Smoking

There are people who smoke every day. You see them everywhere, surreptitiously puffing away on their cigarettes. And it’s no secret that smoking is bad for your health – even the cigarette packets are marked with a warning that “Smoking is dangerous to your health”. And while the smokers might be quite happy to do whatever it takes to die of lung cancer, they’re actually harming non-smokers as well.

Second-hand smoke, smoke inhaled by non-smokers from smokers around them, contains over 4000 carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals. So when you light up a cigarette, you’re not just taking risks with your health, you’re playing games with the health of the people around you. You’re putting your spouse, your children and your friends at risk.
And even if you choose to go and smoke in another room or before everyone gets home, smoke lingers. Smoke can stay in the air for up to two and a half hours – just because you can’t see it or smell it any more doesn’t mean it’s not there still.
Once smoking becomes a habit, it can be really difficult to stop. Cigarettes contain nicotine, an addictive substance. But you can still ‘kick the habit’.
There are nicotine patches, nicotine gum, different alternatives designed to help people give up smoking. But seeing the amount of information out there about the dangers of smoking and to consider the type of treatment you’ll have to undergo to get a handful of extra years if you get lung cancer, it’s mindboggling that anyone would choose to start smoking.
I mean if you started smoking back in the day (waaayyy back in the day) when there wasn’t much knowledge about the dangers of smoking, then you could’ve said that you really didn’t know better. But to start now, when there’s so much focus on exactly how much you’re killing your body when you light up a cigarette, it’s pretty inexcusable.
I mean sure, in movies they make the heroes and heroines who smoke look like they’re so cool, taking a drag on their cigarette and casually punctuating the ends of their sentences with a puff of smoke. But movies also make their action heroes look incredibly cool while they’re shooting and killing and stabbing. Car chases in movies look super cool, but normal people are just collateral damage as the hero slams into their vehicle while chasing down the bad guy. Just because something is portrayed in a positive light in movies, doesn’t mean you should go ahead and try it out for yourself.
And it’s ridiculous to think that only your internal organs get messed up when you smoke and that no one will notice the damage. Your external features also get altered. Just to name a few things that get messed up by smoking – your lips get discoloured, your teeth get stained, and your fingers get discoloured.
So do the right thing, don’t start smoking. Your life is worth much more than a couple packs of cigarettes.