. “My reading of the constitution is that it is intended to expand the rights and liberties of people.”

Her letter is being widely circulated by email. It points out that, as Reynolds’ appointee, May helped give Iowa “one of the most restrictive rulings in the nation against the rights of women.” It goes on to say, “It is an unfortunate development in our society that these kinds of actions against judges must happen, but I'm afraid we have had to learn some sad lessons from those who deny the rights of women. It is well known that most Iowans do not support these draconian restrictions on women's lives and decisions.”

That’s true: 61% of Iowans polled support abortion rights in all or most cases . Still, the governor saw fit to impose her personal beliefs over the will of the majority.

DeLong is co-founder with Charlotte Hubbell of a group of some 15 women known as Iowans for Reproductive Freedom (one word but light years away from the group that waged the 2010 ballot battle). Formed in November, 2022, it has placed billboards defending reproductive rights on display around Des Moines.

They carry such captions as:

•   Reproductive Freedom Is KEY to a Strong Family .
•  Keep Government OUT of Women's Health Care .
• If Men Got Pregnant, We Wouldn't Be Discussing This .

Though individual members support the ballot idea and are circulating DeLong’s letter, the organization isn’t officially involved in the effort. DeLong herself doesn’t doubt May is a good person. And she’s mindful that Reynolds would likely replace him with another justice of the same ideological bent. But she wants this to be a wake-up call. “It sends a message,” she said. “Maybe it will encourage people to think very seriously about what this court is doing to women.”

Unlike Vander Plaats’ well financed and heavily publicized initiative, she says, “We’re not trying to organize a campaign. We will do what women have always done before: Spread information to our friends.”  

More importantly, the goal this time is protecting rights, not undermining them.

“Much as I don’t like the fundamental concept of doing this,” DeLong said, “I think so many destructive lines have been crossed.”

And she’s right. They have been.

Rekha Basu is a longtime syndicated columnist, editorial writer, reporter and author of the book, “Finding Your Voice.” She retired in 2022 as a Des Moines Register columnist. Her column, “Rekha Shouts and Whispers,” is available at basurekha.substack.com .

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Democrats Are Missing Out on a Big Opportunity on Abortion Rights

By Mary Ziegler

Ms. Ziegler is a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and the author of “Roe: The History of a National Obsession.”

Protecting reproductive rights is one of Democrats’ strongest issues, and their ability to capitalize on it may decide a tight election. Chances are even better now with Kamala Harris, a candidate known for her unapologetic positions on the issue, at the top of the ticket.

And yet Democrats have not fully capitalized on this apparent advantage. Though Donald Trump was responsible for appointing the Supreme Court justices who were crucial in striking down Roe v. Wade — a campaign promise that thrilled parts of the electorate and dismayed others — in this election cycle he seems to have avoided the ire of many voters because he insists a second term won’t matter much to reproductive rights one way or another, especially in states that protect abortion access.

The reality is that a second Trump term — or a first Harris term — could fundamentally change Americans’ reproductive lives and health. With Ms. Harris formally introducing herself to voters as the Democratic presidential nominee next week at the party’s convention, now is the time to make the case for what she could do — and what Mr. Trump might — over the next four years.

It will not be enough to blame Mr. Trump for abortion bans already on the books or to warn that he wants to pass a nationwide ban . Ms. Harris, like President Biden, has vowed to sign into law a bill “restoring and protecting reproductive freedom in every state .”

These messages are powerful, but they look to the past or point to possible futures that voters may dismiss as unrealistic — and thus inapplicable to their lives. Ms. Harris needs to drive home that in a post-Roe world, Mr. Trump would probably have unusual power to criminalize abortion. She must also convey that under a Republican administration, there would be no state in the country where reproductive rights would be absolutely secure. Furthermore, she has a chance to overcome a problem that plagued Mr. Biden’s campaign: explaining what could be done to expand reproductive rights.

Ms. Harris, who has worked to connect Mr. Trump to Project 2025 , the plan created by conservative groups and former Trump officials as a blueprint for the next Republican president, must remind voters that many key conservative proposals for reproductive rights in a second Trump administration would not require congressional approval. Mr. Trump, she must emphasize, could do a great deal of damage through the use of executive power alone.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .