* The 2014-2015 senior student signature series features area senior class students – and their own “signature” outlooks on a topic of their choice. A new outlook will be posted on Cross-Counties Connect each Friday. The series opens with point of view comments by seniors from Mountain Lake Public High School. The opinions can be found by clicking on the Family & Faith link on the website’s header, and scrolling down to, and clicking on, Outlook. Their teachers are Brenda Feil, Kim Syverson and Debby Jass.
Everyone Has a Right to Clean Air
Each time someone smokes a cigarette, he/she has lost ten minutes of life that cannot be regained, according to the British Medical Journal. This statistic includes the five minutes cut from his/her lifespan due to future health problems and the average five minutes it takes to smoke a cigarette. Smoking, even secondhand, is extremely harmful to a person’s health, and it needs to be heavily restricted to improve the lives of everyone who wants to live a long and healthy life.
The main issue with smoking is the damage it inflicts on the health of everyone who smokes or has to be around someone who does. According to the National Cancer Institute, tobacco smoke is made up of more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 250 of these chemicals are known to be harmful, including hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. Among the 250 chemicals, 69 of them are carcinogenic, meaning they can cause cancer. Smoking is a leading cause of cancer and harms nearly every organ of the body; smoking causes cancers of the lung, esophagus, larynx, mouth, throat, kidney, bladder, pancreas, stomach, and cervix, as well as acute myeloid leukemia. Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 443,000 deaths each year, including approximately 49,000 deaths due to the exposure of secondhand smoke. Knowing the sickening facts about tobacco use, why would anyone continue to smoke?
The sad truth is that cigarettes are extremely addictive due to added substances like nicotine, and many people who want to quit have an almost impossible task in doing so. In a 2011 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 68.9% of adult smokers wanted to quit smoking. The key to stopping this problem is prevention. Each day across the United States, more than 3,800 kids under the age of eighteen smoke their first cigarette. If we could prevent this statistic, we could make sure people would not get addicted in the first place.
The first step in putting a stop to smoking is to put more restrictions on where people are allowed to smoke. If we limit smokers to smoking only on their own property, we would almost eradicate the effects of secondhand smoking. The next step would be to raise the legal age at which someone can buy tobacco products. I know that many teens would still try to get ahold of cigarettes, but the higher legal age would be an inconvenience at the least. The most effective solution, in my opinion, (besides outlawing cigarettes altogether) is to increase the price of cigarettes dramatically. A larger tax on cigarettes would discourage people from buying cigarettes and also raise money for organizations that are supported by cigarette taxes. We must also continue to educate people, young and old, about the dangerous effects of smoking and encourage people who do smoke in their fight to quit smoking for good.
We all know how bad cigarettes are for us.We just need to work together and continue the fight against tobacco use. We also need to help prevent young kids from attaining cigarettes and help people who do smoke to rid themselves of this nasty and dangerous habit. I encourage everyone who reads this to join the fight against tobacco use so that all people can hope to live a long, healthy, and smoke-free life.