Image from uknow.uky.edu.
The effects of smoking can cause thousands of diseases, including lung disease, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. So, why would anyone smoke in the first place? And why is tobacco still allowed to be used?
Despite this, many people believe that smoking should not be restricted. This could be because it’s an issue of personal rights versus public health, or just because they are addictive and it’s hard for people to stop.
Regardless of the warnings and dangers to their future health, young people continue to experiment with tobacco, which often leads many of them to become addicted. There are a lot of teenagers who smoke and began doing so before the age of eighteen. Another way students begin smoking is because of social circles with their friends, making it become a habit or even something to bond over. Students eventually start smoking, especially seeing that everyone else is already doing it. Moreover, almost all gas stations have advertisements encouraging you to buy cigarettes.
Vaping is the new smoking replacement: around 40% of smokers haven’t ever tried a cigarette. But, most people believe it is worse than smoking. However, vaping carries major health benefits when compared to smoking, although it also comes with several risks. At least 20,000 new successful quit attempts could be caused by vaping each year, and there could be many more. Over the last year, vaping has been associated with higher quitting success rates and an increasingly rapid reduction in smoking rates all across the country. Despite this, several thousands of smokers wrongly believe vaping is just as bad as smoking
Less than 10% of adults know that tobacco is not the primary cause of the majority of the health risks that come with smoking, showing that there is a major health misunderstanding about the substance.
When you smoke, your chances of getting cancer are higher than ever. 90% of men and 80% of women who pass away from lung cancer were smokers. Lung cancer is produced by coal dust, and when smokers smoke tobacco cigarettes, they inhale a lethal mixture of 7,000 smoke chemicals. Vaping is the solution to quitting smoking, and you can quit vaping once you have quit smoking. Yes, of course, it’s a long process, but it would seem to be more effective than other methods of quitting smoking.
Gigi Astrid Monares is a second-year high school student in Washington. She spent her entire childhood in the Philippines before she immigrated to the US in 2018. She became a journalist because she enjoys photography. Her hobbies are watching Korean dramas and listening to music to keep her from becoming distracted while working. Although she’s still considering her options for the future, for the time being, Gigi simply wants to be able to graduate from high school and figure it out.