No More Cigarettes

Essay by mrpepelepuoJunior High, 8th gradeA, October 2014

download word file, 2 pages 0.0

Barnett �

Eddie Barnett

Mrs. Gary

ELAR-5

5 March 2014

No More Cigarettes

Everybody agrees that cigarettes are bad for your health. That is a reason why minors cannot smoke. They are even bad for the environment as a result of all of the production and packaging, even the pesticides used on the tobacco and the smoke that is released, which has over 7,000 chemicals. The sale and production of cigarettes should be banned because they kill more than hundreds of thousands of people annually in the United States alone, and are harmful to all people and not just smokers. Even secondhand smoke causes cancer.

Secondhand smoke, or SHS, is possibly worse than actually smoking a cigarette, because all of the chemicals, seventy of which are cancerous, are being directly inhaled without passing through the filter on the cigarette. Even adults and children who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives can die from SHS, as a result of the diseases caused by it.

They could even get lung cancer. According to www.livescience.com "More than 42,000 people a year die from second hand smoke, including 900 infants" (Christopher Wanjek).

There are too many people dying as a direct result of cigarettes to remain idle. For example, some statistics from the Center of Disease Control, or CDC, state that there are "More than 480,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke)" (www.cdc.gov). Also, that "Life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than nonsmokers" (www.cdc.gov). Tobacco is very deadly. For example, smoking "cigarettes kills more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined" (cancer.org). With six million people dying worldwide each year, the time to act is now.

Not only cigarettes, but all tobacco products cause diseases,