My Thoughts | Teen Ink

My Thoughts

March 9, 2011
By Dan gasasu BRONZE, West Branch, Iowa
Dan gasasu BRONZE, West Branch, Iowa
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Why cant people smoke anywhere they want? Why cant they do what they want? Why cant they drink and drive? All those questions have different answers. They are based on different their belief and what people think is good or bad. From that we can get a simple question that has not been answered yet: “what is good or bad, and what tells you whether one thing is bad or good?”

I am going to try to explain everything step by step. First, for smoking I don't think its bad. Smoke is a gas, and if you have studied science you know that gas expands. Then if you smoke you take some smoke in to your lungs, but only a little amount of smoke in. The rest goes into the atmosphere and people take it in. That is why they say second hand smokers get more smoke in their lungs, because it travels with the oxygen you breathe in.

Making someone inhale smoke because you are smoking around them is selfish and that's why smokers have a bad time. But also it's selfish to not let someone do what they want to do with their life. No one can own a life so that is also bad. So what solution can we think of that will make everyone happy? I thought about having rooms with air filters and from that all the smoke is treated, even if you go to a smoking place to smoke, non smokers passing by will inhale the smoke too.

Okay so I get it for smoking, but all the measures taken for teenagers to not drink is really useless, because if I really want to drink I will find the alcohol. They are many ways to do this, but the easiest is to give $1 to a homeless person, or just tell him to buy you a bottle of vodka at $15 and you give him $20. He will most likely do it, and if you let him keep the money the first time he might even go back for free, you helped him get some money before. Based on this, I think it is better not to do all that, but to spend more time showing teenagers what the good things are about it, but also the consequences they will have to face from that good thing. They need concrete examples that they can refer to, and after that time to think about it. Another strategy is to just teach them that drinking out of the home is bad, and give them what they want at home.

Also adults make a lot of disastrous mistakes because of alcohol. For example, an old mature man decides to drive knowing that he is drunk, and after killing someone in a car accident in the court he claims that he was drunk or on drugs. But no one made him drink, and if they did he would know that he is not able to drive. That is why peoples small decisions are the ones that determine your future. From that example, you know that the small decisions we make everyday are the ones that can make us go to jail, be rich, or be poor.

Other type of drugs that are prescriptions used by parents can even have bad consequences. If a child takes those pills to feel good, then it is most likely the parents fault, because for the child to go all that way probably means they don't have someone near them. When they really need someone to help them.

Parents should be there for their children. Even if they don't know it, parents influence their children by the way they look, the way they talk and even the mood they are in. This is something very difficult to understand, but it is proved that kids follow in their parent's foot steps. When I was young, my dad used to tell me stuff like, “I am not the perfect example, and I know you do what I do. Never do my mistakes because I know why I did them. ” Then he started telling me stories that I was too young to understand. For him, it was the perfect time to do so because he would not be with me 24/7, and it worked. They are things that I can't do, even now. My dad told me everything about them, so I changed my mind.

In all I talked about I was trying to show that things are good and bad. I cant define that because that comes from people's beliefs, and everybody has their own way of thinking. However, what they don't know is that we choose what is bad and good from what we want to have. If you want to be rich really bad you might sell drugs, and if someone asks you why, you will tell them that you are doing it for a good cause. You want your children to go to a good school, have a good life and not suffer the way you did.

As people, we don't really go into details about our life or our bad experiences because we think it is bad or shameful to say what we did wrong, especially as parents. It's like they don't think that we are all human beings and we make mistakes.

All this comes from what parents teach their children. By telling your children your mistakes, you can prevent them from drinking, smoking or even touching drugs because you have answered every single question they have about life.


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