Teen Smoking

Reference: Shereevedic (2010, Dec.31). Teen Smoking Articlesbase.com. Retrieved on Feb 12,2011 from " http://www.articlesbase.com/wellness-articles/teen-smoking-3947083.html". Summary: This article discusses teen smoking. And the role of parents in educating their children about smoking and smoking effects. Smoking is one of the main causes of death. In fact, smoking kills around 1,000 people every day. Recent study showed that if people do not start smoking in early age, it is more likely that they will never smoke later. Moreover, other study showed that around 90% of people who died because of smoking related diseases started smoking when they were young. Most of teenagers know that smoking could kill them if they become addicted to it. Normally teenagers start smoking because of several reasons like, stress, peer pressure, smoking friends.  It is clear that smoking has a lot of dangerous effects for our health. There are two categories of these effects, which are long-term effects, and short-term effects. Lung cancer and heart disease are the most obvious long-term causes of death. There are several short-term effects of smoking; for example, bad skin, bad breath, bad smelling cloths, increasing chances of health problems, and reduced athletic performance. According to the author, Nicotine is a very powerful and addictive drug. In fact, a study shows that teenagers who smoke are 3 times more likely to use alcohols, 8 times more likely to smoke marijuana, and 22 times more likely to use cocaine. According to American Cancer Association, teenagers who smoke are more likely to get in fights, carry weapons, attempt suicide, depressed, and get poor academic performance. Parents can play a major role to educating their children. They should live up to their children’s expectations to be a good model because a study shows that only 2% of the smokers have non-smoking parents. Parents are responsible to educate their children that they do not have to smoke to be mature. However, they should know that there are strict rules in home rejecting smoking. Parents are responsible to enhance their children self-esteem, felling of independency. They have to encourage their children to do physical exercise in school, and educate them how to cope with stress, worries, and social pressure. Also parents are responsible to teach their children how to make friends and how to solve their problems independently. Reaction: I agree with the author in almost all points specially when he said “good parenting is the best way to prevent teenage smoking” that teenagers need good parents who teach them, guide them, and help them to overcome their issues especially during their teenage period. In this article it shows that only two percent of smokers have parents who don’t smoke. This shows how is the relationship between good smoking parents and their effect on their children’s smoking habits. For example, I counted my friends who are smokers, and I found that all of them they have smoking father. On the other hand, there are some of my friends who are non-smokers they have non-smokers parents. It becomes a fact that smoking parents produce smoking children. On the other hand, I disagree with him in two points, first, when he says, “Nicotine is a very powerful and addictive drug”. In my opinion, nicotine is not very powerful drug. In fact, it is not classified as a drug otherwise you will not find it in the supermarkets, and all smokers can buy it easily. Second point is when he says “teen smokers are more likely than their non-smoking peers to get in fights, carry weapons, attempt suicide, and suffer from mental health problems such as depression and to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors. Other risks include poor academic and athletic performance, school drop-out rates, pregnancy, stealing and other delinquent behaviors”. I think this is not true because it seems that he is talking about drugs not smoking. Smoking does not produce these types of mental problem as far as I know because I am a smoker and nothing applies to me nor applies to my friends who smoke.