From endlessly dug up roads to crime to lack of basic necessities such as electricity and water, there is an increasing number of reasons due to which Pakistanis are frustrated, in general. Smoking is also one key reason for the same. Indeed, many people are lured by peer pressure to start smoking. They are made to feel by their classmate, colleagues and friends that it’s cool to sport a ‘cigarette from your mouth.’ As a direct result of such pressure it is estimated that 90 % of smokers take their first drag before the age of fifteen
Moreover, your friends might tell you that all the health warnings are just nonsense and their great grand papa has been smoking since pre-partition without any side effects.
Please don’t let such people fool you or force you into doing something that is extremely harmful for your health.
Smoking is a dirty and dangerous habit that in the long run can and almost certainly would hurt you and simply thinking that you are ‘too young or two old to worry about side effects’ is not going to change the fact that they will affect you and not just in later life but almost as soon as you take up smoking. Here is how:
o Bad smell
Smokers emit a foul smell every time they light up a smoke. In fact, the more they do so, the more the smell clings to them and all the change of clothes and showers is not going to make it go away. And let’s face it, not many people will want to be friends with someone who smells of stale smoke all the time!
o Yellow nails and teeth
Smokers often have various different brands of toothpastes and toothbrushes for a reason. The smoke stains the pearly whiteness of the teeth into a dull yellow colour and does the same for your fingers as well.
o Expenses
Smoking is an expensive hobby. If you are like one of the mindless millions who have to earn a living thorough the daily grind of 9 to 6 job six days a week than there is no way you can manage to do the same while literally blowing your salary in smoke. (No pun intended). Just think, this money can be put to so many productive uses, from buying the baby’s milk all the way to investing it in different mutual funds and securities.
o Quality vs quantity
As a rule, the better-quality smokes are for more expensive than their low-quality counterparts. Starting all the way to the most noxious of them all such as “Babu Biri” to Marlboro hard. Then we have K2 and Belga et el. If course where money is a problem than quality will be sacrificed over quantity and you will cough yourself to an early grave all the quickly.
o Smoking is a gateway to many different addictions
Peer pressure or evening living pressure is often not an easy thing to resist, and once you go that way the chances are many of your so-called well-wishers would want to ‘experiment’ even further, with alcohol, cannabis hash, all the way to that terrible drug, heroin. And climbing out of that hole is not going to be easy at all, unless of course you refuse to take that first positive step.
o Difficulty in breathing
Smoking robs you of your natural stamina and energy. You will find huffing and puffing in the first quarter of a cricket match when you used to be an all-rounder easily enough.
o The big “C”!
Irrespective of what your friends and office colleagues say, the warning labels and graphic pictures on cigarette packs have been put there for a reason. Smoking does cause both lung and mouth cancer and that dread disease is one of the most difficult to recover from, amongst all the illnesses in the world.
o Addiction
The nicotine in cigarettes creates its very own addiction thanks to its narcotic properties. In fact, the more you smoke, the more difficult it is to quit. In fact, the odds are there will come a time in your life when you would be desperate to quit but would not know how to go about it, so intense would be the nicotine cravings.
The only way of dealing with people who want you to smoke is a resounding “NO”. Period… full stop! Remember, if they really like you they would not want to force you into doing something that is so harmful to your health. Stay away from such people as much as possible.
