Smoking

I have been a smoker since the young age of 15. I still remember the first time. I was in grade school and all of us "bad" kids were hiding behind a building. One of the people with us, Jenny, had stolen cigs from her mom. The four of us shared our first cigarette. I wanted to throw up; that feelings was just not right in any way. For some reason I wanted to smoke again. Getting the cigarettes was easy because my mom smoked, and i worked at a gas station (the owner would sale cigarettes to me even though i was only 15).

Eventually, by the age of 16, i was hooked. I really do not remember how much i was smoking but that really doesn't matter because the damage was already done. Even though everything in my family history said NO NO RUN DO NOT SMOKE!

1.) My grandma had throat cancer and had a laryngectomy to treat the cancer, because of smoking. The treatment was to remove the "voice box." My grandma had to use one of those things that you place on your throat and she would have to sorta whisper words and this device would "speak" for her, not sure when this all happened because i always remembered her this way. Luckily my grandma lived to be 77 and became a very vocal, no pun intended, proponent for the American Cancer Society. The irony here is that she even visited schools to speak against smoking, my grade school included. She passed away in 04/2007.

2.) Growing up my mom constantly coughed and hacked up "her lungs." she had been smoking at a young age too but she even continued to smoke after what happened to her mom, my grandma. My mom has since quit smoking, she quit about 5 years ago. There are two reasons why she quit that will get to in a sec.

3.) In 2000 my mom started dating a guy, he was also a smoker. They dated for about 8 years. He actually died from lung cancer, again because of smoking. He was diagnosed around 8/2007 with lung cancer.. The craziest thing was everything was "normal" but his cough kept getting worse and then he started coughing up blood. He went to the ER and found out about the cancer. The gave him 6-8 months to live without treatment. He decided against chemotherapy because the treatment might extend his life for a few months. He instead went to a herbal/ natural approach. The "herbal" approach did not work. He died 02/04/2008. He went from being "normal" to withering away in 6 months.

My mom quit between the time her mom died and when her boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer. She used some prescription that came in pill form. She has constantly been on me to quit smoking since she has quit. i have tried to quit smoking numerous times even made it 2 months once but I always go back. Even with so many options to quit i never bother to try them. Smoking is not a cheap habit either between B and myself we spend over $300 a month smoking. Thats a lot of money. Smoking makes us and our home smell horrible. There is nothing good about smoking so why do we keep smoking?

I even feel embarrassed smoking in public. I try to go away from people if smoking by a store. I will not smoke in a restaurant even if the restaurant has a "smoking" section. Then i think off all of those cigarettes smoked in the car and then thrown out the window when I am done smoking. Let's assume i smoke, in the car, 4 cigarettes a day 365 days a year for 15 years that's 21,900 cigarettes thrown out the window over my smoking life. Now think of all the people that throw cigarettes out the window after they smoke we are talking billions of cigarettes littering our world.

Such a horrible habit. Not one good thing comes from smoking except making tobacco companies rich but so many people like me won't/ can't or don't want to quit! For all of the things our government is involved in, all of the things our government controls why not step in here. Of course smoking is a decision made by a smoker but i will say that at the age of 15 I did not have enough mental capability to say yes or no. There were huge law suits against the tobacco companies, there are stronger advertising regulations, higher taxes the list keeps going but obviously these solutions are not stopping people from either continuing or taking up smoking.

I am not one to to put blame on others because typically the path in life we take is one full of choices. We make decisions daily that affect the outcomes of our life. Either way i hate government involvement in corporations but in this case maybe the government should be doing more. Marlboro even released the new 72's a few years back. The 72's are cigarettes in smaller packs. I switched to this brand because they were constantly doing "buy one get one free" when they first came out. I also switched because the cigarettes were smaller/ shorter, seemed like less cigarette meant lease damage, very flawed thinking but the truth. Even though i know there is trickery in advertising especially with tobacco companies i get caught falling for the tricks every time.