Banning Smoking in Bars and Restaurants in the State of New York, Essay Example

There has been in recent times an increase in the lines of division between supporters of public smoke banning and their opponents. Whilst the former group is mainly constituted of public health advocates, the latter consists of smokers and other stakeholders within the tobacco industry. Contentious as this issue is, the fact still remains that above all forms of economic, personal and social considerations, the health of the individual and the community remains a treasured spot that has to be safeguarded at ant cost. It is based on this premise that the crust of this essay is established.

A brief opening orientation comments at this juncture will prudently serve the purpose of the thesis of this essay. Among other things, smoking bans in its general form brings together a host of public policies that embrace two dimensional safety paradigm of enforcing regulations overseeing occupational and health safety on the one hand and the aspect legal regulations which fundamentally seek to outlaw the every form of smoking specific public areas. Within the limited scope of this essay, it is worth acknowledging that ban on public smoking is not a new phenomenon in most parts of the United States.

Indeed, the main contending issue as of today stems from the 2003 amendment in New York City which introduced far reaching legislations that effectively brought smoking in bars and restaurants under the category of outlawed acts. There is no gain arguing against the fact that tobacco smoking apart from being a bad habit is a lethal health threat. More worrying is the knowledge that the act of tobacco smoking does not only constitute a hazard to the health of the smoker but also increasingly authoritative research findings have also been able to prove that the health of third parties is also threatened by the unconscious inhalation of the toxic gases contained in tobacco smoke. Given this background, the debate then moves from what is considered pleasurable by an individual into what is harmful to others, covertly or overtly.

Clearly, public smoking in its general form within this context therefore becomes an issue that tickles the social conscience, given the evidence available about the repercussions it has on the health of the human being. A critical point that should not be overlooked in this debate is the fact that public “utility” in its most apparent form is in a clash with individual interests. Ideally, human civilizations spanning thousands of years have thrived because of the understanding that the common good or utility explicitly surpasses the individual or minority interest. Going down to the practicality of this debate, it is known for a fact that patrons of bars and restaurants in the city of New York are moved to seek the services of bars and restaurants as part of the natural instinct of satisfying a hunger craving and to a limited extent pleasure as well.

Being the case, patrons to bars and restaurants come there with a primary goal of satisfying their hunger for food or quenching their thirst for drinks—indeed, food and drink is an indispensable requirement for healthy living. Allowing individual smokers a free hand to engage in their unhealthy acts of smoking in bars amounts to a gross absurdity and a paradox expressed in the manner in which a drive to satisfy a health need is in the same way compromised by the unhealthy actions of other patrons. To prove the level of public disgust for smoking in bars and restaurants, a national poll conducted the Gallup Organization a little over a couple of years ago revealed over fifty percent of Americans were in support of a complete ban on smoking in bars and restaurants[1]. Why should it be different for the state of New York, when the New York City Department published in 2004, a year after the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants that the recorded amount of air pollution within the territory of bars and restaurants had fallen considerably by six fold.

Finally, the federal and state laws have among other things the ultimate goal of protecting the public good as opposed to countenance minority actions that is not in accordance with the former. Health being an indispensable human estate should therefore be safeguarded under the sternest conditions, of which smoking in bars and restaurants cannot be left off the hook.

Reference

Wakefield, M, Cameron, M, Inglis, G, Letcher, T, and Durkin, S. “Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Respiratory Symptoms Among Casino, Club and Office Workers in Victoria, Australia,” Journal of Sociological and Environmental Medicine 47:9 (2005) 698-703.

Farrelly, M.C. Noumamaker, J.M. Chou, R. Hyland, A., Peterson, K.K. Bauer. U.E. “Changes in Hospitality Workers’ Exposure to Secondhand Smoke Following the Implementation of New York’s Smoke-free Law,” Tobacco Control 14 (2005) 236-41.

Bartosch W.J. and Pope, G.C. “The Economic Effect of Smoke-free Restaurant Policies on Restaurant Business in Massachusetts,” Journal of Public Health Management and Practice 5 (1999) 53-62

[1] The Gallup Organization (March 2009). “Survey on Tobacco – Analytical Report”. European Commission. Accessed on January 2, 2010.