Essay: Smoking

Sample Essay

Words 1,321

Is an analogy healthy food against fatty junk food really applicable to be compared to smoking behavior? The answer is provided by Watson Laughton Lafayette who wrote a letter to the editor in response to Stanley Scott’s article, “Smokers Get a Raw Deal.” Lafayette explains that people who make laws and influence other people to exercise these laws are obviously at the top of the ladder and should be able to understand the difference between the harm sugar does to a human body and the effect smoke produced by cigarettes has on another human beings body. In other words he does not believe that smokers get a raw deal when it comes to following an infinite amount of rules concerning where a person can smoke and when he or she can smoke. He believes that if someone is involved in an activity that inflicts harm upon someone else should be stopped and there should be legal sanctions in doing so. Therefore he insists that a different analogy should be used to describe this conflict, one which involves “examining the response of unwitting nondrinkers in public places to being force-fed bourbon.” The idea behind Lafayette’s argument is that if people want to indulge in health hazardous activities they should be done in private so other parties don’t have to involuntarily succumb to the hazards.

Stanley on the other hand argues that “Can a nation that has struggles so valiantly to eliminate bias on race, religion, and sex afford to allow a fresh set of categories to encourage new forms of hostility between larger groups of citizens?” In my opinion the answer is a balance between Stanley and Lafayette’s argument.

First we have to understand that smoking is an activity that causes a lot of harm to the human body. A huge killer of people all over the world is second hand smoking. This means that people who smoke not only inflict harm upon themselves but on other people too. If something affects my well being and health I have every right to object to that activity. It is my prerogative to be able to enjoy a clean smoke free environment. Other people’s decision to smoke should not affect my well being. In the same that drunk driving is illegal smoking in public spaces should be illegal too.

The part where I agree with Stanley has to do with inflicting harm upon people who smoke and attacking them and hurting them brutally for simply smoking a cigarette. This is where people go overboard and fail America’s essence. Discrimination is wrong in whichever form it is carried out in. When people start to harm other peoples well being in order to lessen smoking it turns into deviant behavior and adds to the problem instead of taking away from it.

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