Smokers, It's About Time You Cut The Ignorance

An unattractive abundance of sheer filth - Quit it!

There is absolutely nothing healthy about smoking. The smell, the sight and the price of these cancer sticks is off-putting, in fact it's merely a welcome mat on your door-step gladly inviting lung cancer and associated respiratory complications.

Recent legislation has ensured that all tobacco distributors shelve all cigarette packaging in cabinets that disallows all consumers to view the price and branding of each respective cigarette brand. For the most part, it is a bid to formally express the potential harms cigarette smoking can cause by basically locking away to ability to view the good ol' Winnie Blues on the shelves at supermarkets or at service stations.

However, in contrast, the government's highest revenues are extracted from the sales of petroleum and ironically, tobacco (cigarettes). In this sense, the legislation contradicts the government's significant revenue success and realistically isn't an effective bid to attempt to cut smoking rates among Australians. If the government can't make sense of this fiasco and remains greedy and acquisitive, we must do so and take the initiative to diminish smoking rates among Australians ourselves. According to a study conducted by the Cancer Council, 19% of 17 year old boys smoke full time and 17% of 17 year old girls smoke full time as well. Furthermore, in Australia there are over 15'000 deaths caused by smoking related diseases such as respiratory failures, lung cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD).

As an ex-cigarette smoker I can empathize to the difficulty of giving up a habit, it's never easy stopping something immediately that's routine and that concept is, most certainly, reasonable and understandable. But what isn't understandable is the inevitable consequences you're inviting by smoking tobacco. Teenagers, at such young raw ages are mostly naive, vulnerable and susceptible to these potential harms and have this perspective that smoking cigarettes is, in fact in some way 'cool' and do so as a means of fitting in and to avoid discrimination.

Although it is understood to be a strenuous and difficult quest to ever completely ban or abolish smoking, however, by granting teenagers the appropriate knowledge of the potential harms and diseases that smoking tobacco welcomes it ensures that a seed is planted in their minds, further steering them in the right direction toward the future.

I killed my habit of smoking these cancer-sticks by ferociously hurling my packet on the bitumen, gazing disgustingly into the measly stick that controlled my every move and dictated my daily routine. I felt free, I was no longer controlled by such a demon. It took the tragic experience of witnessing the loss of an extremely close family member who was my idol and inspiration, which for the most part, changed my life completely. Ultimately, I witnessed my fate, it was me laying remorsefully on my death bed, yearning for the past wishing I had of listened to those who cared for my health and well-being. But now, I understand that it is just simply too late.

Unfortunately, it took the emotional distress that this tragedy inflicted to realize the absurdity of cigarette smoking. In addition, after viewing my predetermined destiny, I now live a smoke-free life and so should you. Think of your family, could they deal with your departure out of their lives? Could they cope with the overwhelming burden that your death would promise?

By smoking cigarettes you're not only harming your individual health, but you're more importantly, betraying your family. If you're a smoker in the modern era be ashamed, today it's selfish, egotistic and narrow-minded to continue to do such an ignorant thing. It's not too late to bring your life back, abolish the habit now or you'll be prematurely welcoming death.