Student Smokers Should know More About Smoking

It’s been almost two years since smoking was prohibited in Michigan bars, restaurants and businesses, so I would think that my encounters with smokers would have decreased. Yet, here on MSU’s campus, I still come in contact with the effects of smoking on a daily basis. In my opinion, college campuses should be some of the least likely places to find smokers because this generation should be well aware of the health risks associated with it. Now, student smoking does have its personal effects on me. For starters, my day is ruined when I have to sit next to someone who has just been smoking for a two-hour lecture. And don’t even get me started on when I get behind a smoker and have to inhale secondhand smoke all the way to my next class. But the real issue here isn’t the unpleasantness it causes me. It’s the fact that I come from a generation of people who have been smothered with facts about just how horrible smoking is for one’s health and yet they still choose to slowly kill themselves by smoking. Students should know smoking causes cancer, heart disease, chronic respiratory diseases and premature death. But somehow, while adult smoking rates decline, adolescent smoking rates have increased in the past decade, according to the World Health Organization. And even if students don’t mind the health risks which accompany smoking, the money a student would save by quitting should be enough to make them want to put down their cigarette immediately. Assuming a pack of Marlboro Cigarettes costs 6.50, if someone who smokes a pack a day saved their money instead, they would have around $2300 by the end of the year. So let’s say an MSU student made it their New Year’s Resolution to quit. By Christmas, they could buy a brand new 80” LED TV, a MacBook Pro, even a used car. If that’s not enough to make someone quit, then I don’t know what is. With that information, and all the other statistics out there about just how awful smoking is for one’s health, I’d say I’m pretty ashamed to belong to a generation that doesn’t realize the amount of wrongdoing and abuse they’re inflicting upon themselves.