Essay, Research Paper: Smoking

English Comp. Essay
How Smoking Affects Your Life and People Around You

I have watched a man try to convince me he’s not a smoker, as he holds a cigarette in his
hand. People come up with many intricate and clever excuses to assure themselves, as well as
others, that they are not smokers. Whether you decide to call it “Social smoking”, or try to label
yourself solely as a “Party smoker”, you are a smoker. A few of my friends only have a cigarette
or two at a party, or with a drink. The rest of the smokers I know confess to their habit, but see it
as being far from harmful. People that decide to follow this habit, don’t grasp the actuality that it
is very dangerous to their health. As well, they have no idea that it is also threatening to the
people around them such as friends and family. Cigarettes, whether you smoke twenty a day or
only two, will dramatically affect your life in ways you’d never suspect.
Smoking has definitely affected my life, and now at the age of seventeen, I can recognize
all the changes. My older sister, the person whom I looked up to the most growing up, is a
smoker. At the age of twenty-one, my sister has been smoking for a steady six years, starting at
the age of sixteen. At that age, I was only 13 and was well informed that she had started
smoking. I began to notice that her clothes started to smell of smoke and that she would
constantly be spraying herself with perfume. I also noticed that her teeth were beginning to reveal
a pale yellow color. Having my own sister transform into a smoker came as a big shock to me,
and I vowed to myself that smoking would never become a part of my life. Not only was I
wrong, I had no idea what was in store for me.
As the years went by, my sister’s smoking habit no longer came as a shock to me, but the
addiction was still crude. As I turned 15, I started to notice that one of my good friends had
started to smoke. I was in utter disappointment, and I spend countless hours trying to persuade
her into quitting. Trying another method, I spend days collecting facts and statistics about the
dangers of smoking to further try to pry her from the nicotine fixation. Nothing seemed to work,
and so I gave up, with the frustration that I let one of my friends fall into the addiction, not
knowing what they were getting into. One by one, I started to see quite a few of the people
around me become smokers. My friends were smoking, my teachers were smoking, my relatives,
and even my mother started to smoke. Slowly, the need to prevent their dependency on cigarettes
lessened, and I came to be comfortable with it. This, I feel, will affect my life later on, when I
have children of my own. Because I am comfortable with smoking at my age, I only wonder if I
will be strict enough to my own children on smoking. Now, although I came to accept everyone’s
habit, I never felt the need to start smoking, or to even try it. Curiosity never managed to
overpower me and so to this day, I have never put my lips to a cigarette.
Even though I don’t smoke, I can honestly say that smoking is still a part of my life,
because the people around me smoke. I know that almost everyone that smokes has no idea what
is happening to their body. People don’t know the minuscule effects of smoking like how the cilia
in their throat shrivel up and die, or how sperm become damaged and reproduce, carrying the
disorder to the next sperm. Only days of smoking can negatively affect your system, and once
years have passed, smokers rarely think about the greater dangers such as lung cancer, skin
cancer, and birth defects. Although I don’t smoke, I still am aware of these dangers and I try to
keep myself away from situations where I am surrounded by smoke. The majority of people don’t
know that breathing in second hand smoke is actually worse than smoking a cigarette.
People who are constantly surrounded by smokers in places like bars and restaurants will
be affected by the smoke they breathe in. People assume that inhaling the smoke straight from the
cigarette must be worse than second hand smoke, but they forget that the smoker has a filter
which holds back some of the toxins that people around them can easily breathe in. Smoking
lessens your stamina, reduces your endurance and strength, diminishes your health, and at the
same time deteriorates your organs as well as your nervous system.
People that smoke usually say that smoking reduces their stress, and calms them down.
They don’t know that smoking is probably causing their stress, and the nicotine addiction is only
adding to it. The toxins that are released into your body when smoking, confuse your brain. The
chemicals react with your own and you begin to lose your appetite, when you really are hungry.
Your body forgets to remind you that you need a certain amount of proteins, starches,
carbohydrates, and vitamins every day to have a healthy life. This is when you start to lose
weight, and the nicotine addiction becomes stronger.
As you can see, smoking can influence your life in ways you never assumed. A smoker’s
habit affects not only them, but also the lives of others around them. Next time you see someone
you know that wants to start smoking, fill them in on the dangers they’re about to get themselves
into. Most probably, they won’t know how bad the habit really is, and as well as caring for their
health, you’re protecting yours.



Word Count: 987