Smoking - by Nora

Have you ever walked by someone, and you smell smoke? That’s probably a teenager or adult smoking. Some people say smoking is good, and their reasons are because they think it’s cool. It’s also because of the nicotine, and that’s what makes them addicted. More than 480,000 people die a year from smoking compared to illegal drug use, firearm-related incidents, motor vehicle incidents, and alcohol use. If this keeps happening, more and more people die. People need to see the reasons of why you shouldn’t smoke. How can people live life when they soon won’t have one?

My first reason is that smoking can give you many diseases. Smoking can give you cardiovascular and tuberculosis disease, pneumonia, Coronary heart disease, Crohn’s disease, Emphysema, and many more. Mrs. Aikenhead’s cousin Tom, got Emphysema by smoking every day. Her cousin had to have a breathing tube. This brings great danger for teenagers and shortens their life as well as adults. According to MedicalNewsToday, the author wrote that smoking shortens the life of a male by 12 yrs, and a female by 11 yrs. Smoking can also possibly cause heart stroke which can lead to brain damage. This is very important because all these diseases can change our life eminently and cause more people to die. Would you want to get heart and lung disease, just from smoking? Carbon Monoxide and Tar cause the lung and heart disease. Tar coats your lungs and affects your breathing which can cause asthma. Nicotine addicts teenagers to smoke. Some people say that teenagers smoke when they’re stressed, but what does that do? It might take away a teenagers stress, but instead it starts killing them. We need to stop more teenagers from smoking (and eventually dying.)

What happened to exercise? Smokers also lose their athletic ability to exercise or run. This brings a big divergence to somebody’s life. How can they exercise? Everybody knows that running and playing sports gives you exercise. The problem is, smokers aren’t aware of this fact and keep smoking. If smoking reduces your athletic ability, then how can you survive? Mrs. Aikenhead also informed me that her cousin (Tom) couldn’t walk or run as well as he did before he took up smoking. Look how much impact it made on her cousin! In other words, I’m saying that smoking brings a big damage to life. If you lose your athletic ability to exercise, you’ve basically aged yourself 50 years. Smoking also causes wrinkles on your face, around your eyes and mouth.

One day, my family and I had just arrived to Montreal. We went to  check-in, got our room and went up to the 4th floor. We opened our door and our noses caught the whiff of smoke. What else could it be? It couldn’t be a fire. It dawned on me as I realized this was a smoking room. My mom, my brother, and I started to cough. The smell was unbearable as we burst out the door. Coming out of that room, I got the impression of what the smell was like for a smoker. This shows that it could affect people. I have noticed that people cough a lot when they smoke. I just didn’t understand how they could stand the smell. In Spain, the sidewalks were usually covered with cigarettes. This proves that we’re affecting the environment by littering cigarettes. We breathe the smoke and that affects us in many ways. If you smoke, you can alter your sense of taste. According to MedicalNewsToday, smoking causes bad breath, stained teeth, as well as gum disease, tooth loss, and injures your sense of taste. That’s why you cough so much when you smoke.

Now you’ve heard everything. Imagine a world with everybody smoking. Even teenagers. Imagine hundreds of adults and kids dying each day. Now, imagine a world without smoke. Without smoking companies, and no cigarettes all over the streets. Just envision a world without smoking. Which one do you think is better? People dying, or adults and teenagers staying safe? With the facts you have, you wouldn’t want to smoke. There’s a higher risk of death and diseases. Remember, “Rather than smoking a cigarette, the cigarette is really smoking you.”