Should cigarettes no longer be sold?
By Justine Dziadkowiec

Smoking makes you cough, go dizzy, and smell like anashtray. Those are only few of the reasons why I think cigarettes should no longer be sold. Cigarettes have very bad outcomes like different types of illnesses and even possibly death. Nationwide, 20% of high school students are smokers and 10,000 to 80,000 teens are picking up smoking each day. Every year 443,000 people die in the U.S. from cigarette smoke. This is why I strongly believe that cigarettes should not be available in stores. I feel that smoking causes negative consequences, and therefore I will never want to smoke.

Cigarettes should no longer be sold because people could get sick from cigarette smoking and die. 87% of lung cancer is caused by cigarette smoke. Smoking is also a major cause of heart disease, cancer, bronchitis, emphysema, and strokes. It is my belief that smoking is very bad for your health. One out of every 5 deaths is related to cigarette smoking. It affects your blood, skin, lungs, and sense of taste and smell. Cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined.

Another reason why cigarettes should no longer be sold is second hand smoke. Second hand smoking occurs when you’re around someone that smokes and you don’t. You breathe in the same air as they do, which is contaminated by their smoke. This is unfair to people that work in some kind of environment where smoking is allowed because they can’t earn their paycheck without risking their health. Parents who smoke are putting their children at risk. The child does not have any say in the matter. Second hand smoking causes nonsmokers to have bad health. Smoking does not only kill smokers themselves, but people around them that they love.

Besides the fact that smoking is very bad for your health and could kill you, it is also very pricey. When you become diagnosed with any of the diseases smoking causes, you have to pay doctors and hospitals for their treatments. All of this could have been avoided if cigarettes weren’t being sold. Not only do you have to pay hospital and doctor bills, but you also have to pay for your cigarettes. $82 billion dollars were spent on cigarettes in the United States in 2006. I don’t understand why people would pay so much money to buy something that only shortens their life.

It is my hope to get people to stop selling and buying cigarettes because cigarette smoking can cause serious sicknesses and possibly even death. Second hand smoking is also a big problem because it can cause a lot of the same things smokers could get. If the government doesn’t stop the sale of cigarettes right now, then more and more people are going to become exposed to smoke and there will be more deaths. Why are cigarettes still being sold if they are so harmful?