Swiss Rejects Smoking Ban
9/23/12 6:33
In
the article I read from BBC News Switzerland rejected a full ban on
smoking in public places. A majority of Switzerland’s 25 cantons voted for the
ban at 70%, although Geneva was slightly in favor of the ban at 52%. Places
like restaurants and hotels are allowed to have smoking rooms although people
say that that may put the employee’s health at risk. The Swiss socialist party
said that by protecting the non-smoking customers the employees would be protected
as well. Larger cantons have out their own smoking bans in place in places of employment
to decrease the health risks for its employees. Other public places like hotels
were happy the outcome of the vote was a “no” because it would have made some
of their investments pointless or unneeded. Also as reported by Dr.
Jean-Charles Rielle, who was a member in the committee that proposed the ban, in
the places where the ban on smoking rooms were put into play already there has
been a 20% decrease in the number of people hospitalized with cardiovascular
issues.
At
first when reading this article I was against the idea of banning
smoking/smoking rooms in public areas. I thought that by banning public smoking
it was taking away someone’s right to smoke if they’re of age as long as they
do it in the designated area. After reading the statistic from Dr. Jean-Charles
Rielle my mind changed. If by banning smoking rooms alone decreased 20% of hospitalizations
due to cardiovascular issues then maybe over time people will begin to smoke
less since they won’t be able to smoke when and where they want. If smoking is restricted
then maybe people won’t take the time to go elsewhere and smoke so they’ll just
surpass the thought of it and move on to their next task. Cardiovascular
diseases, which can be caused by smoking, are one of the leading causes of
death in the world. So if we minimize the causes of cardiovascular disease we
will inadvertently decrease the number of deaths caused by it and save millions
of lives worldwide. Hopefully other countries will have this issue of public
smoking and vote “yes” to banning public smoking.
No comments:
Post a Comment