Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Smoking is a disease causing, habit forming; influential thinking that is affecting people all over the world. Diseases that smoking forms are fatal and effect more then just the smoker. Smoking kills 1 in 5 people every year. 80% of adult smokers started smoking as teenagers. So why do teenagers smoke? To fit in? Peer pressure? Teenagers are exposed to so much smoking at such an influential time in there life it is hard to say no. Smoking is everywhere. It is in magazine advertisements; on movies in T.V. Smoking is a deathly and hard to avoid habit.

Worldwide (100), between 80,000 and 100,000 kids start smoking every day. Some reasons teenagers and younger kids start smoking is to be more sociable, to look more mature showing their independence, and to make their friends more attracted to them. Of these teens who start smoking it is more likely for them to get hooked on cigarettes if; their parents smoke, they have older brothers or sisters who smoke, their parents seem to not mind them smoking, or if they have friends who smoke.

About 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily, and 10 million every minute. The legal smoking age in New Jersey(100) is 19, but placing a legal age limit on cigarettes doesn’t seem to keep teenagers and younger children from smoking. Teenagers who look older get away with convincing sales people that they are old enough to buy cigarettes. Also teenagers ask older friends and siblings, sometimes strangers to buy them cigarettes. There are even laws against smoking within 1,000 feet of schools, yet teenagers still smoke near the schools. The consequences of smoking within 1,000 feet of schools are $250 tickets, and punishment through the school.

So why do teenagers still smoke with all of these punishments and fines? The (100) younger someone starts smoking, the harder it gets to quit. Over 70% of current smokers say they want to give up smoking, and about half have actually made the serious...