I hate smoking. I hate how it smells up my clothes, I hate the itchy feeling in my nose and throat ,I hate how it hurts my eyes and most of all, I hate how it makes every visit to my favorite local restaurant a potential health hazard. Its just too suffocating, and I am the one to start sneezing….non-stop. Probably that power is enough to drive a dozen wind-mills. Pity, there are no windmills around us!

Smoking is the single greatest preventable cause of ill health. Smoking contributes significantly to life threatening diseases including numerous cancers, heart disease, lung disease and impotence in men and infertility in women. On second thoughts a country like India needs to encourage it. What do you feel?

Passive smoke, secondhand smoke, environmental tobacco smoke and involuntary smoking all describe a mixture of more than 3,000 chemicals emitted from the burning end of a cigarette and exhaled by active smokers. Children living with adult smokers are more likely to suffer from asthma and other lung diseases. So what? Is that a reason enough to give up the pleasure of nicotine? Why do we care about someone else other than our cravings?

Recent studies from the World Health Organization and from the National Cancer Institute show that women exposed to smoke, whether at home, work or play, have an increased risk of lung cancer, asthma, respiratory infections and cardiovascular disease. We anyways have low mortality rates these days. Do I say, "Let them die!"?

As evidence of the dangers of secondhand smoke becomes known, many states are facing pressure to restrict smoking in public places. Public interest petitions being filed by anti-smoking activists in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are all set to adversely affect the huge excise revenues that the Central Government earns from the tobacco industry.

Ever since the Kerala High Court passed an order on July 12 strictly prohibiting smoking in public places, the state police have arrested and fined nearly 3,000 people across the state who were found smoking at bus stands and railway stations, on roads, in offices, hotels and bars.

The court order came after a woman employee filed a public interest petition stating that she found it difficult to commute in a bus in which her male co-passengers smoked.

I would like to be objective in my presentation of issues on The Fence. Can't get a decent debate on The Fence if your presentation is biased, he says. Well, that's all well and good - except in this case. I don't like smoking because it harms my health - and I don't smoke. It effectively allows total strangers to make negative decisions about my health and well being, decisions that may tether me to a respirator when I'm old. I'd call for making cigarettes flat out illegal if I wasn't so convinced we'd be looking at a modern day replay of Prohibition. Don't want that, but at least I can call for a ban of smoking in public.

All friends of mine get themselves in a puff when I talk about escalating the ban. Why stop, as Kerela High Court did (and, admittedly, had to), at all public places in Kerela? Why not all public buildings in all states, including ours? Why not ban smoking in public everywhere -- so that smoking would be relegated to private residences? If you don't go that far, why not at least make secondhand smoking an actionable legal claim, like assault and battery? I hope our authorities look into it.

Your opinion matters...