Non Smokers Get a Fresh Deal
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Smoking is known to have harmful effects on the smoker and the people around them, and has become an addictive habit for a large portion of the US population. To prevent smokers from endangering people's health, restrictions were placed on smoking in public places. Discrimination is treatment based on race, class or gender rather than on individual choice. Restricting smoking is not discrimination because choosing to smoke is an individual choice.
When Stanley Scott, Vice President of Phillip Morris said "Can a nation that has struggled so valiantly to eliminate bias based on race, religion, and sex afford to allow...new forms of hostility between large groups of citizens?," it can be clearly seen that he tries to create a false sense of similarity between the restrictions set on smokers and discriminations against certain a certain sex, race, and religion. First of all there are no hostilities between any two large groups of smokers and non smokers, most are very small and only a handful have ever been recorded. Second, since smoking is a choice and although it's a hard habit to drop, it is still a choice a person makes and it can in no way be compared with the discriminations suffered by people because of their race, sex, and religion because these things are determined and given to people, without a choice, at your birth...