Roselle S.

Angus

English 17- BA

The Price Tag of Smoking

Do you know that the life expectancy for 30-to-35 year-olds who smoke two
packs of cigarettes a day is from eight to nine years shorter than for non-smokers?
Puffing on cigarettes also gives a smoker an annual dose of radiation equivalent to
about 300 chest X-rays. It takes 10 to 15 years after one quits smoking before his risk of
dying from the effects of smoking approaches than of a non-smoker.

Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema and may
complicate pregnancy. Smoking also contributes to blockage in the leg arteries with
eventual gangrene of a foot. This condition always requires the amputation of the
affected limb. It’s really sad to see a man with one or both legs gone and still puffing on
a cigarette. There is also an effect in a non-smoker, breathing secondhand smoke from
a neighbor’s cigarette it is called a sidestream smoke (smoke escaping into the air from
a burning cigarette). It has been found that sidestream smoke actually contains three
times more benzopyrene, a cancer-causing chemical found in a cigarette smoke than
the “mainstream” smoke drawn into the lungs of the smoker. Consequently, a non-
smoker who is constantly forced to work or live in a smoky environment faces a definite
risk.

Although some smokers complain that they have the “right to smoke,” the question is:
Do they have a “right” to put at risk by their passive smoke the health of those who
“choose not to smoke?” Hopefully our smoking friends will learn about the dangers of
passive smoke and will be considerate! This entire means is that every smoker is a
gambler. But smoking is a “lottery” in which everyone loses! Smoking carries a
tremendous price tag which no one can afford.