Smoking Kills Indeed

When somebody does not eat properly and sleep well, that person's immunity may decrease. And we all have the Koch bacilli in us, and it attacks us or not, depending on how vulnerable we are to it. Before discovering the antibiotics, the most effective treatment against such an enemy was the cure based on fresh air, good food and good rest. And many people used to respond immediately to such a cure, without any other medical treatment. But tuberculosis is not the only disease that affects our lungs. Lung cancer is one of the most frequent and most serious diseases in the world.

In men, lung cancer is on the first place among the causes of mortality. In women, it is on the third place, and that is because women have started to smoke as much as men. This explains the warnings we may read on the cigarette packages. But with all the warnings, people do keep on smoking, and smoking a lot. According to doctors, 9 out of 10 cases of lung cancer are caused by smoking tobacco. There have been experiments that proved cigarette smoking to be the main and most frequent cause for lung cancer, but of course, tobacco industry and cigarette producers would never tell you that. After all, their daily bread depends on other people's addiction and sadly enough, often on other people's misery.

There are many programs and initiatives throughout the world that forbid smoking in public places, such as bars and so on. This can be effective indeed, for people have the tendency to choose comfort over their own vices. Which means some may start wondering what they are doing outside the comfy sofas inside a pub, filling their lungs with nicotine, and realize it's not such a good idea to keep on smoking. But then again, to other people and especially young ones, the ones at a rebel age, it may seem even more interesting and cool to smoke and show their protest against rules and higher authorities that they most often associate with the idea of paternal authority.

There is another myth regarding smoking and quitting, saying that after you stop smoking, you're out of danger. Unfortunately, experts have a different opinion on this subject. It takes no less than 10 years after you quit smoking for the chances of you getting lung cancer to be equal (in the sense of small chances) to those of a non-smoker. So, after one quits smoking, he can be safe from the danger of lung cancer only ten years later.

In order to justify their decision to keep on smoking, people generally come up with rare cases of other people who have smoked most their lives, and these examples are indeed special and unique - referring to people who also lived quite long. But this doesn't necessarily mean smoking doesn't kill. After all, even cigarette packs have to admit this tragic fact. How can we buy and use something that has such a clear negative message on it, like Smoking Kills?

For many people, it all starts at a very early age. Some choose to start smoking seeing their parents. I even have a friend of mine who says that she's started smoking because her mom used to smoke since forever, and the girl had found out passive smoking is more harmful than active smoking. Teenagers start smoking because of peer pressure, and some to find an escape from their stressful life at school, or to protest against too restrictive parents and teachers. Of course, seeing their friends smoking despite what even cigarette packs say, gives them a great encouragement to keep doing this enormous harm to themselves and others.

A great number of people are influenced by commercials and movies where the act of smoking is presented as a glamorous, bohemian, rebellious and even seductive gesture. They want to look as sexy, cool and nonchalant as the gorgeous people they see in the movies, and often long to relate to this inaccessible movie/music star world somehow. Here is what the great Oscar Wilde once said: "A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves you unsatisfied." Indeed, it does. Smoking is a vicious thing that feeds on the very own feeling of frustration that it leaves you with. And most probably the so-called forbidden fruit was forbidden in the first place (if we are to think of the history of Adam, Eve and the fruit) not to restrict us as humans, but because such a fruit can kill us.