Argumentative Essay on Illegalizing Smoking

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One final important reason why smoking should be illegal in the United States is that smoking cigarettes contributes to environmental issues as well. For example, when smokers exhale, they release a mixture of 4,000 different chemicals from the cigarette into the atmosphere. With this, the UEPA has evidence of these dangerous chemicals polluting our air, and even combining with other gas pollutions to create slight toxins in the atmosphere. The process of these chemicals polluting our air is highly damaging to our ecosystem along with changing our environment from a clean and pristine state to an almost unbearable place to settle. In addition to pollution, the UEPA has also found that smoking cigarettes affect the environment by acting as litter. Every year more than millions of cigarette butts have been littered on the earth’s ground and many are never picked up. In many cases, littered cigarette butts can be extremely threating to the environment as they get exposed to animals, some are dropped in the ocean and contaminate it, and even when some butts are still lit up they may even cause destructive forest fires. However, many opposing arguments might emphasize the fact that smoke from cigarettes is not the only thing contributing to pollution and destruction of the environment, such as factories and even car exhausts. But the mixed chemicals from cigarettes prove to be more dangerous since it is not used for a good cause unlike driving a car, and it also harms humans’ health more than the others. Therefore it is evident that pollution and litter making smoking cigarettes harmful to the environment.

In today’s society, raising awareness about smoking is very significant because many people do not know the full dangers and risks that they put themselves and others. The big problem is that smoking has been seen as an everyday action and it brings fears that it may consume the lives of people who ignore these dangers. However, opposing arguments to illegalizing smoking have been arguing that smoking, in a way, is actually healthy since it relieves stress, prevents depression, and even helps the person relax. In contrast, a cartoon showing a grave and tombstone with the caption, “Smoking Helps You Relax” agrees that smoking will help a person relax, but not in that context. Instead the harmful effects it has on health will indefinitely lead a person to relax in death. Many people wonder, what if the world banned smoking in public. To answer that simply, millions of lives each year would be saved, life expectancy will increase, and the accounts of cancer/diseases caused by tobacco will drop dramatically. However, if we continue to live our lives imprisoned in these chains of smoke, then there is no doubt that the consequences will catch up to us. Death rates would increase, children would become more affected, and the environment itself would eventually rot into a wasteland. The illegalization of smoking will prove to make the world a much better place.