If you smoke, take a breather before you read this.Boston public officials are debating whether or not they should tighten restrictions on cigarette and cigar sales and use as early as next year. Although these laws currently would only affect the immediate Boston area, their jurisdiction could spread to Waltham and the Brandeis campus.

Under current Massachusetts law, there is a 40 percent excise tax on smokeless tobacco and a 15 percent tax on cigars and cigarettes. All revenues from the tax are sent to the Children's and Seniors' Health Care Assistance Fund. Also, smoking is banned from most public facilities and buildings and tobacco products cannot be sold to minors under the age of 18.

These regulations might be taken a step further. Specifically, the new, tougher rules would ban sales of cigarettes at pharmacies and college campuses, ban smoking on bar and restaurant patios, phase out cigar bars and increase fines imposed on violators of previous smoking regulations.

While lawmakers argue that these guidelines will ultimately boost the health of Bostonians, drugstore chains and tobacco companies are vehemently opposed to this potential decrease in their profits. Additionally, tobacco control experts contend that dogged smokers would resort to other, perhaps illicit means of acquiring such items.

As a nonsmoker, I certainly wouldn't mind a decrease in the number of cigarettes on campus-I can't say that I am a big fan of breathing in the damaging secondhand smoke they produce. Kiernan Bagge '12, agrees, adding that he "hates the smell."

I recall one time I was eating some pizza on the patio of Cappy's. Some customers at the table next to me were smoking, forcing me to breathe in the stench they produced as I ate. Overall, it wasn't a pleasant experience, to say the least, and I'll be glad to see a law banning the practice in such a locale.

Also, the benefits of a drop in smoking are obvious. According to the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, approximately 10,000 Massachusetts residents die of tobacco-related causes, such as lung cancer and heart disease, each year. The state-run health care system has spent $2.7 billion fighting these illnesses, while other consequences of smoking have accounted for $1.5 billion.

Aren't pharmacies supposed to provide medicines and other treatments to help people, not harm them? Clearly, selling products like cigarettes and putting money before people's well-being contradicts this purpose.

Nevertheless, some students have expressed outrage and resentment at the prospect of more limited access to purchasing and using cigarettes. One friend of mine, who requested anonymity, pointed out that she purchases tobacco-related products at a drugstore in Waltham and that if these regulations pass, she "wouldn't even know what to do" and that she "can't help being addicted to this stuff."

Unfortunately, she may have to find another source to support her endless addition to tobacco.