Smoke Free Views

• Health & Personal Care

The rationale for smoke-free laws is based on the fact that smoking is optional and breathing is not. Therefore, smoking bans exist to protect breathing people from the effects of second-hand smoke, which include an increased risk of heart disease, cancer, emphysema, and other diseases.[2][3] Laws implementing bans on indoor smoking have been introduced by many countries in various forms over the years, with some legislators citing scientific evidence that shows tobacco smoking is harmful to the smokers themselves and to those inhaling second-hand smoke.

In addition, such laws may lower health care costs in the short term (but may actually increase them in the long term, since smokers who die sooner no longer use health care),[4] improve work productivity, and lower the overall cost of labor in a community, thus making a community more attractive for employers. In Indiana, the state's economic development agency wrote into its 2006 plan for acceleration of economic growth an encouragement to cities and towns to adopt local smoke-free workplace laws as a means of promoting job growth in communities.

The World Health Organization considers smoke-free laws to have an influence to reduce demand for tobacco by creating an environment where smoking becomes increasingly more difficult and to help shift social norms away from the acceptance of smoking in everyday life. Along with tax measures, cessation measures, and education, smoking ban policy is currently viewed as an important element in lowering smoking rates and promoting public health. When correctly and strictly implemented it is seen as one important policy agenda goal to change human behavior away from unhealthy behavior and towards a healthy lifestyle.[6]

In America, the success of the ban enacted by the state of California in 1998 encouraged other states such as New York to implement bans. California's smoking ban included a controversial ban of smoking in bars, extending the statewide workplace smoking ban enacted in 1994. As of April 2009 there were 37 states with some form of smoking ban.[36] Some areas in California began making entire cities smoke-free, which would include every place except residential homes. More than 20 cities in California enacted park and beach smoking bans.

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