Cigarettes Should Be Illegal

Gür Ağcı Professor Andrew Evans 10 Pre-AP English 21 September 2012

TOPIC: SHOULD CIGARETTES BE ILLEGAL? A Breath Of Fresh Air

In order to create healthy and generations with a long life governments should ban cigarettes. According to statistics from World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002, there are one billion cigarettes being sold every day and one third of the world population (approximately 2.3 billion people) are smokers. Worldwide, between 80,000 and 100,000 kids start smoking every day. (Martin, Global Smoking Statistics For 2002) In this essay, I will argue why we should ban the cigarette production. First of all, cigarettes are incredibly bad for your health, they shorten your life span and cause unrepairable harm to your body. It is stated by many doctors and medical experts that cigarettes harm the respiratory system, causing heart and circulation problems. Illnesses such as lung cancer, strokes, chest pains and heart attacks are unsurprisingly common in frequent smokers. The 4000 chemical compounds and 400 toxic substances in cigarettes are significant numbers to indicate how harmful they are for your health. When you inhale a cigarette the heat created breakes down the tobacco to produce various toxins. The substances created such as tar, causes serious cancer. Nicotine, which is addictive, increases cholesterol levels in your body. Carbonmonoxide (CO) reduces oxygen in your body and all these substances cause damage to your health. We can say smoking affects how long you live healthly. According to the studies made by US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), smoking reduces life expectancy by seven to eight years and on average each cigarette shortens a smoker’s life by about eleven minutes. US CDC’s report indicates that over 440,000 people in the USA die because of smoking each year. Smoking is destructive not just to you but for all the people around you. This process is called second hand or passive smoking. Passive smokers inhale the smoke that the smoker exhale and unfortunately passive smokers also get affected just like the actual smoker. The only difference between a first hand and a second hand smoker is that the first hand one inhales a higher concentration of carcinogens (nicotine and other toxic chemicals) than the second hand smoker. Still the second hand smoker is exposed to the chemicals harmful for their body. The conclusion of a report from the California Environmental Protection Agency made in 2005 states: “One out of hundred second hand smokers are linked to breast and lung cancers.” Smoking harms your social life and affects your relations in various negative ways. For example, you cannot go into a restaurant, a bar or a pub with a cigarette in your hand. So you are going to have to wait to finish your cigarette, while all your friends go in and begin to have fun. To give another example, smokers are not really welcomed in public. By smoking you can toxicate your friends. Even if you do not care about your social life and friends, buying hundreds of packs of cigarettes harm you economically. A survey in UK shows that an average smoker spends 240,000 dollars on cigarettes in his whole life time until he becomes sixty years old. People can do great, productive and helpful things like charities, building schools or helping unfortunate kids throughout the world with this amount of money. On the other hand, some may still argue that my thesis is idealistic and cannot be applied. They may claim that smoking is individualistic and it is their right to smoke freely. It is a habit and their psychology may get badly affected if they are forced to quit. Banning smoking by legislation may create blackmarket for cigarettes, creating another social problem. So the question is how are we going to make people quit, prevent the emerging of new smokers and fight with the blackmarket? I definitely object to these arguments because I believe that it is the government’s duty to protect the health of its citizens. By taking the right pre-cautionary steps blackmarket can be prevented and by establishing the right institutions people can quit smoking without being mentally effected. The government can direct smokers to other hobbies and therapies that will help them to quit. Research shows that people who take part in “full quit smoking programs”, including behavioral therapies and medication may increase their chance of successfully quitting smoking. Considering the deaths, illnesses and various types of cancers, I see no reason why we should not make cigarettes illegal. Why do the governments still allow the production of this poison? We should not harm our youth by allowing them to inhale the dangerous tobacco smoke, while we have the opportunity to provide them a healthy, smoke-free life.

-Works Cited- 1. http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/nr012606.htm (18 September 2012) 2. http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/smokehealth.htm (18 September 2012) 3. http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/smokehealth.htm (19 September 2012) 4. http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/TobaccoCancer/secondhand-smoke (19 September 2012) 5. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html (20 September 2012) 6. http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/tobacco/en/index.html (20 September 2012)

Cited: 1. http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/nr012606.htm (18 September 2012) 2. http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/smokehealth.htm (18 September 2012) 3. http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/smokehealth.htm (19 September 2012) 4. http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/TobaccoCancer/secondhand-smoke (19 September 2012) 5. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html (20 September 2012) 6. http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/tobacco/en/index.html (20 September 2012)