Emptying the Ashtray

Roberto Hernandez, Staff Writer

Sitting and waiting at a bus stop isn’t very enjoyable. At least you can go on your phone and listen to music to pass the time. But wait, what’s that smell? Great, it’s someone smoking. Now you don’t just wait for your bus, bored out of your mind, but now you get to inhale smoke that can possibly kill you.

To begin with, the smell of smoke isn’t ever pleasurable regardless if you’re at the park, movie theater, bus stop, etc. It isn’t something you want to smell, period. Fortunately, we may be the last generation to deal with this issue as we can put out the conflict of cigarettes for good.

To start off with, cigarettes are virtually little poison rolls that you put into your body. Once someone takes that first hit, they are practically signing a contract due to how addictive nicotine can be. What makes matters worse is the fact of how deadly it is. Considering it can lead to a variety of heart and lung problems, along with the grim reaper itself, lung cancer, it doesn’t make sense why someone would still do it.

Cigarette smoking is to blame for over 160,000 deaths in the U.S for a single year.

That’s more people than the entire population of Carson along with other cities around the nation. Smoking cigarettes isn’t just suicide to the user, but also murder to those that receive the secondhand smoke. Yet, despite all of its fallbacks, people still smoke. This makes absolutely no sense. There is nothing cool about it. There is nothing healthy about it. There is nothing you can get done with it. There is nothing you can possibly gain, other than a pair of horribly damaged lungs and people offering you tic-tacs for your breath.

Luckily, though, the amount of teen smokers has diminished drastically over the last decade to 7%. One of the main anti-smoking campaigns promote the tag of #truth.

The organization has become extremely influential over the last several years due to its barrage of comical and intriguing commercials attempting to expose big tobacco companies.

One of their more popular ads consists of a series of cat and dog videos explaining how smoking can kill pets as well.

People need to know the truth about big tobacco companies and how dangerous it really is to use their product. The only way we’re going to fully solve this issue is by working together. We can be the generation that takes a step back and doesn’t light up the smoke.