Regarding Michelle Lamont´s recent column (“Smokers have rights, too,” Oct. 3), I disagree with the author’s trivialization of the increased risk of contracting lung cancer — “only” 20 percent more — incurred by a non-smoker who lives with a smoker. Twenty percent sounds like a lot to me! Lamont also trivializes second-hand smoke by referring to it as the “transient tendril of cigarette smoke” as you walk down the street, but it´s a matter of how high your tolerance is. If the majority of people walked down the sidewalk chain-smoking, maybe Lamont would feel differently.
Thomas Jefferson, inspired by the words of John Locke, wrote in the Declaration of Independence of our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Smoking clearly infringes on the right to life of both the first- and second-hand smoker, since cigarette smoke contains toxic and carcinogenic substances such as carbon monoxide, tar, formaldehyde, cyanide, and ammonia.
There is no such thing as “the right to smoke,” because actually that means “the right to harm ourselves and others, eventually killing both of us.” We don´t have the right to kill people using knives, guns, etc., so why should we have the right to use smoke to do the same thing?
Julianna Gallardo
GSAS
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