Municipal bans on smoking in restaurants and bars are highly controversial, but

游客2025-01-28 30

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 barkeeper and blogger who writes as "Scribbler50" 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 U.S., 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 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 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. [br] The word "backfire" underlined in Paragraph 6 means to _____.

选项 A、go wrong
B、feed back
C、set fire
D、lift up

答案 A

解析 backfire意为“回火，适得其反”，故A“出现问题，出错”与之最接近。由前文第5段倒数第二句看，一些学生看到与死亡有关的吸烟警告，反而吸烟的态度更积极，也即吸烟警告会适得其反，由此也可以推断出backfire的意思。B“反馈”、C“点燃”和D“举起”，意思都与backfire差别较大。

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