When are people going to learn that smoking causes nothing but long-term pain?

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Carli Troutman, Entertainment editor, Ad manager

Smoking is one of the worst decisions a teenager can make. No benefit or advantage comes from what smoking can give someone. In any case, smoking can and will never lead a teenager in the right direction.

Recently I noticed the smoking trend rise because of image. People somehow think that smoking can make you look cool or trendy, and that is one of the biggest lies I have ever heard. Smoking does nothing for your body or image in a positive way. All smoking can do is ruin your health and kill you a lot faster than the people around you.

The thought of even picking up a cigarette should make people cringe, but for some reason, they think of it as a fashion statement. If smoking is a fashion statement, then yellow teeth, bad breath, wrinkles and failing lungs should also be. Because when someone picks up a cigarette for a smoke, they welcome all of those problems into his or her life.

When I sit and think about all the reasons a person would pick up this awful habit, it all comes down to his or her priorities. What does this person care about? Why on earth have they decided to begin smoking in the first place? Is it to look cool? Relieve stress? Try something new? All of those excuses do not really make sense in the end. Why risk your life for something that does nothing to benefit your or the people around you?

The reasoning behind smoking never weighs more than the price. Putting your life at danger for a simple smoke does not add up. When considering smoking, a person must compromise on a lot of other things in their life.

My family has been hit with a lot of deaths due to the effects smoking has on the body and because of that I have built up a lot of passion against the awful habit.

Seeing people smoke makes me feel sorry for them and their loved ones. I never want people to go through what my family has gone through in the past. The damage that smoking can do is not always visible. Smoking can damage people’s lives who do not even smoke.

The emotional problems a child has when their mother or father dies due to disease caused by smoking never actually heal. I have seen people try to ‘get over’ a death but no one ever ‘gets over’ seeing someone die; they simply learn to live without the person whether they want to or not.