SMOKERS KILL

Is smoking a crime? It depends on how you look at it. It depends on how frequent you smoke--how many number of cigarette sticks or packs per day.

Murder is a crime. It depends on how you look at it. But it doesn’t depend on how frequent you kill--how many people, lives you take. When you kill, you kill.

When you smoke, you kill. You are killing yourself. In other words, you die a slow death. I bet you know that, do you? And it doesn’t make you the least bit terrified. You know why? Because you have already accepted that fact, and have set that aside, to a part of your brain where all neglected warnings are kept. For now, it’s “I want to enjoy it as I can” or “I want to enjoy it because I can.”

To add further, have you grasped the idea that when you smoke, maybe you kill the people around you--by shortening their life span? Pragati Khond cited on his article at themedguru.com, a year ago, that “Non-smokers are badly affected by second hand smoke in NYC”, meaning non-smokers are suffering the risks of heart disease and other related illness by breathing in toxic chemicals from smokers.  That alone becomes a moral crime.

Yet, who am I to tell you or lecture you to make you quit? I am no smoker. Sure, I have tried puffing a few sticks before, back in high school when peer pressure was at its peak of influence. I guess it wasn’t the vice for me. But I have bad habits too. You take or do something excessively even when you know its harmful upshots on your body. Bad habits die hard, as the saying implies, and sometimes, it stays long longer than you, surpassing your existence. When you smoke, do you think you don’t encourage others, especially the people closest to you? I see smoking as a part of culture--it’s a very good example of tradition that lives within a family for generations. You are passing on your vice to one or two people in your clan, unintentionally. You don’t tell your kids or nieces to look at the way you puff your cigar or tobacco, but when they grow up, they might be a replica, an imitation of you today.

I read an article today before going to work. The results of a research from the University of Hong Kong, studying 6,519 children who grew up in a household of smokers, that obesity is one of the long term effects of parental smoking. Let me quote the information provided by TIME correspondent Alice Park, “Fathers’ cigarette habits affect children’s obesity via biological mechanisms through second hand exposure.” That would mean twice the effect on them, than it did to you.    

If you think that this blog is about quitting nicotine bars, not yet. Quitting is a gradual process. It takes time and effort, patience and above all, willingness, for you to truly pull away from your dependence to nicotine and cigarette. This is just the beginning. 

Frances Gamboa is a guest journalist for Access RX a facilitator to buy http: http://www.accessrx.com Zyban, to help reduce nicotine withdrawal symptoms and other

http://www.accessrx.com medications.