This is a submission from our Leaders 4SC Middle School Camp.
Did you know that smoking causes 480,000 deaths only in the U.S every year? This is horrible! We need to ban smoking and cigarettes! Although some people believe that cigarette smoking makes people happy and relieved, it causes cancer, it creates more and more air pollution, it causes people to have serious health conditions, they harm our wildlife and put homes and forests on fire, and it is unfair and unpleasant to secondhand smokers.
First, we should ban smoking because it causes cancer. Cancer is basically a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body. Cancer causes deaths. Some types of cancer are bladder cancer, blood cancer, cervix cancer, colon cancer, esophagus cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer, and more cancers. Smoking can cause cancer and it can cause cancer almost anywhere in the people’s body! Cancer is bad. A lot of the time, cancer kills people. Cancer is even one of the leading causes of death in the world! We do not want people to die because of smoking. This is an action that people are making even though they know it is horrible. We need to ban smoking. If people ban smoking, those people will live a longer life and it will also help save other lives too. According to CDC, if nobody smoked, cancer deaths would reduce significantly. Every one in three cancer deaths only in the United States wouldn’t happen. Smoking is very dangerous and it causes many cancers. We should ban smoking. We should save lives.
Second, smoking creates air pollution. In fact, Medical News Today says that “Cigarette smoke produces 10 times more air pollution than diesel car exhaust.” This is terrible because air pollution is very harmful to the earth. It ruins the ozone layer and do you know how helpful that is? It is very helpful. Esrl.noaa says that the ozone layer protects the earth from very dangerous things like the heat from the sun, the sun’s harmful rays, burns, and destroys meteors that are headed toward Earth and even from extreme temperatures. We shouldn’t smoke and we should prevent it from happening and we should stop breaking down the ozone layer. We need to realize that smoking doesn’t only affect those people, but many more things. We have to look around us and realize smoking is affecting the whole world around us. Additionally, smoking creates air pollution and air pollution causes people to have serious health conditions because they are breathing in toxic things that are in the air. We do not want people to die because people are smoking.
Third, smoking causes people to have serious health conditions. These serious health conditions can kill people and make people sick and even die! This can even affect other people’s children. For example, the CDC explains that smoking causes numerous health problems in infants and children. These health problems can include really frequent asthma and asthma attacks can be more dangerous. Also, smoking causes respiratory infections, ear infections, and even infant death syndrome! Smoking can make people sick in every way. Scientists or doctors don’t know all the ways that people are becoming sick just because of smoking. Putting harmful air into our bodies is horrible and we know that we are hurting ourselves when we are doing this. Why are we hurting ourselves? Why are we making ourselves die because we are smoking? We have to ban smoking. We have to stop harming things and we have to make the earth a better place.
Fourth, smoking harms our wildlife and puts homes and forests on fire. Some people leave their burning cigarettes on the floor and it harms us. There are stories when someone leaves a cigarette somewhere where there is wood and it burns down the wood. There are many houses that burned down. This even happened to my apartment! A person left a cigarette on the rooftop and it was still smoking out smoke. The person forgot to put the cigarette out. Anyway, the cigarette that was left out ended up burning the rooftop and it turned into ashes. The firemen had to come and stop the fire. This is how dangerous smoking is. We should not smoke. It is harming people and the environment at the same time. Smoking also creates wildfires. Wildfires are harmful because it burns down trees. This affects animals because it ruins their home. Why are we smoking, leaving cigarettes out, and then killing animals and their habitats? This not only affects animals, but it affects humans too. The trees are giving humans oxygen and we need oxygen to live. We need the plants to live.
Fifth, people that smoke are making other people breathe in smoke which is called second-hand smoking. Second-hand smoking is unfair for people because some people don’t like the smell of smoke. Every day when I am trying to walk somewhere, I always see smokers and I can always smell the smoke around me. I hate the smell. It is very unfair and unpleasant for the people that are trying to breathe but they feel like they can’t because the smell is horrible. Not only that but actually the smoke that they are breathing in is bad. Second-hand smoking is just like smoking. People get the same types of health conditions that could kill them. Smokers are killing other people because they are not caring about other people and their lives. People are dying because of other people and their smoking. In fact, according to CDC 2.5 million adults who were nonsmokers passed away because they breathed in other smokers’ air. This is completely unfair to the people because they are having a shorter life when they were just trying to breathe. This is also unfair to their family because there loved ones passed away and they are feeling sad. We have to ban smoking!
Some people might say that smoking makes people happy and relieved. When people get home from a long day and then they smoke, it makes them feel very relaxed and not as stressed out. This is because of the smoke. Thoracic says that smoking is very addictive and it causes people to feel sick in some way if they don’t have it for a long time. After people smoke again, it makes them feel not as sick and just relieved. This may be true for that time that people smoke but in the end, people will die early and they will regret it and only feel bad. People will regret hurting themselves and potentially killing and hurting other people. Smoking may feel good when people are alive and not in pain but people shouldn’t start smoking just because it will get people addicted and people will probably be smoking all the time in the end. People shouldn’t have easy access to cigarettes, in fact, they shouldn’t have access to cigarettes at all! We have to ban smoking and we need to be considerate of others!
People are trying to help this problem and stop smoking. Other people are trying to do things about this. Little by little. People that are in my apartment are not allowed to smoke. More and more people are realizing that smoking is bad. Buildings are not allowing people to smoke in there. These things that people are doing to help stop smoking are actually helping but if nobody did this, imagine how much of a good big difference we would make if we banned smoking. If we do this, people will be safer because people aren’t near smoke and people will not smoke anymore. So we need to ban smoking so nobody smokes. Also, banning smoking will help the earth. If there is less smoking then there will be less polluting the air. If there is less polluting the air, then there will be less ruining the earth’s protection. We will be keeping the earth safer. We need to continue reducing smoking and eventually ban it. Imagine, if smoking was banned, nobody would be hurting themselves and hurting the environment. I know that smoking is very addictive and if people have a smoke once, people feel like they need to smoke more, but they will not smoke anymore because they won’t have access to cigarettes. People have stopped smoking before as an individual but if we ban smoking, nobody will be smoking. And we will have stopped smoking as a whole. This will greatly help because then we don’t have to convince each individual to stop smoking, they will be banned from smoking. This will greatly improve the earth and the people. Also, many people have been smoking and they are trying to stop but since they can easily get access to cigarettes, they buy it because they are allowed to and they are addictive. We need to ban smoking and cigarettes!
Therefore, smoking is ruining the earth and people. It is time to ban smoking. It is time to correct our actions. It is time to take away smoking from the earth. It is time to save our earth and people. The time is now. We must ban smoking!
Sources
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Earth System Research Laboratory
Written by Leaders 4SC 2020 Student, Ava M.