CIGARETTES AND OUR ENVIRONMENT

By Rebecca Hosking

The smoke from the end of a cigarette dissipates very quickly within the natural air so there fore has more damaging results on local environments. Just like the smell that lingers in your hair and fingers and even the fabrics in your home those smells are attached to chemicals that linger in our lungs. Not only the lungs of the smoker but everyone within the vicinity. Each day 6,000 people will take their first puff from a cigarette and at least half of them will become regular smokers. That is a lot of pollutants in the air we breathe. Secondhand smoke is an environmental menace. It fills the air with many of the same poisons found in the air around toxic waste dumps. This smoke kills about 3,000 nonsmokers each year from lung cancer. Not a very nice thing to carry on your conscience is it? Along with those pollutes most smokers feel they have the right to toss their butts out their car window while they drive down the road. Snuff a lit end out in the sand while they sun on the beach. Or even worse toss their cancer stick into an innocent lake or river while boating and enjoying the fresh air. Nearly 12.5 million acres of forest are destroyed each year to provide trees to cure tobacco. That's about a tree every two weeks for the average smoker. Each year smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides, and fires -- combined! Well hopefully I have planted enough trees to make up for the ones I've killed due to this nasty habit?

We live in a volatile environment at best and think of the numerous gases we expel with every exhalation of a single puff of smoke. An environmentalist who chooses to light a cigarette is an oxy moron. Now you know the consequences of your decision to smoke cigarettes, but didn't we already know this anyway?

It is shocking how in our society so many people live with the, "it can't happen to me", sort of attitude. Well it can and it will. By choosing to smoke a cigarette you are not only hurting yourself but the people around you. More and more everyday we are learning just how unsafe it is to light up. There is nothing cool about a cigarette except for one that is being extinguished. People look at it as a social interaction, well good conversation over some fireflies out doors is social interaction as well and far less deadly as lighting a cigarette. Let's be kind to Mother Nature she provides a lot for us. If not for Mother then do it for yourself.

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE ONE VOICE AT A TIME:

I was talking to a group of friends where we were discussing issues that had been going on in our political lives for decades with no resolution in sight. This prompted one person in saying why waste your time, I've lost interest, and besides what can I do, I have no power to accomplish anything….I was floored and immediately thought, WOW, I'm glad not everyone shares that defeatist attitude. Although in today's society the dangers of smoking seems like small potatoes in the scheme of things, but lest we look back to the day when nearly 50% of our population smoked and put an increasing burden on tax payers through the funding of healthcare due to the fact that no one was privy to the harms that cigarettes were causing to their bodies. It took one voice to start spreading and educating in order to make a change. As a country we are linked as one through an elected government that dictates ways of reform to give this country's citizens a better way of life. These elected officials are put into place through a democratic election of which the powers that be are put into power by the people. Yes that is you, including that person who said what can I do? But I digress.

Taking a subject like smoking cigarettes and applying it to a life decision that an individual makes I feel is a perfect example of how everyday, little decisions that we make, affect the masses and should be taken very seriously. We live in a free society that is built upon multiple decisions our law makers put into place for the betterment of daily living. The idea is to make sure it is the best policy for all parties involved. So let's go back in history let's say one year before the surgeon general took the initiative to educate the public of the health hazards puffing on a cigarette was causing. Just little under 50% of our population was putting themselves and others in harms way by not educating themselves to what smoke does to their own lungs not to mention the effects of second hand smoke to others just by being around it. Doesn't it seem absurd the loss of lives endured due to ignorance? You would not let your kid go on a field trip with out thorough investigation as to the safety precautions and background checks of chaperones so why would you put your trust in a company trying to make a profit, with something as important as your health.

I think as an individual it is our job, to be that voice, our responsibility to do the homework and always know what is going in your own body and what the consequences of that action will be. You do have a voice, and through protecting yourself you are opening the door to reaching lives outside your own, and it all started with you. My point is to let us take one small triumph at a time and the triumph I wanted to emphasize is the decrease of adult smokers over a span of 40 years. Why should it stop there? The next time you light a cigarette, I would ask yourself, are you inhaling with a full understanding and appreciation as to what is entering your body, and if the answer is no, then distinguish that cigarette until you can make a more well informed decision.