This editorial has been on my to-do list since Spring 2013.
It begins with my first term as a Co-op Student when I worked at Parsons Brinckerhoff. Every day, on my commute to work, I encountered at least ten people huffing away on cigarettes. As an asthmatic, I occasionally found myself choking on the clouds of smog these people produced.
I always tried to be courteous to these people, it is his or her right, it is his or her body. But, not anymore.
Why? Why do you do this to your bodies? Yeah, sure, everyone dies eventually, but you don’t have to be stupid about it! Smoking kills, that is a fact that has been engraved into our minds as young children, yet I still see peers my age stupid enough to take a puff.
Really? How can you possibly continue on this path? Oh, it’s addiction, is it? Toughen the hell up! If you aren’t the master of your mind and body, who is? The cigarette? You are human beings! Show some fighting spirit! Quit!
Of my family, I can pick out at least three who have died from smoking, my great uncle being one of them. It isn’t a fun way to die. Your lungs will slowly deteriorate, losing their functionality. This will cripple you, causing you to gradually lose your energy until breathing itself becomes so much a chore that you asphyxiate yourself by trying to sit still. Either that, or cancer will get you. Either way, pain and suffering over a long drawn out process are all that await you.
Moreover, it is expensive! With recent tax hikes, smoking a pack of cigarettes will cost somewhere around $7.00 a day. If this is a routine hobby, not only are you destroying your lungs at breakneck speeds, but you’re also costing yourself just shy of $50.00 a week, or $200.00 a month. Parking my car in the local garage costs less than that!
So why do people still do it?
I can only think of two reasons off the top of my head: either people somehow still exist that think smoking is cool. (It’s not, and if you honestly believe it is, you’re not worth my time.) The other reason is that it is some sort of coping tool.
If you’re coping, and you’re smoking as a means to cope, then I can see a cycle of depression forming. People who are upset about something will smoke to allieviate their stress, which will only end up making them more upset because they are stuck on smoking.
From a purely logical standpoint, the only way out is to quit. From an emotional standpoint, you’ll be stronger if you quit. From a societal standpoint, you will be heralded as a good person for managing to quit.
So really, quit smoking.
In some locations, there have been pushes to remove public smoking in general. Those locations are luxorious on my lungs. People are only allowed to smoke in their cars or in their homes, nowhere else. The air just feels cleaner in general. (On a side note, if we could push for that on campus, I would be overjoyed.)
I understand that it is your right to smoke, I really do. But, when you are corrupting the air I breathe, then I’ve got a problem with it. I can’t just change my path of travel to work (when I worked there) and I rather like the prospect of not getting lung cancer from walking by you.
So please, do yourself and everyone around you a favor, stop smoking.
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