Why should you quit smoking? Ah let me count the ways. Perhaps the better question by far is why in hell wouldn’t you quit smoking?
Lung cancer directly caused by smoking surpassed all other causes of death in the 1950’s and has been (though having slowly declined from that peak) ever since. And this is just talking about death. Morbidity (not mortality) caused by smoking is a 60 billion dollar industry in direct costs associated with the health care needed for smokers. That is one heck of a lot of misery! This figure doesn’t even count all of the indirect costs including loss of man hours both related to smoking breaks and sick days as well as shorter life spans with more time spent on disability. Indirect costs also include the health of the people that live with the person that smokes who have statistically speaking several times more use of healthcare dollars than the average non-smoker living in a non-smoking environment. So yeah, the better question is why shouldn’t you quit smoking?
You say well your right I should quit and I have tried several times and I cannot do it. You don’t even know how hard it is to quit smoking. And my reply is for one thing you are right and I’m glad I don’t know how hard it is to stop smoking, because I’m sure that its hard after watching people struggle with it. I would also say however that giving up is not the answer and for several reasons.
For one thing haven’t you heard the phrase “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”? This is a natural part of life to have to fight for the things in life that are really worth something. You don’t just give up on something, especially if what you are straining for will kill you if you give up, literally! Would you tell your son or daughter to just give up the fight if they had leukemia because it was going to be hard? No way, and so you can’t either.
You also want to say something but I and my body want it so bad and like it so much. And I would agree, addiction is for sure the worst part of the whole thing and makes it hardest to make a good decision to quit smoking. However it still isn’t an excuse for several reasons. It still for one thing is a life and death matter. For another, are you going to let those tobacco companies who targeted you and got you addicted on purpose get away with doing that to you? And third many have done it before you and there are good programs that help you to quit smoking. So you’ve got some thinking to do and some decisions to make. I ask you to choose life!
