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Smoking: Straight Talk for Teenagers
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Have you ever tried smoking? Maybe a classmate or a barkada who smoke gave you a cigarette. Perhaps you were curious and wanted to " experiment."
Or maybe you thought it would be "cool" because you see a lot of teenagers nowadays puffing at the cafeteria or at the university parking lot. Yet your first puff was probably not pleasant. You coughed and your throat burned. You might have felt sick to your stomach or dizzy as smoked entered your lungs.
These reactions make sense when you consider what cigarette smoke does to your body!
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Smoking is Unattractive YOSI Kadiri! Remember that anti-smoking slogan? Smoking affects what you look like and how people relate to you. Smoking is simply unattractive, contrary to what most people think that smoking is glamorous or sexy. Smoking causes bad breath, bad skin and stained teeth. Smoking often makes other people not want to be around you. Even if you don\rquote t smoke, you may notice a strong odor of cigarettes in your clothes after being near someone who smokes.
Most conservative guys probably would not want to date a girl who smokes. Neither would a conservative girl want to date a guy who smokes. It's simply a big turn off.
Smoking is UnhealthyGovernment General Warning: Smoking is Dangerous to your health.Studies have proven that smoking is harmful to health. Coaches require that athletes not smoke. Smoking reduces the amount of oxygen the bloodstream can deliver to the body. The result is that the athlete who smokes may not be able to swim or run as well as nonsmoking athletes.
The lungs of anyone who smokes do not deliver oxygen as efficiently as do the lungs of most nonsmokers. This is not only harmful to health, but can also result in poor athletic performance.
Nicotine is a harmful substance in tobacco smoke that can cause you to become dizzy and feel sick to your stomach. Not only that, but nicotine causes the heart to beat faster and work less effectively.
Many smokers develop an annoying cough. This is caused by the chemicals in cigarette smoke. These irritating substances damage the tiny hairs (called cilia) that line the lungs and help sweep dirt and waste products out.
Depending on how much you smoke, your lungs become gray and "dirty", instead of pink and healthy. The effects of smoking later on are far worse. The earlier a person starts smoking, the greater the risk of these diseases.
Smokers get cancer. Smokers are more than 10 times as likely to die of lung cancer than nonsmokers.
Smoking doubles the chances of heart disease.
Smoking is the main cause of chronic bronchitis, a serious lung infection, and emphysema, a crippling lung disease.
Smoking by pregnant women increases the risks of premature birth, underweight babies, and infant deaths.
Passive smoking harms nonsmokers. When nonsmokers are around people who smoke, they absorb nicotine, carbon monoxide, and other ingredients of tobacco smoke just as smokers do. People who are subject to passive smoking such as children of parents who smoke, can suffer from a variety of ailments. They are more likely than other people to develop lung infections, heart disease, and cancer.
Smoking is AddictiveAccording to the American Pediatrics Society, it takes only a short time to become addicted to nicotine. If you a re a smoker, you will know you are addicted when you find yourself craving cigarettes and feeling nervous without them. You will really know you are addicted when you try to quit smoking and can't.
Quitting can be hard for addicted smokers, and it can take a long time. Often people must try several times before they succeed. The longer you smoke, the harder it is to stop.
Smoking is ExpensiveThe cost of supporting a pack-a-day smoking habit adds up. It is a vice that eats up a big chunk of a teenager's daily allowance. Because teenagers still depend on their parent's hard earned money to provide them a good education as well as other needs, they would hide their smoking habit by doing it somewhere else. It also costs you a lot in other ways, missing school or work, becoming sick, and having increased medical expenses. That's a high price to pay for something that isn' t good for you in the first place.
Who Smokes?Young people are more likely to smoke if they are living in households where a parent or an older brother or sister smokes. According to a teen drug abuse survey, nearly 90% of smokers start smoking as teenagers. It is important that young people learn what happens to smokers so as to make a healthy choice.
You can QuitQuitting of course is possible. It is a must if you want the best for yourself and those around you. If you ignore warning signals and continue to smoke, your body will change. It will get used to the smoke. You won't cough or feel sick every time you puff on a cigarette. Yet the damage to your body continues and worsens each time you smoke.
In order to quit, you must be strong. Get help from family and friends. Redirect the habit to sports or exercise. Try and try if you don't succeed the first time. Deciding to stop smoking must be abrupt and not gradual as some people suggest.
Be Cool. Don't Smoke.Slick advertisements are designed to encourage people to smoke. They depict attractive women and rugged men. These ads never mention harmful effects such as bad breath, stained teeth, heart disease, and cancer. Nor do they tell you how offensive smoking is to others. As one woman puts it, Kissing a man who smokes is like kissing a dirty ashtray.
So if you haven't tried smoking, don't. If you've already started, stop.
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