Even with information about the danger of smoking widely available, people still choose to light up.
Jump to full article: Joong Ang Ilbo (kr), 2009-10-12
Author: Claude Drolet
Intro: I have recently begun to worry about the state of education in our society. I fear that people are unable or unwilling to learn from what they read or study. Students and adults alike simply read and memorize but do not adjust their behavior or lifestyle according to the new information they are encountering.
People should discard old destructive habits and adjust their behavior given the new information that science has given us. . . .
Now that we know this, my mother has stopped smoking and my father only smokes in places where he can avoid bothering other people.
And that is the beauty of modern society: We know that people get hooked on smoking, and we let them have that choice.
We know that secondhand smoke is dangerous, so to facilitate that problem, society has designated a number of areas for people to smoke.
The idea is that if you don’t want to smoke or breathe secondhand smoke, you simply have to avoid those smoking areas.
The problem is those people who decide that they can smoke anywhere they please. For some reason they feel it is their right to pollute and endanger other people. . . .
They smoke in bathrooms or hallways, taking away non-smokers right to breathe clean air.
We have the information: Smoking and secondhand smoke is very dangerous.
Now all we have to do is get people to learn from this and change the way they behave. That is what intelligent humans do.
Many animals don’t learn; they simply act on impulse, fulfilling their instinctive wants, unaware of the impact of their behavior.
But humans learn, change and evolve.
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