Cigarette Smoking

Abstract
This essay, the Argumentative Essay, is about cigarette smoking. I will explain the harmful effects it has on people’s health, whether they smoke or not. I will also talk about how smoking can be bad for one’s financial status. I will show opposing sides of how smokers don’t find smoking bad.

Cigarette Smoking Every day, over 3800 teens, eighteen and younger, smoke their first cigarette. It may be with friends that pressured them, or by themselves just to see how it is. After their first one, they will want another one, and another one, and so on. It is a bad habit to get into as a young adult. So with this in mind, cigarette smoking should be banned because of the health risks and costs they have on people. By smoking cigarettes, one can see a dramatic toll on their spending costs. These spending costs will affect a person’s income and financial life. As it states on the website, Better Health Channel, “One packet of 25 cigarettes costs around $16 and the price keeps rising” (“Smoking- the financial cost,” 2012). People could be using those sixteen dollars for a better use, like putting gas in their car or buying something that they want. It is true that the “price keeps rising” (“Smoking- the financial cost,” 2012) because congress wants to add on more tax on the cost. By adding more tax, the cost will go up more and more. It all adds up with all of the costs. Smokers should think as if they are burning their dollar bills. They pay money to smoke cigarettes, yet they don’t know how much money they are wasting. “At today’s prices, if you smoke one pack of cigarettes each day for ten years, you’ll spend over $58,000 – easily enough to buy a new car or put a deposit on a house” (“Smoking- the financial cost,” 2012). This is a fact and smokers should take it under consideration. Instead of smoking all of those cigarettes, they could get new things that they can show off. This information proved that people that smoke would have a better financial life without cigarettes. An opposing argument to this would be that a smoker would say that prices vary where ever one is at. This is true, but the prices are all really high. A pack of Marlbro Reds in this area can cost around six dollars after tax. There is a lot that people can do without buying cigarettes, and they will feel better about it. Cigarettes are composed of a lot of things. Most of these things are very toxic to the human body. “Over 4000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette – 69 of those chemicals are known to cause cancer” (“Cigarette ingredients,” n.d.). Some of the major chemicals are: carbon monoxide, nicotine, methanol, and paint. As many people know, these things are very bad for people’s health. What they probably don’t realize is that these toxins are in cigarettes. Those toxins can make a person really sick or worse, they can die from them. “Smoking increases your chances of getting cancer” (2012). There are chemicals in cigarettes that are very cancerous and can be very deadly.
If a person smokes for most of their life, they prone to have health problems. These health problems can result in a stroke or even a heart attack. Cigarettes can affect a person’s life. One way that they affect a person’s life is that they, “it permeates everything around it” and “it stains the teeth yellow or sometimes even brown” (Baack, n.d.). These are some long term affects that a smoker will have to deal with. An arguer could say that one could get teeth whitener to get the yellow out of their teeth. This would be a good solution, but it could take weeks for their teeth to turn white again.
Cigarettes not only affect the smoker, it also affects people around smokers. Second-hand smoke is as deadly as first-hand smoke. “Secondhand smoke is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the smoke exhaled by smokers” (“Health effects and exposures to secondhand smoke,” 2011). Smoke from the cigarette can affect people around you. It is really dangerous for someone to smoke by a person with asthma. People with asthma have hard time breathing because their lungs are not as strong as they should be. The smoke can trigger an asthma attack that can be mild or deadly.
Someone that smokes would say that the other person can go out of the room so they wouldn’t be by the smoke. Something else they could say is that they could go outside and smoke. Even if the other person is in another room, they can still get second-hand smoke. The smoke will travel to different rooms and will stay in the same room. Then when the non-smoker walks through that room, they get the smoke.
There are ways to help someone quit smoking. There is a “stop-smoking drug that may be safe” (“Harvard heart letter,” 2012, n.p.) for smokers to buy. The drug is called Chantix. The smoker takes one pill a day and in time, it will help them quit. There are other ways to quit smoking, such as: nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and hypnosis. Some people will go “cold turkey,” as in quitting on the spot. That is good, but then after a day or so, they will be craving cigarettes and smoke a lot more than they usually would. On the other hand, there are some people that can quit right away and go the rest of their lives without smoking.
An argument for quitting smoking is that the person depends on cigarettes during stressful times. They don’t know how to handle the stress because they would always smoke a cigarette. In an interview that I conducted with my father, Rodney Moore, he told me that, “I have tried to quit smoking before. It’s really hard to do, because whenever I get stressed out, my body tells me that I need to smoke” (R. Moore, personal communication, April 9, 2013). It is in the smoker’s mindset that they need a cigarette to get them through the stressful situation. In this essay, I have talked about how smoking cigarettes is bad for people. They will not only affect the smoker, but also the people around them. I don’t want to have to smell the smell of a cigarette burning, and there are others that agree with me on that. By showing that counter arguments, I see how the opposing side views smoking. So after some thought, I have decided to stay with my stance about smoking.

References
[Special issue]. (2012). Cigarette Smoking and It 's Health Risks. Retrieved from Health and Wellness Resource Center database. (Accession No. A294902125)
Baack, E. (n.d.). The effects of cigarette smoking. Retrieved April 10, 2013, from Eslbee.com website: http://eslbee.com/effects_of_cigarette_smoking.htm
Cigarette ingredients. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2013, from Tri-County Cessation Center website: http://www.tricountycessation.org/tobaccofacts/Cigarette-Ingredients.html
Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events, Institute of Medicine. (2010). Secondhand smoke exposure and cardiovascular effects: Making sense of the evidence [Google version]. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=-7nuL5X_m6YC&pg=PT44&lpg=PT44&dq=difference+between+mainstream+and+sidestream+smoke&source=bl&ots=d06KombDCc&sig=jUALePbPUbpAivYtVEH64afGbvk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1lJcUcThKorF2QXR04HABw&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBQ
Harvard heart letter. (2012). Health Source- Consumer Edition, 22(11), 8. Retrieved from EBSCO eBook Collection database. (Accession No. 78294193)
Health effects and exposures to secondhand smoke. (2011, November 30). Retrieved April 3, 2013, from EPA: United States Environmental Protection Agency website: http://www.epa.gov/smokefre/healtheffects.html
Moore, R. (2013, April 9). [Personal interview by the author].
Smoking - the financial cost. (2012, November 29). Retrieved April 10, 2013, from Better Health Channel website: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Smoking_the_financial_cost

References: [Special issue]. (2012). Cigarette Smoking and It 's Health Risks. Retrieved from Health and Wellness Resource Center database. (Accession No. A294902125) Baack, E. (n.d.). The effects of cigarette smoking. Retrieved April 10, 2013, from Eslbee.com website: http://eslbee.com/effects_of_cigarette_smoking.htm Cigarette ingredients. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2013, from Tri-County Cessation Center website: http://www.tricountycessation.org/tobaccofacts/Cigarette-Ingredients.html Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events, Institute of Medicine. (2010). Secondhand smoke exposure and cardiovascular effects: Making sense of the evidence [Google version]. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=-7nuL5X_m6YC&pg=PT44&lpg=PT44&dq=difference+between+mainstream+and+sidestream+smoke&source=bl&ots=d06KombDCc&sig=jUALePbPUbpAivYtVEH64afGbvk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1lJcUcThKorF2QXR04HABw&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBQ Harvard heart letter. (2012). Health Source- Consumer Edition, 22(11), 8. Retrieved from EBSCO eBook Collection database. (Accession No. 78294193) Health effects and exposures to secondhand smoke. (2011, November 30). Retrieved April 3, 2013, from EPA: United States Environmental Protection Agency website: http://www.epa.gov/smokefre/healtheffects.html Moore, R. (2013, April 9). [Personal interview by the author]. Smoking - the financial cost. (2012, November 29). Retrieved April 10, 2013, from Better Health Channel website: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Smoking_the_financial_cost