Chinese CA discussion was held today, the 26^th of March. Essentially, the topic was “ Should smoking areas be retained in Hawker Centre?”

There are two teams involved in this debate, consisting of 4 members each team and are named as 正方and反方. The motion for 正方is that smoking should be totally banned in hawker centers while the motion for 反方 is that smoking areas should still be retained.

My role was to play as the citizen member of Singapore in 正方，and attempt to argue how smoking can negatively affect us citizens and should be banned. Personally, I felt that I did not perform very well, as compared to wencong or haochen. Both of them were experts in Chinese and throughout the debate, they were able to express themselves fluently. Even though I’m the opposition, I can’t feel but be awed by wencong’s talent to capture his audience’s attention.

Well, moving on to my speech. I covered 6 aspects in my speech of 1000+ words. The first point was that smoking and passive smoking are potentially dangerous to the human health, and we citizens should not be harmed by passive smoking. Furthermore, unlike smokers, citizens do not actually choose to smoke passively, and thus smoking ban should be imposed to protect the rights of us citizens.

The second point covers the fact that passive smoking can not be avoided as most hawker centers generally have 3-4 smokers hanging out at the smoking area. Unless citizens remain at home and do not go to hawker centers, they will be affected by passive smoking. Other than that, passive smoking is the cause to many diseases, varying from dry cough to serious illness like heart attacks.

As for the third point, I talked about how ban on smoking can help smokers to wear off their smoking habit. When smokers lose their regular “smoking spot”, they have to seek for alternatives. It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to find another permanent spot, as smokers enjoy congregating at hawker centers to chat with their friends. Gradually, they’ll find the task of finding a spot to smoke tiring, and stop smoking entirely. ( I find this point rather naïve, and initially, I thought that I was going to be questioned for it. Sad to say, I was put down by wencong)

My fourth point shows how smokers in hawker centers can affect teenagers. As teenagers are young and generally impressionable, they’ll be influenced by these smokers to start smoking. I moved on to talk about how many hardcore smokers start from the first, innocuous sniff.

My fifth point comprises of two main parts, mainly the one on hygiene and ambience. When a customer ventures into a hawker center filled with smoke, they will be unable to enjoy their food with a happy attitude. Generally, the person’s mindset will go like this, “ Omg.. The smoke is making be cough. Am I getting heart attack?” Furthermore, smoke and dirt will land onto the person’s food, rendering him sick if he ate it.

The last point was used to suggest how a win-win conclusion can be reached. I suggested the building of an air-con room in shopping centers or places near hawker centers to allow smokers to smoke there. Due to it being an enclosed, air-conditioned room, smoke is unlikely to spread outside and affect citizens. However, there is the issue regarding the excessive about of smoke in the room. Personally, I feel that ventilation systems can be built, and that the smoke be transferred to somewhere far from the current location, preferably underground.