Cigarettes are bad. In other news, winter is cold, and gravity works. It’s such an obvious statement to make that it almost is unnecessary to make, yet there are still people who make the decision to pick up a pack of smokes and take a puff. I’m sure you’ve had to sit through lessons where its a bunch of “cancer is bad, and lungs are useful; don’t smoke.” That’s usually about it which is leaving out a lot of details about why exactly smoking can take control of your life and affect the world. Below is a table from the CDC that is a giant compilation of only the easily measurable statistics that are related to smoking. The gist of it is that there are a ton of things that are connected to the cigarette. Lung and throat-related complications are the easiest to see the relation, but there are tons of other systems that are affected. Smoke doesn’t just cause damage by direct contact; it seeps throughout the body, disturbing all of the natural systems that can stop you from dying. Even if you might recover from a serious issue which was aided from a terrible habit, the time that you spent lying in a hospital bed and had family visiting could have instead been spent somewhere else. The people that don’t take their health as seriously as others place a strain on society to be there when their decisions catch up to them. Yes, hospitals are a great thing for everyone to have access to, but they’re not built to specifically help people who voluntarily put themselves in a worse position.
In more general terms, think about all the small things that goes into cleaning up the mess left behind. There are countless cigarette butts lying around major cities and other areas. These things are hard to completely remove from an area as there will always be more left behind. Some will eventually be swept down drains straight to the oceans where they can contaminate the entire ecosystem. According to an article from NBC, cigarette butts are the number one most littered items and account for about one third of all trash collected from beaches. The filter has a great deal of residue chemicals and plastic which can cause a great deal amount of damage if left to degrade. The article also mentions that the reason why butts are so common is that many people get satisfaction from flicking them away instead of disposing of them in a regular fashion. One focus group of smokers was quoted saying that the act was, “...a natural extension of the defiant/rebellious smoking ritual.” It’s amazing how strong of an effect stereotypes and associations can have on our actions. The scene of a flying butt landing in a pool of gasoline is iconic so many action movies to the point of becoming cliche. Maybe the Hollywood did more damage to the world than what the explosion caused.
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