Persuasive Essay on Smoking Should Be Banned

I want you to think to yourself for 1 minute and answer this question.Why is smoking bad? You can name a number of reasons including cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, and diabetes. Smoking is one of the biggest health concerns in society today and without smoking a huge amount of money and lives will be saved. You can find cigarettes at every gas station and convenience store you go to and in total Americans spend an average of 80 billion dollars on cigarettes a year. Smoking is one of the leading causes of death in the world today and what amazes me is that people know the risk of smoking but they still choose to do it anyway. Banning cigarettes will be a very difficult thing to but I'm going to tell you why cigarettes should be banned and how it affects the world today and hopefully you take this into consideration

Most people start smoking during teenage years or as young adults. Teens experience peer pressure from other friends to these things and some people do it to act “cool”. Many current smokers say they're not addicted but can't even go 1 day without smoking because of the addictive chemicals they are putting inside of their body. Smoking young can cause many health problems and can lead to respiratory illnesses, decreased physical fitness and potential effects on lung growth and function. There are about 480,000 deaths from smoking a year in the United States and  smoking causes one out of five of the deaths in America. Smokers have a 3 times higher rate from dying than non smokers and 5.6 million of these smokers are under 18. It has been proven from the CDC that smokers can die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.Parents can have an influence kids to smoke because when kids see their parents smoking at a young age they feel like it's okay for them to do it too.

Smoking is also one of the big causes of pollution and causing damage to the environment. There has been over 948,327 pounds of chemicals released into the air from tobacco companies,over 600 million trees that have been chopped down each year by tobacco companies, and 2.7 million tons of consumer electronic waste (vapes) that have ended up in landfills. It's not also just cigarettes but also vapes causing pollution and also affecting kids.From 2014-2020 cigarette sales have increased by 122.2%.Vapes and e-cigarette cartridges are are single-use products that contain plastic, electronic and chemical waste and many of them may also end up as litter. According to the CDC vapes are mostly used by middle school and high school students and it's reported that 38.9% of high school have used a vape before and 20% of middle school students have also used a vape. By banning these products and shutting down tobacco and e-vape companies these numbers can be cut by about 75 percent. 

If smoking was banned it would reduce heart attacks and diseases by 26 percent a year. This would be a big improvement and this means it could prevent 154,000 heart attacks per year. This is why smoking should be banned and illegal not only to prevent people from literally killing themselves but to also help improve society's ideas on cigarettes and how bad and unhealthy they are. Hopefully you take this idea into consideration and can help change laws and make a few new rules.