To the Editor:
Re: “Death Wish,” by liv_luv_4eva (Op-Ed, March 8th):
Smoking is a terrible and health concerning habit. It gets people addicted way to easily and over 3,000 children a day smoke there first cigarette. This is a drug yet it is legal and sold all over the place. Even though many people frown upon it there are still millions of smokers and it is to blame for nearly 1 out of 5 deaths in America. People should NOT smoke.
Every day, people die because they made the wrong decision and decided to smoke. Imagine losing a loved one because they chose, whenever it was, to light that one cigarette and put it in their mouth. Imagine having a teenage daughter or son who was smoking. Now imagine them slowly but surely having trouble with exercising and having trouble inhaling and exhaling. Imagine them, later on in life, with a hole in their throat so that they can do the simple act of breathing. Just because they got addicted by that one cigarette it could ruin their entire life. It only takes one.
Smoking not only harms the smoker but it also harms the people that he/she smokes around. If both of a child’s parents smoke then they are twice as likely to become smokers also. Secondhand smoke is almost as bad as smoking and if you smoke in your home or car or around your child in general, they are constantly going to be breathing in the harmful air the cigarette gives off. If you smoke it can continuously harm your child/children.
Cigarettes have tons of disgusting chemicals that you wouldn’t even think of putting into your system. For instance: Tar. When you smoke, tar covers your lungs making it more difficult to breath and causing cancer. If a smoker smoked 20 cigarettes a day then they would have breathed in a full cup of tar in a year. This is why smoker’s lungs are black compared to a healthy non-smoker.
Smoking kills. Over 400,000 deaths occur a year in the United States alone because of smoking related diseases. One out of two lifetime smokers die from cigarettes, half of these deaths will happen when the smoker is middle aged. Heart diseases and strokes are more commonly found in people who smoke then people who don’t smoke.
Even with all these reasons not to smoke, people still do. The best solution in this situation would be to make cigarettes illegal. The problem with this is that so many Americans and people all over the world smoke that it would be completely outrageous how many people would oppose this law. Even though a law will not pass banning smoking, the production of cigarettes should go down but the price should go up. This will mean many smokers won’t be able to afford cigarettes.

Sincerely,
Daniela B.
Fort Collins, Colorado