Thank You For Not Smoking

My father died from smoking, and my fathers father died from smoking, and from what I found approximately 40% of the students at my college smoke. Smoking is not a natural act. It can be compared to running into a burning house. We must help people to stop smoking.
Until the early years of the 20th century cigarettes were neither a major article of consumption in this country nor a major threat to health. At the turn of the century less than one million cigarettes were consumed annually in this country as compared to the over six hundred billion cigarettes consumed annually today. The sudden and enormous increase in the use of cigarettes came about for a variety of reasons. Cigarettes are less expensive and less offensive than other forms of tobacco, and for these reasons have been taken up by large numbers of women. Cigarette smoke is milder than smoke from cigars and pipes making inhalation easier and thus nicotine adsorption into the blood stream more rapid. Once a person starts smoking cigarettes, addiction in the sense of building up a physiological and psychological dependance, can quickly follow. Cigarettes are very profitable to manufacture. Over the years cigarette companies have had immense sums of money to invest in advertising, promotion and propaganda. Scientists first became suspicious as cigarettes were a cause of illness and death as early as 1930. One reason was the increase of in incidence of lung cancer at that time. In 1930 three thousand Americans died of lung cancer. By 1950 eighteen thousand died. In 1980 over one hundred thousand were dying of lung cancer every year. Since the 1930's the medical evidence has continually grown stronger until cigarette smoking can now be identified as one of the major causes of death and disability around the world.
The U.S. Surgeon General created a report that listed a couple of bad things about
smoking, the report was almost three thousand pages long and all negative. In reading through the Surgeon Generals report I came up with a few of the health risks that they mentioned. They concluded that clearly cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of illness and preventable death in this country. Cigarette smoking is a causal factor for coronary heart and vascular disease, cancer of the lung, larynx, oral cavity and esophagus, and chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Cigarette smoking is associated with cancer of the urinary bladder and pancreases well as ulcer disease. Maternal smoking is associated with an increased risk of spontaneous abortion, prenatal death, and impairment of growth in early childhood. The chances of encountering these problems increases greatly when cigarette smoking is combined with oral contraceptives, asbestos or other occupationally encountered substances. Involuntary or passive inhalation of cigarette smoke can exacerbate existing disease states such as asthma, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Pneumonia and bronchitis are more common in the first year of life of children whose parents smoke. I found this part of the Surgeon Generals report most interesting because I was hospitalized for pneumonia when I was six months old. I also grew up with bronchitis and asthma. I had always believe that it was just because I was a sickly child, but I now believe it was because I grew up with a smoker in the family. Smoking is also the major identifiable cause of fire deaths and injuries in this country.
Smoking is rapidly becoming socially unacceptable in this country. I personally have found difficulty in having relationships with women who smoke. I also find it difficult to associate or do business on a regular basis with people who smoke. A lot of people share my views, so if you are smoking you are disassociating yourself from a majority of the population. I
know a lot of people who smoke will contend that it is their own body and they have a right to do with it what they will. I will have to agree that anything you do to your own self is your own business. But smoking really does affect a lot of other people. According to the Surgeon Generals report on smoking taxpayers pay 5 to 8 billion dollars a year in health care costs for smoking related diseases. Not to mention lost productivity, wages, and absenteeism estimated to be from 12 to 18 billion dollars a year. Also when you become ill or die from smoking you take a toll from your family and friends. You owe it to yourself to take care of yourself. No one can reasonably conclude that smoking is simply a private concern. All the smokers that I have talked to have told me that they wished they had never started smoking, and none of them would recommend smoking to a non-smoker. Every time someone sees you smoking, especially children who see adults as role models, you are sending a signal to them that smoking is an acceptable thing to do.
Smoking is more than just a bad habit, it hurts you and it hurts the people around you. My father is already gone but it is not too late for you to stop smoking, or to help someone you know or care about to stop smoking.