Understanding The Tremendous Cost Of A Smoking Habit
Do not think in purely monetary terms when trying to figure the tremendous cost of a smoking habit. The initial purchase price of enough cigarettes to create a full fledged habit is small compared to the price paid in ill health, loss of life, and harmful effects on others.
Tremendous is a good word choice, because smoking has severe consequences. However, let’s start with the fact that, while the economy and job security have both gone down, the price of cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, and chewing tobacco have gone up. It is hard for those who do not smoke to see why anyone would pay good money for a bad habit. Unfortunately, common sense does not help much with this compulsive habit.
The smokers puts their money down for fragrant white tickets to the high risk seats, where they can play the odds with congestive heart disease, heart attack, stroke, emphysema, and cancer. Like all those with a compulsive gambling problem, the fact that the odds are stacked against them means nothing compared to the satisfaction of the next smoke.
Other forms of tobacco are no safer. Young men think chewing tobacco is cool, then become addicted and can’t stop when they are old enough to know that cool does not come in a can. Later, they may pay the unthinkable price of losing part of their face to mouth cancer. Cigars, with the traditional savoring of the smoke by holding it in the mouth as long as possible, are just as risky.
Long before the first sign of serious disease, the health of habitual smokers has declined. Cigarette addicts find that they are too short of breath to climb the stairs or walk for exercise, that they are nervous and irritable without their ‘fix’, and that they smell funky and have bad breath. Very attractive.
Individuals that do not smoke themselves can be harmed by ‘second hand smoke’ from the burning tobacco of others. Research on this danger has resulted in laws that set no smoking standards for restaurants and public places. The effects of breathing smoke polluted air are especially harmful for children who share enclosed spaces like rooms or cars. Smoking by adults sets a terrible example for children, too.
Remember the shock when Michael Landon got cancer? The world grieved as he wasted away and finally left his wife and young children behind. Friends from his earlier days remembered his compulsive smoking. This scenario is echoed daily in many places, as the ones left alone mourn the ones lost to the consequences of this deadly habit.
It is not only health that is sacrificed. Peace of mind is lost as well. Kicking the nicotine habit is so hard and unpleasant that many people just cannot succeed. After trying the patch, and the gum, and gaining forty pounds, they begin to bum smokes off their friends and soon feel so guilty about that that they once again start buying their own. For some, even a sincere wish to stop, the pleas of their families, the advice of their doctors, the rising premiums on their life insurance, and even prayer or hypnosis cannot help them quit.
The tremendous cost of a smoking habit involves everyone around the smoker, who puts money, health, and life itself on the line.
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