Smoking Ban

As of May 31st 2006, citizens of Montreal will no longer be allowed to smoke within twenty feet of any public places. This will have a huge impact on every Montrealer. However, this impact has both its advantages and its disadvantages on smokers as well as non-smokers. The law will in fact be touching the whole province of Quebec. Should we agree with this law that Quebec has come up with? Certainly; yet, there are a few reasons why we would also have to argue about it.


This new upcoming law will, for one, most likely help the environment, be more environmentally friendly. Next, non-smokers will be glad since they will be able to go to more establishments without being affected by second-hand smoke. As a final point, smoking becomes an addiction; it becomes a force of habit. It is a bad habit carried out onto these smokers’ children and grandchildren. Surely, no parent or grandparent would want their little ones to begin their life with unhealthy habits. This law will help smokers fight their cravings in order to eventually quit, since it will forbid them to smoke in public areas. It should even help the ones who have not been able to quit before, when they have already tried to stop smoking on many occasions.


As a non-smoker, I find it is important to have this regulation come into effect since smoke is destroying people’s lives every day. Hearing about it on the news, many people die from lung cancer, and even more of them die from second-hand smoke. That is why it is essential for Quebec to ban smoking from public environments. Smokers will, nevertheless, always be allowed to smoke at home. This will still have an effect on their non-smoking guests. Personally, simply breathing that same air makes me feel queasy.


In conclusion, I am in favor of this new upcoming law, seeing that it will have a positive impact on both smokers and non-smokers. It will also influence everybody’s way of thinking when it comes to smoking. Surely with time people will realize the benefits of this law and become used to it.