Addicted: The High Cost of Cigarette Smoking

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An addiction is the state of being enslaved to a habit, practice, or something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming. There are many forms of addictions but the most common addiction is smoking. According to the American Cancer Society, on average about 45 million Americans currently smoke cigarettes. About twenty three percent are male adults and eighteen percent are female adults. Many smokers do not realize the serious effects of smoking until it is too late. It wasn’t known until the past twenty or thirty years what the harmful effects of smoking were. Many people who smoke started because of peer pressure, the desire to be labeled as “cool”, or just did not have the resources to understand the risks. Whatever the reason is, there are many results that are irreversible. There are several negative effects to smoking cigarettes; there is a high financial cost, it effects one’s own health physically and mentally, and can have serious effects on other people.

There is high financial costs to being a smoker. The MSN Money article on Financial Costs said that to buy one pack of cigarettes costs around seven dollars and each package holds about 20 to 25 cigarettes. So imagine one smoker who smokes around three packages a day; he is spending 21 dollars a day instead of choosing to spend that money for more needy expenses. Many smokers are just the average person who has bills to pay and with the way the economy is headed, many people are out of jobs and since a lot of companies are not hiring smokers it puts them at risk to be financially unstable and the money that they should be saving for more valuable items that are necessary. Due to the fact that many smokers develop physical illnesses, many are required to ge...

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...n smokers die each year from inhaling smoke from someone else’s cigarette.

Smoking has serious and irreversible effects financially, to the smoker personally, and to others around them. The bottom line is that starting to smoke is a bad choice because it will quickly become an addiction with serious consequences. Not only is it hurting the smoker, but innocent people, and our world. Without the environment we as human beings would no longer survive because of the pollution of our planet due to the harmful substances that are in tobacco. There are many resources available for a person to quit and get help, but that person will have to decide for themselves what is most important in life. Smoking can start off as being new, exciting, and adventurous but when it comes to life or death, life is at a much more valuable cost then a pack of cigarettes.

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