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  3. Municipal bans on smoking in restaurants and bars are highly controversial, but history shows they can also be highly effective.

Municipal bans on smoking in restaurants and bars are highly controversial, but history shows they can also be highly effective.

admin2013-10-11  31
问题     Municipal bans on smoking in restaurants and bars are highly controversial, but history shows they can also be highly effective. But are all smoking bans equally successful?
    The barkeep and blogger who writes as " Seribbler50" was outraged when, in 2003, New York City enacted one of the first comprehensive smoking bans in bars and restaurants : "How can a guy and some board just kick us in the teeth like this? This smacks of fascism. " If people are aware of the consequences of smoking or visiting places with lots of secondhand smoke, should the government really have to tell us what to do? Won’t people just vote with their feet and smoke even more when they’re at home and away from restrictions?
    Scribbler50’s post inspired the physician who blogs as "PalMD" last week to look up the research on the effectiveness of smoking bans. He found several studies showing that not only did workers in restaurants and bars show improved health shortly after the bans were put in place, but smokers themselves also reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked.
    Overall, however, smoking rates remain persistently high, despite the common workplace smoking bans. Can other government measures help these smokers live healthier lives, or at least prevent people from taking up the habit?
    In the US, warning messages have been in place on cigarette packages for decades. But the messages are rather clinical, for example: " Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, And May Complicate Pregnancy. " What if packages contained more dramatic warnings? In January, psychologist and science writer Christian Jarrett looked at a small study of smokers’ reactions to cigarette warnings. The researchers measured self-esteem in student smokers, then showed them cigarette packages with either death-related warnings("Smokers die earlier")or esteem-related warnings("Smoking makes you unattractive"). Students who derived self-esteem from smoking and saw the death-related warnings later viewed smoking more positively than those who saw the esteem-related warnings. For students whose smoking wasn’t motivated by self-esteem, the effect was reversed.
    So not all anti-smoking messages are equal; Depending on who the message is directed at, a morbid(病态的)warning on a cigarette label may actually backfire.
    Scribbler50 , for his part, is now a convert favoring smoking restrictions, at least in his narrow limits as a bartender. His patrons who haven’t quit smoking say they smoke a lot less now that they have to go outside to get a nicotine fix. He doesn’t miss emptying ashtrays, or the holier-than-thou(自以为是的)customers who complained every time a fellow patron lit up, or working in a smoke-filled bar all night and going home " smelling like you put out a three-alarm".
    Would it be right to enact even more restrictions on smoking in the interest of public health? It’s hard to deny that banning smoking in public, indoor spaces has been a huge success. Why not try out some stronger smoking bans? Parents in some areas are already restricted from smoking in cars with children, but I haven’t seen a study that evaluates the success of those measures. Perhaps a state or municipality could try extending the ban to homes, with provisions for studying the results. It’s also possible that stronger measures would be counter-productive, like the stronger warnings on cigarette labels. Maybe we’ll decide that at some level deciding whether or not to smoke should still be an individual choice. Or maybe in a few generations, it won’t be necessary to regulate smoking; There won’t be any smokers left.
What does the passage mainly talk about?
选项 A、Scribbler50’s attitude towards smoking bans.
B、The research on how people can stop smoking.
C、The effectiveness of smoking bans.
D、Smoking bans in restaurants and bars.
答案C
解析 主旨题。文章第一段提出了一个问题“所有的禁令都是同等有效的吗?”下文都是围绕这个问题展开的；第二段提到博客写手Scribbler50非常反感禁烟令及其观点；第三段则是写到另外一位博客写手PalMD对禁烟令的调查，结果表明有一定的好处；第四段继续引出问题：政府的其他措施是否有所帮助?第五段和第六段则通过对香烟盒上警告语的研究表明不是所有的禁烟令都有效，有的香烟盒上的警告语适得其反；第七段表明Scribbler50现在已经支持禁烟了；最后一段则是作者对禁烟令提出的一些设想。所以本文的主题都是围绕[C]”禁烟令的有效性”展开的，其余均排除。
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