Ethical Grammar

Ethical Grammar of Smoking

Tobacco addiction is the result of the brain’s chemistry being physically changed by the activity of tobacco use. Smokers are not weak, or selfish, or ethically challenged. Smokers are good people whose bodies react to a perceived or actual need for nicotine most acquired in youth. The issues that come into ethical question focus on the behavior of smoking, not the smoker. Here are four ethically questionable aspects of the behavior of smoking.

Smoke free role models: The sort of example a smoker sets for young people is ethically suspicious. 90% of smokers alive today started as teens. Half of these people will die prematurely from tobacco use. The hypocrisy of a community accommodating public tobacco use while advising kids never to start is rather ludicrous. Becoming a tobacco free example allows kids to recognize sincerity in a “Don’t start smoking “message.

Litter: Examples of the discourteous disposal of cigarette butts are everywhere. What butt fairy is supposed to pick this trash up? This garbage in our lives in not merely unsightly it is deadly. According to the National Fire Protection Association, cigarette caused fires are the #1 cause of fire death. Cigarette litter takes years to decompose and leaches toxins into the soil or is ingested by wildlife or children.

Secondhand smoke: Causing health risks in others is ethically indefensible. Allowing unsafe public space is unconscionable. The deaths of 53,000 nonsmokers each year from secondhand smoke is very real. The family of a smoker, who smokes inside, inhales the equivalent of 20 cigarettes a week. A study published in the American Heart Association Journal in 1997 revealed that nonsmoking spouses of smokers had a 91% increased risk of death from heart disease. Secondhand smoke in the work place increases the risk of lung cancer by a third. Smoking is a privilege. Breathing is a right.

Financial support for a morally bankrupt industry: A pack a day smoker spends on the average over $1,000 a year supporting an addiction and an industry that targets youth to market a drug that, when used properly, kills 450,000 people each year. That’s simple enough. Now note that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated smoking related disease put the actual cost of a pack at $9.64. Every household in the state pays an extra $564 in taxes for smoking caused government expenditures for health care and productivity losses. The millions of dollars in profit the tobacco industry makes each day come out of all our pockets.

It’s the smoke not the smoker. Challenge tobacco.