IDEAS ABOARD: Smoking, the Killer Vice

By JEAN-LOUISE VALDEZ and MARCOANTONIO DELA ROSA

Sin tax on, government warns, TV adds tell...when to stop?

WHAT is the first thing that comes to your mind whenever you hear the word cigarette?

Fun. Stress reliever. Social status indicator.

There are probably a hundred reasons why people smoke. But to many, as seen on packages, cigarette smoking is dangerous to one’s health.

Students comprise a significant percentage of smokers. Many of them save a portion of their daily or weekly allowances so they can buy cigarettes, which prices have skyrocketed after the sin tax bill was implemented.

Yet, they still buy.  

Most students measure a distance not by meters or kilometers anymore but by how many sticks they can consume. When they walk from a jeepney terminal to school, “it’s just two sticks away,” as they say it.

Many students can be seen at the back of school buildings, walking, or standing by common places, smoking their lungs out, oblivious of the dangerous repercussions. 

Some students resort to using e-cigarettes, which range from P1000 to 2000. E-cigarettes use juice, burnt through an electronic gadget to produce smoke. But because of little satisfaction over “juice smoke,” students still crave for the real thing.

Despite knowing smoking’s ill effects, many still continue smoking.

Advertisements, awareness campaigns, and government and private initiated programs have been organized to stop smoking in as early as a student’s life, but to little, if not, totally no avail.

One of the world’s famous writer, John Grisham, wrote a book about smoking, which was few years later put into a movie “Runaway Jury” with Edward Norton and Rachel Weisz.

The setting revolved around a girlfriend and her boyfriend as part of a jury to decide on a law suit between a wife, whose husband died of smoking and the big cigarette companies. The jury ended up deciding in favor of latter.

Even the tobacco companies themselves warn smokers on their own TV advertisements: “Government Warning: Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous To Your Health.”

There could be thousand programs and laws to eliminate smoking but all will be futile if not curbed at a young age.

The best time to stop: now, while still young.

The best people to help one to stop: parents, teachers and yourself.

Away from this killer vice, teenagers will have more rational mind to use when studying, if not contribute to the betterment of the community and the society.

Meanwhile, smoking parents and teachers cannot tell their children not to smoke. Much like how Robin Hood cannot tell children not to steal. 

Perhaps, it is the best time for the government and private sectors to shift their gears and put their focus on the parents and teachers to effect real change and condemn smoking.