Neese 3
Kameron Neese
Mr. Scheck
English 101
6 March 2018
Smoking
One of the most common harm that is killing people all over the world is smoking. People start this habit of smoking because of social, personal, and economic reasons (Jarvis). Everyone knows that smoking can have some horrible short and long-term effects of cancer and heart disease, but people still continue to smoke pack after pack. The main cause of this is from addiction. Addiction is the fact or condition of being addicted to a certain substance or thing. The best way to break this thing called addiction is to focus on the root of the problem: the causes of smoking
A main cause of smoking at an early age would be in the social aspect of today’s society. The first stages of smoking begin in the experimental stage. In the article, Why People Start Smoking and Why It’s Hard to Stop, it says “Studies show that smoking is most likely to become a habit during the teen years. The younger you are when you begin to smoke, the more likely you are to become addicted to nicotine.” Typically, one would start to see a very small group of teenagers begin to test this new thing that they have been exposed to. Then eventually, the group of teenage smokers would gradually increase. This is one form or peer pressure found in teenagers. Peer pressure is an influence from one’s friend group to do something they were less likely to try if they were not around that certain friend group. This influencing does not have to be as direct in some cases. Sometimes teens may not be approached by a friend saying, “Hey, try this.” Cultural influence is also another form of pressure to start smoking. People may see their favorite singer, actor, or even just the popular guy in school start smoking. This then creates a thought to go through that persons head that if they start smoking maybe they could be that “cool” (Why Do People Start Smoking? Top 10 Reasons).
A person is more likely to start smoking if they have someone at home that is already doing it. On the other hand, if a person’s family keeps pushing them to not smoke; of course one would become curious about smoking. Using family to determine who is going to get sick sooner or later from smoking may be hard to determine, but what we can determine is who is going to start smoking, who will give up, and who will continue the tradition (Jarvis). People may see a pattern in families that have a smoking background that the children of smokers want to be better and healthier than their ancestors and change their smoking history. In plenty of other cases, normally the children of smokers continue out their parent’s way of smoking as well. This is found to be true because of the results of second-hand smoking. According to a new study that focused on how fam...
