Smoking should not be allowed in public places because of the health risk associated with second-hand smoke and the danger this poses to non-smokers who may find themselves in an environment where smoking is taking place. A link between second-hand smoke and various diseases associated as well with smoking was long suspected and has now been demonstrated, leaving no room for excuses in working toward making public places into smoke-free environments.
Admittedly, some Americans may resist this notion because they see any curtailment of freedom as a dangerous governmental intrusion, but in fact there are good reasons for such intrusion when it will prevent death and disease, as would be the case with a ban on smoking in public places. It is also true that the regulation of risk has been applied to a large number of environmental hazards and other perceived hazards in the home and the workplace, with varying results, and that the people have accepted these regulations as necessary by and large. Both the government and the people have shown considerable interest in having the government serve as watchdog over certain specific hazards, and probably no perceived hazard has been addressed so assiduously or with such success as smoking. American society has changed over the last three decades from a society accepting of smoking to a society tolerant of smoking to a society antagonistic to smoking and openly intolerant of it. This process has also entailed a change in emphasis, from smoking contributes to a variety of health problems to smoking is hazardous to your health to smoking is hazardous to the health of those around you. The vast majority of people accept the fact that cigarette smoking is harmful to your health, but not everyone has been so accepting of the idea that second-hand smoke is every bit as dangerous and deadly.
However, while one argument against the regulation of second-hand smoke has been uncertainty over ...