Cigarettes are a dangerous thing. They have
many negative effects to our lives. It could be our health, financial problems,
environment issues, and other problems.
In Indonesia, cigarettes help the national economy. They give more
chances to our farmers because as we know many people work as farmers. Because
of this, tobacco and cloves, the main ingredients for cigarettes are planted in
our country for. There are some people who disagree with this issue. They say
that because of cigarettes, the jobless people finally have a place to work.
For example, in cigarette factories. Even though they assume that it can help
our economy, there are more serious problems that will occur because of it.
Here are various reasons and problems why cigarettes should be banned in
Indonesia.
Cigarettes
smoking is dangerous for our health; especially our lungs and heart. Cigarettes
consist of nicotine, carbon monoxide and tar which can damage our heart. These
substances are very dangerous. Nicotine is an addictive drug which affects our
brain and muscle activity. Nicotine in cigarettes can make our heart beat
faster because it increases the production of adrenaline in our body and it can
increase the blood pressure which causes heart attacks. Moreover, nicotine is
the substance which is used as a bug killer. The next dangerous substance is
carbon monoxide. It’s a dangerous gas which can replace the oxygen in our
respiratory system. Because of that, if there’s a lot of it, our body will have
a lack of oxygen so we’ll find it hard to breathe and it can make our heart
beat faster. If cigarettes are banned in Indonesia, the Indonesian people will
be healthier.
Implicitly,
cigarettes affect economic issues. We have to spend around Rp.20.000 per pack
of cigarettes. Imagine if we smoke around 1 pack per day? We would have to spend Rp 600.000 per month. Next,
imagine that we have been smoking for two years! How much money would be spent?
It’s around Rp 14.400.000 for two years of smoking. If we quit smoking, we can
save our money and get something we want. If we don’t smoke for a day, we can
treat ourselves to have lunch at a restaurant. If we don’t smoke for a week, we
can save around Rp 140.000 and we can get a new shirt. How about if we don’t smoke
for a month? We will save around Rp 480.000 and a pair of brand-new shoes will
definitely be possible to buy. And how about if we don’t smoke for a year? We
will save around Rp 6.000.000 and we can possibly buy a new iPhone. We could
even buy a new motorbike for the price of smoking for two years!
Another big
cost of cigarette smoking is the cost when we are affected by diseases which caused by smoking. We need to pay a lot money for medical
treatment if we are hospitalized.
The other
serious problem is cigarette smoking can affect the younger generation. There
is a paradigm that smoking is cool among the teenagers. They might think the
people who smoke cigarette will look cool. They usually see this in movies or
around them. Young people seem to imitate the habits of older people, so they
could imitate the bad habits too. We can say that many senior citizens are
smokers and smoking is a bad habit which is copied by the younger generation.
Another matter that may occur if young people smoke is that it can decrease
their brain performance. This in turn could affect our quality of education. If
teenagers can’t think and learn well, there will be no qualified people in the
future. By banning cigarettes in Indonesia, surely, our teenagers will be
better physically, mentally and also do better in school.
The global
impact cigarette smoking will have concerns environmental issues. The toxins
emitted from cigarettes cause pollution of our environment. Each time you smoke
a cigarette, chemicals are released into the atmosphere, polluting the air. The
chemicals can harm our atmospheric layers. The carbon monoxide gas which is
produced by cigarettes can be the most dangerous chemical. It can thin the
Ozone (O3) layer. If the ozone’s layer keep decreasing, global warming
will be worse. This in turn adds to pollution of the air, destruction of
forests by starting bush fires, or the killing of marine life. Another reason
why cigarettes may affect our environment can be seen in Australia. Besides the
gas of the cigarette, cigarette butts can also be very harmful for our
environment. In Australia, this is a big problem. The fact is that nearly 7
billion butts of cigarette aren’t disposed of properly. This is extremely bad
because the chemicals in the butt can affect marine life. It can affect the
water quality and can be deadly to marine life. As we know, Indonesia is
covered by forest and also borders the sea. We can save our environment to get
a better life by stop smoking or better yet; by not starting!
Clearly,
cigarette smoking causes many problems. It is very bad for every aspect of
life. Cigarette can be dangerous and bad for our health, economic life, for
young people and also for the environment. Because of these serious issues, it
is also clear why cigarette smoking should be banned in Indonesia.
