5.5 trillion cigarettes. 6 million deaths. Countless more devastated. And just one year for it all to happen. This is a taste of the grief and misery smoking can bring. Smoking, the bane of the human body, isn’t helping anyone. It’s knocking down the walls of achievement by killing off people like a third world war. Smokers days are riddled with deadly ailments and terrible symptoms. Smoke, ash and fumes, stain our society. Minds are killed along with dreams, inventions and personalities. Bodies are blackened with soot and ash. Families become short one member, and sometimes more. “One thousand Americans stop smoking a day - by dying”. That is the cold hard truth, and that is the only thing you need to inhale.

Seductive and addictive, smoking can very easily ensnare you. It is hard to quit once you start and that is why it is one of the most infamous killers on the planet. It is enjoyable and at first, you don’t even notice that your health is going down. Then the symptoms kick in. You start feeling worse than usual. Your teeth yellow. You become short of breath and your voice becomes hoarse. You are paying for your addiction. This can change though. Quitting is very possible. Just listen to Kelly, a fifty-two year old office manager, who quit smoking. “I quit by using a combination of Zyban and a nicotine patch. Zyban is an antidepressant that has been found to curb cigarette cravings. I took the Zyban for one week before my official quit date, which was the day I threw out the cigarettes and slapped on the patch. My quit day was a Monday and by Sunday, when I was smoking my last cigarette, I was already losing my taste for them. On Monday, I added the patch. The brand I was using came in three levels; I started with the highest level, which I wore for one month, then moved to the intermediate for another month, and the weakest for the last month. By the end of three months, I removed the patch, quit taking the Zyban, and turned 50-as a non smoker. That was two and a half years ago.” She is over fifty, has quit and is looking forward to a smoke free life.

There are reasons why smoking is bad beyond statistics, facts and scientific theories. There is a cold truth that is experience, loss and realization. It shouldn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t have to be like a young boy of 7 who lost his father because he smoked. The father, a smoker since thirteen, had lived all his life with smoking. He was a funny, mellow and happy man with a wife and kids. He lasted 43 years before the smoke took its toll. He started feeling pain. worsening each day. His family insisted on getting a doctor but he refused. He battled with the cancer that his addiction had given him, but it was useless.

He died at age 43.

His family is left devastated. They are incomplete and empty without him.

All it took was a couple of cigarettes to start the addiction that killed him and destroyed a happy family.

Smoking can take it’s toll in many ways. The biggest problem with smoking is cancer. Cancer is common among smokers. You can get many different types of cancer from smoking, lung, throat and many more; basically wherever smoke goes through you can get cancer. Cancer is very bad as it is extremely hard to cure and even prevent from killing you. Cancer isn’t even the only thing though, symptoms can be just as uncomfortable if not as deadly. Insomnia, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, hunger and many more will plague your days as a smoker. It’s not going to be fun. Additionally, you will waste lots of money battling your symptoms with various medicines. This is a no-win situation. Do you want to spend time and money battling symptoms? Do you want to sacrifice comfort for a rolled up bunch of dead plant? Do you really want to be miserable? Well thats what you get when you stick with smoking.

Smoking is a choice. It’s not an easy one because there are exceptions and rare cases but at it’s core there are two roads to go down: the path of the non-smoker, the right the choice, the choice that you will be happy you made or the path of the smoker: a cold, hard and nasty path filled with ash and life-sucking abyss. The way I see it, its a no-brainer. Don’t smoke and you won’t end up like so many smokers: dying. Don’t end up like that man who died at age 43 and left his seven year old son to grow up without his father.