The most recent occurrence in the fight against smoking is a letter to the Motion Picture Association of America signed by 24 state's attorneys general, including Ohio's, asking the film industry to decrease the amount of tobacco use in films as a preventive measure to keep teenagers from acquiring the habit.
The letter cites a study from Dartmouth Medical School that states children who watch movies involving a heavy amount of smoking are three times more likely to smoke than those exposed to less smoking in movies. In response to what the MPAA currently is doing to reduce teen smoking, spokesman Rich Taylor said, "Smoking is, if you'll recall, a legal activity." He also said the MPAA will carefully go over the letter and the Dartmouth study.
Groups like the 24 attorneys general who joined together to write this letter are right to advocate their beliefs. The government also should with the smoking controversy because smoking can be a health risk for non-smokers.
Smoking is a choice and is legal, but the government should limit the areas where people can smoke because smoking is harmful to not only the smoker's health, but also to the health of those in the vicinity of the smoker. But banning smoking indoors completely curtails the rights of smokers.
One solution is to have smoking sections that are in separate rooms from the non-smoking areas. A small wall divider between booths or using the back of the room for smoking and the front for non-smoking is not acceptable because the smoke still gets into the non-smoking section.
Smokers should be in separate rooms from non-smokers because the government needs to take the majority of the population, who are non-smokers, into consideration when choosing to establish regulations such as smoking bans. According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, about one quarter of the adult population smokes.
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