and peers influence children and young adults more than advertising. Even if the results were different, citizens have the right to choose and it would be a breach of their rights to force them not to smoke. This is called the principle of caveat emptor. After all, adulthood is about being able to choose different paths provided you are fully informed. Therefore, smoking is not a public- health problem but a personal problem and anti-smoking campaigns are against liberal principles, presenting weak arguments, causing dangerous political and social morality problems. As John Locke said, ‘there is a private sphere which governments may not invade, even for the obvious benefits of those affected.’ (Anonymous page 2) As a result, the costs of a ban far outweigh the benefits. Furthermore, cigarettes are not seriously addictive and this is shown in a national survey of America’s drug abuse, which found that only about 30% of smokers quit smoking, smoked in the past month. (Anonymous page 4).As long as passive smoking is concerned, its effects are insignificant. (Anonymous page 3). In addition the data collected, are sometimes exaggerated, invalid or inaccurate. For example a smoker is defined as a person who smokes at least a cigarette per week. This is an exaggeration since a person that smokes a cigarette per week is not really a smoker. Another inaccurate survey found a connection between cot deaths and smoking by the parents. But parents smoking can have other characteristics that cause cot deaths, such as bad diet or poor housing conditions. This argument is very strong if we consider that people in lower social grades are more likely to smoke and equally likely to have the rest of the characteristics. Invalid results are also present in a research of the Environmental Protection Agency in United States, which identified ETS as a carcinogen. Recent conclusions identified that, is not a primary lung ca...
