Over the past, smoking has posed a big danger to the community. Many people have become victims of smoking both directly and indirectly. The people who are affected directly are the smokers themselves while those who are affected indirectly are the people who stay near the people who smoke. Smoking therefore poses a very big problem especially to people who live as a group or as a community.
In campus, the issue of smoking has been a major problem. This is due to the risks associated with smoking to the students as well as the workers. However, the issue of whether smoking should be outside or inside the campus has been controversial.
Discussion
From my point of view, smoking should completely be barred from all public places where people are mixed up. This is because smoking has been found to affect both the smokers as well as those staying around them. Therefore, when smoking is carried out inside the campus, those people who are non-smokers will also be affected.
Some will even be forced to move away from the places like entertainment halls in case someone smokes around them. This denies them their right as individuals. In other words, people should smoke outside the campus to avoid interfering with other people’s lives.
Another reason why people must smoke outside the campus is to avoid peer influence into smoking activities. Peer influence is one of the main ways through which people are ‘recruited’ into smoking. Therefore, by allowing smokers to interact with non-smokers while smoking in campus, this may cause non smokers to adopt the vice.
Thus, people should smoke outside the campus to avoid such temptations. Also, smoking is closely associated with abuse of other drugs like cocaine. Most of the people who smoke are also victims of other drugs. Therefore, banning smoking within the campus will still be preventing the spread of other drugs’ abuse among the campus students.
In the same way, banning smoking within the campus will make smoking a burden to the smokers. This is because they will be forced to move outside the campus every time they want to smoke. In the long run, this may encourage the smokers to quit smoking.
Smoking in the campus will expose every person residing in the compound to secondary smoke. That is, both students and workers who work around the campus.
Smoking has been associated with very many diseases. For instance, smoking has been a major cause of lung cancer. Smoking is also associated with other breathing and the general respiration system complications. Therefore, smoking within the campus increases the cases of illnesses.
Consequently, this increases health care service costs incurred by institutions in treating students and other workers within the campus. Most of the people suffering from the lung cancer are smokers. Therefore, smoking outside the campus protects non smokers from acquiring such illnesses.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this discussion has clearly shown that smoking in campus is very dangerous. Many problems can be avoided by banning smoking within the campus. For instance, it will be possible to protect non smokers from illnesses associated with smoking. It will also be possible to protect non smokers from the temptation of engaging themselves in the vice. Therefore, smoking should be abolished from within the campus by designating smoking zones outside the campus.