By Fallon

This is mostly about my personal feelings on smoking and the world around us. I grew up around smoke, both of my parents smoked and still do.. but I do not. Sure I experienced it, but nothing really serious.. and I am glad that I was not influenced enough by them to be a smoker today. I find smoking one of the most disgusting habits that you could possibly have in this day and time.

Furthermore, I look around today and see kids as young as 16 smoking and I wonder, where in the world are their parents? They couldn’t possibly be so oblivious as to not notice or to not smell it. Either they really do care that little or just don’t want to bother with discipline. If a 16 year old child is living at home I believe the parents have all the say in the world about whether the child smokes or not, not for control issues but because they love the child for crying out loud. When a child smokes it isn’t because “oh i’m stressed blah blah blah” if they aren’t addicted yet it isn’t stress relieving. Kids smoke because of peer pressure, plain and simple. A parent needs to be there for them and help them get over this, possibly remove the friends whom are being influential.

I don’t think it would be very lovely to watch your own child pass away, or watch them go through an illness triggered by smoking.  Whether they are rebellious or not now, they would thank their parent in the future when they are a non smoker and see their sick friends around them. With smoking, it isn’t a “maybe” when it comes to illness, it is just a matter of when. Whether it is lung cancer, emphysema, bronchitis, heart problems.. it does happen. Those are only a few of the many, many more illnesses you can get.

If your child is not thanking you for looking after them and for being a non smoker then maybe they fall into the other category and are highly disappointed in you now that none of the patches that they buy seem to satisfy their nicotine addiction. How can anyone pay a company  to make their child die faster. This topic just really bothers me and I needed to reflect on it. The only other worse thing, is parents smoking around their children and actually being the one to expose them to the smoke. *sigh*