According to World Health Organization, a current or former smoker dies
every 6.5 seconds. That means about 13,292 people die daily just from the addiction of
cigarettes. Is it worth it? You only have one life to live, don?t waste it on a worthless
cigarette. Smoking does not only affect your life medically and financially, but it affects
the ones around you as well.!
! ! Getting addicted to cigarettes has many negative influences on your
life. Medically, cigarettes slowly kill your body little by little. The diseases that tag along
with the addiction are extremely dangerous and can even be life threatening. Many
people think that lung cancer or emphysema is the leading cause of death for smokers,
however heart disease is at the top of the list. As the number of packs you smoke
augments, the risk of heart disease increases greatly. Lung caner is another disease
you can catch from inhaling smoke day-to-day. More than 90% of the nicotine inhaled is
absorbed by the lungs. Although nonsmokers can develop lung cancer, the risk is about
ten times greater for smokers. As for emphysema, which is characterized by shortness
of breath, 120,000 people die yearly from it in the United States. For not being the
number one cause of death for smokers, the number of deaths caused by emphysema
is outrageous. Not only does smoking affect your health, it takes a toll on your body too.
Wrinkles, a women?s worst nightmare, starts to become reality after a year or so of the
addiction. They are caused from the loss of oxygen supply to your skin. Another obvious
appearance for a smoker is yellow teeth. The reason why your pearly whites change
color is because of the nicotine that is deposited on them. Your teeth aren?t the only
things that turn yellow; your nails transform into that color as well. Not only do they turn
yellow, but they become brittle too. On top of that, dark circles and eye bags begin to
form from this appalling habit.
! ! Financial conflicts arise when smoking a cigarette becomes a need
instead of a want. It all starts with finding a job of course. According to the article “The
High Cost of Smoking” on the MSN website, it?s becoming more difficult to find a job
when you are a smoker. The reason being is because now-a-days businesses are
starting to require nicotine test as an employment screening and some businesses are
even refusing to hire smokers. Furthermore, the cost of cigarettes is ridiculous. An
average cost for a pack is about $5. If you needed two packs a day that comes to a cost
of $70 by the end of the week. If you continued the habit for a year, the average amount
of money you threw down the drain would be $3,640. When it comes to insurance, your
life policy is higher than nonsmokers. Therefore, you have to pay up to 30% more
money on your life insurance. So while you are having a hard time finding a job and
wasting money on packs of cigarettes daily, it?s going to start becoming hard to pay for
your life insurance. Smoking puts the cost of insurance out of reach for smokers and as
a result, some people lose their life protection. As life insurance payments will be hard
to keep up with, you still have house, car and other payments that still need to be
tended to.
! ! Although most smokers have the assumption that they are only putting
their body at harm; they are absolutely wrong. Friends, family members, co-workers,
and even strangers are affected from passive smoking. Passive smoke is also known as
secondhand smoke, which is the smoke that is exhaled from the mouth and the smoke
steaming off the cigarette. Even though it may seem harmless, secondhand smoke
contains thousands of chemicals. Many of the chemicals exposed are known to cause
cancer. A healthy nonsmoker can also suffer from respiratory infections, asthma,
coughing, sore throats, and even heart disease just from someone else?s poor decision
to smoke.
! ! Smokers not only suffer medically and financially in life, but others around
the smoker suffer as well. Think of the 13,292 lives that were taken from the
dependency on cigarettes; think of how easily their deaths could have been prevented if
they never would have begun this addiction. Think twice before you light up what seems
to be a harmless cigarette.