Imagine sitting in a restaurant, enjoying a finely prepared steak. You suddenly lose your appetite at the thought of inhaling the toxic chemicals, which are floating your way from a cigarette the woman at the table next to you has just lit. Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals. Exposure to environmental smoke or secondhand smoke is responsible for 51,000 non-smoker deaths in the United States each year (Banzhaf 1). In addition, cigarette smoke smell and stale taste have ruined many meals in restaurants all over the country. In order to eliminate this uncomfortable and deadly environment, the federal government should require all restaurants to become non-smoking or to create enclosed smoking areas. Furthermore, they should install air-cleaning systems, which would create a cleaner, safer and healthier environment for everyone.
             Most restaurants that contain smoking sections do not adequately separate them from the non-smoking sections, causing second-hand smoke. This not only disrupts some patron's meals but also can be deadly. The Friendly's restaurant near my home has a little glass wall about 3x2 feet in size that separates the non-smoking section from the smoking section. This wall does nothing to help prevent smoke from entering non-smoking areas. Many restaurants require customers to smoke at the bar. This also does little for smoke prevention, because of smoke drifts into other parts of the restaurant. The result is that customers still breath in deadly carcinogens that cigarettes produce.
             Non-smoking policies are catching on in various public places and restaurants. This policy would solve the problem of spoiled meals caused by cigarette smoke, as well as maintaining a healthy environment by eliminating cancer-causing chemicals in the air produced by cigarettes. Separate rooms, through which smoke could not penetrate, would also be an acceptable solution. Enclosed smoking areas have solved the cigarette odor...