Class Debate 2: Smokin'...

Motion: Whether smoking should be totally banned
By Jeremy

In my opinion, smoking should not be totally banned.

In Singapore, smoking is considered partially banned, for example, there are small smoking areas in coffee houses so that it can separate the smokers and the non-smokers. As such, the people patronising the coffee house would have a much cleaner environment to eat in. Smoking in other public places like toilets are also not allowed. Thus, if somebody wants to smoke, he/she must be isolated from other people.

However, if we are talking about banning smoking around the world, it would cause more problems instead of solving them. Think about it: the factories producing the cigarettes would close down; the workers in those factories would lose their jobs; poor countries which survive on exporting cigareetes would become poorer; people would start to smuggle cigarettes and become criminals.

Hence, I believe that measures should be taken to limit smoking in our society. An idea is to inflate the prices of cigarettes to a large extent, but it is not practical in a sense that people would commit crimes like theft just to have money for purchasing cigarettes. A better way is to educate the people from young the bad effects of smoking. As such, the young ones would have a deep inpression that smoking is harmful and is equivalent to "slow death" literally. However, it is only possible when all countries cooperate to achieve the effect. I said that because the young generation are easily influenced by otyher coultures, especially to the western ones

I am not a fan of smoking. In fact, I hate people who smoke. However, nothing's perfect in this world. Smoking cannot be totally banned since it can bring about adverse effects.