A new group has popped up in Albuquerque and it wants smoking banned from all restaurants and bars.
OK, yes, smoking is terrible for one's health and second-hand smoke is worse. Everyone has heard the statistics on lung cancer, throat cancer, etc., etc. Most people have seen the commercials that the group "truth" puts out. You know, the ones where they filmed the body bags that stood for all the people who had died from smoking or the stroller left in the middle of a crowded sidewalk with a smoking statistic taped to a crying doll inside it.
But here's the reality of it. Tobacco companies have too much money and too much hold on corporate America and political campaigns to ever have smoking simply outlawed. It's never going to happen and until smoking is banned, nothing will ever change.
That said, second-hand smoke should be merely one of the many worries people have when opening their mouths to suck in air. Standing next to a city bus and breathing in the exhaust its engine gives off will ultimately cause more damage than sitting next to a table with somebody smoking a cigarette.
We do not live in a clean, healthy world. The water coming out of our tap has any number of chemicals in it. The air that we breathe is smoggy. We eat fast food that clogs our arteries. We don't exercise. Smoking is symptomatic of a larger problem and banning smokers from public places may make non-smokers feel safer about their risks of getting lung cancer, but it's likely that they don't put their sunblock on before going outside where our ozone is paper thin and then 20 years later - bam, skin cancer.
The question we need to ask ourselves is do we really feel safe from health risks anywhere? Being in a restaurant full of smokers should take a backseat to many of the concerns that are real and we refuse to acknowledge.
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Angela Williams
Editor in Chief
