Joshua entered his school's creative writing contest. He entered in the Persuasive Essay category. We were so excited for him when he won for his class. Tonight he was awarded first place for Persuasive Essays in all of the 4th Grade.
Way to Go Josh! Congratulations!
The Evils of Smoking
I believe people should not smoke for many different reasons. When I am around people that are smoking, my stomach hurts and my nose itches. I also plug my nose. I really dislike it when people smoke. I am going to list four reasons that smoking is bad.
The first reason smoking is bad for people is that smoking can cause many different types of cancers: kidney cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, nose cancer, larynx cancer, esophageal cancer, pancreatic cancer, bladder cancer, and leukemia. Over 400,000 people die in the United States every year because of diseases caused by smoking. If a person thinks about that, over the past ten years about 4 million people have died because of smoking.
Secondly, smoking is also bad for the environment. When people breathe out the smoke, it pollutes the air. Sometimes people are careless and throw cigarettes and cigars out the window of a car into a forest or a road. I once saw a movie called Pippi Longstocking. In the movie, a random guy burned down a children's home because he was careless with a cigarette.
Third, smoking causes health problems for smokers. For one of my sister's birthdays, she went to a body museum and saw a person's lungs that had smoked. They were charcoal black. In my research, I learned that consistent smokers get sick more often and sometimes die ten years earlier than nonsmokers. Smoking can also cause cataracts which make people not be able to see clearly and can even make them go blind. Also, arteries become blocked and can cause gangrene. Smoking can lead to hearing loss too.
The fourth reason smoking is bad is that even second-hand smoke is harmful. Second-hand smoke is toxic and especially dangerous to children. Second-hand smoke is smoke that is inhaled by someone nearby a person who is smoking. This person may be a child. By age five, a child living with a smoker has consumed the equivalent smoke of 102 packs of cigarettes. This can cause many problems for the child including, difficulty breathing, more ear infections, more pneumonia and bronchitis, coughing and asthma and even SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
Beware of the evils of smoking. I have listed several evils of smoking that can be harmful to you and to those you love. I hope someday people will realize all of the evils of smoking and stop. Be smart, save yourself, and don't start. For free help on how to stop smoking you can contact www.ashline.org/help.
**Special thanks to Laurie Thomas, Maricopa County Public Health Department, for the information and statistics.**
