Smoking

Today, there are more than 1.1 billion smokers in the world, which is about 17% of the total world population. Over 6000 billion cigarettes are smoked each year. Why?

I cannot understand why people smoke. To me, it doesn’t achieve anything. I asked one of my friend’s friends why he smoked, and he said, “it gives me a good feeling.” Well, if he wants to get a good feeling out of killing himself, then that’s his problem.
I mean, there are plenty of other ways of getting a goods feeling in your life, and no, I wasn’t thinking of anything sexual. For me, when I’m listening to my music on my Walkman, (right now I’m listening to Lord of the Rings!) talking to my friends, (hello amber!) or smiling I get a good feeling. I am one of those people that have a really good outlook on life. When the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, then I smile. When I am running down a hill, with the wind blowing on my skin, I get a good feeling. Life is all good in my opinion, and I can’t see why people have to ruin it by smoking. Not only are they wasting their own life, but they are harming others peoples life as well. To me, this is a very selfish thing to do, because in my opinion, everyone has the right to live.
Do they know that they are damaging themselves and everyone else around them? I can understand peer pressure and everything, and that nicotine is addictive, and once you have one, you have to have another. But really, why? I mean, take a look at the facts a minute (taken straight from my GCSE RE text book, and “The Fag-Mag”, a free leaflet I was given by my doctor.):

• Smoking is highly dangerous.
• There are over 4000 harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke. These include aluminium, copper, lead, mercury and zinc, as well as ammonia, carbon monoxide, and nicotine. (Nicotine stimulates the body’s nervous system but can also cause blood vessels to become narrower, and the heart to beat faster and work harder. Nicotine takes 8 seconds to reach the brain, and is very addictive).
• Nicotine and carbon monoxide cause: heart attacks, strokes, coronary heart disease, angina, poor circulation, brain haemorrhages and heart failure.
  Smoking can also lead to: mouth cancers, impaired vision, infertility, throat cancer, lung cancer, gangrene, and a diseased heart.
• Smoking gives you bad breath, makes you smell and wastes your money.
• It is estimated that smoking causes 80% of lung cancer deaths, 80% of those who die from bronchitis and emphysema and 17% of all deaths from heart disease.
• Because of smoking, there are 31,000 deaths from lung cancer, and 13,000 deaths from cancers of the bladder, larynx, kidney and stomach each year!
• Every year, smoking costs the NSH more than £400,000,000. (Four hundred million pounds just to put that in context).
• More than 17,000 children aged less than 5 are admitted to hospital each year because of the affects of passive smoking. (Passive smoking is when you breathe in someone else’s smoke).
• This year, 3 million deaths will occur because of smoking.
• For every 6 smokers, 1 will die of heart disease or a stroke. For every 5 smokers, 1 will suffer from emphysema. For every 4 smokers, 1 will die of lung cancer. For every 2 smokers, 1 will die from a smoking related disease.
• Apparently, for every cigarette you smoke, you loose 5 minutes if your life.
• If you are a girl, smoke and take a contraceptive pill, you are 10 times more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke.
• A tree has to be cut down once a fortnight to cure tobacco for one average smoker. In the UK, that’s about 390 million trees each year.

Around 120,000 people die each year in the UK because of tobacco. That’s about 330 a day. This is the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing each day, and everyone on board dying.

If a jumbo jet did crash everyday, there would be a public outcry, the planes would get investigated, and would probably get taken down an put in a shed to rust happily into oblivion. So why doesn’t this happen with fags? Because the government gets taxed, that’s why. It is estimated that £7.4billion of tax was paid on cigarettes to the government in the UK during 2001 – 2002. This is about 2% of the government’s total revenue.
Not only does smoking give the government money that it shouldn’t get, it makes the cigarette makers rich, (in the last financial year, on major tobacco company made £463 million pounds of profit), it also wastes your money. 10 cigarettes a day is approximately worth 3 tickets to the cinema every week, new trainers or computer game every month, a new TV or sound system every 6 months, or a skiing holiday or a mountain bike every year. So why waste you money on smoking? What does it achieve, apart from half killing you, wasting your money, polluting the air around you and helping to effectively murder others around you?

If you are a smoker, then please
a) Consider the above facts, read then through and think about you, your health, and the health of others and what you are helping to do.
b) Post and tell me why you smoke, what is so good about it and whether you would like to try and quit.

If you are not a smoker, then please post your comments to me on this topic, as I would like to know your thoughts and opinions on this matter.