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Ethical and Legal Analyses of Policy Prohibiting Tobacco Smoking in Enclosed Public Spaces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Taiwo A. Oriola
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Extract

It is axiomatic that tobacco smoking is hazardous to health. The statistics are well documented and often very grim. For example, the 2008 World Health Organization Report on the global tobacco epidemic presented the following statistics: a hundred million people died of tobacco-related diseases globally in the 20th century; there are approximately over five million tobacco-related deaths every year; and an estimated one billion could die of tobacco-related diseases in this 21st century.

Significantly, no other risky, self-indulgent addictive behaviors such as cocaine abuse directly endanger bystanders as much as cigarette smoking or tobacco use endangers nonsmokers through secondhand tobacco smoke or inhaled environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Environmental tobacco smoke comprises sidestream smoke (smoke that emanates from the burning end of a tobacco product) and mainstream smoke (smoke exhaled by the smoker). About 85 percent of environmental tobacco smoke is sidestream smoke, while the remainder is mainstream smoke.

Type
Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Winter 2009 , pp. 828 - 840
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2009

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