Smoking In Public Places

p Smoking in Public Places

2008

During the last thirty years , health and health care have become a dominant economic issue in the United States as well as in many other developed countries . The enactment of strong laws regulating tobacco use has been a primary goal of the tobacco control movement . From the practical standpoint , the problem is now embedded between the laws that would protect the public from the negative effects of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS ) and the potential to burden individual right to consume a legal product . From the

perspective of negative impact caused by smoking in public places on health and financial security of American population , enactment of legislation prohibiting smoking in public places must be implemented at the earliest

The majority of scholars , such as Bonita , Glantz and colleagues , points out failures of public policy associated with tobacco use (Bonita et al 156 Glantz Parmley , 2 . Primarily , it is a failure to recognize the presence of negative externalities , and the second is the lack of perfect information . Negative externalities occur when one person 's actions , in this case it is smoking in public places , impose costs on other persons without any compensation . Risk studies conducted by the EPA consistently rank indoor air pollution as one of the most important environmental risks to the public 's health (EPA , 7 . Human exposure to indoor air pollutants is often substantially greater than outdoor exposure to the same substances (Glantz Parmley , 3 . The aerosol particles from ETS are concentrated indoors and...