Are a Lot of Teens Smoking?

The simple answer is yes, among teens, a lot of them are smoking. There is nothing new or shocking about this as a trend. Hell, even my mother had a smoking room at her high school. She was 17, and she used to light up with the other kids. And it was legal, too!

Tobacco companies know that people don’t fully realize or care about the dangers of smoking until they get older. So, they naturally target children. www.QuitSmokingBro.com has a good article about this subject.

It’s statistically true that smokers begin smoking around the age of 18. So, when did they have their first cigarette? Well, having a first cigarette is easier than pie. I smoked my first puff when I was around 9 or 10 years old. It was in the back alleyway of my friend’s apartment building. It’s just really easy to pick up someone’s old cigarette butt – many of them are still practically half of a cigarette – and light up.

The percentage of smokers that begin smoking later in life is extremely low. Adults just aren’t stupid enough to pick up a habit that might as well be called “slow suicide.” Nobody wants to run around wheezing and coughing and smelling like crap just for a vague high. For some reason this stuff appeals to teens, though, and a lot of them are smoking.

And that’s all cigarette smoking is – a vague high and something to pass the time. And when you quit, you really feel like crap. On top of that, your brain keeps on telling you to smoke for the rest of your life after you start.

Well, adults have heard all the stories and know better. Some people just aren’t really adults yet, though, and they pick up a pack of smokes and think, “None of that bad stuff is going to happen to me.”

But statistically, the bad stuff will happen. You basically have a 50% chance of getting some horrible disease, and a 50% chance of getting a less horrible disease. Most smokers don’t even realize that one or more of their diseases is related to their habits. For instance, a bad back could be related to smoking. The possibilities are endless, since tar gets all around the body via the bloodstream.

Something certainly is appealing about cigarettes among teens. I myself was just intensely curious when I was younger. They say kids whose parents smoke are very likely to start smoking, and mine certainly both smoked. I guess I was predisposed. Society doesn’t always educate children about the dangers of smoking well enough, and that’s another reason that a lot of teens are smoking. I know that I barely had any anti-smoking education in school. They told me not to smoke crack, but barely touched on the subject of legal killers like cigarettes.