The black cloud of smoke grows larger as it consumes the fresh air. Even as big as the disgusting cloud gets, the addiction continues to plant itself firmly in her life. As the smoke cloud disappears it gets fired up again, by another cigarette and a smoker that can’t quit. She started it to be cool. She stayed with it because she got noticed, and now she can’t stop. How many times has she said, “I can quit whenever I want to!” and failed at every attempt. To stop the addiction, smoking should be banned because, there are more than four thousand toxic chemicals in one cigarette, smoking causes thirty percent of all deaths from cancer, and it contains one of the most addictive substances.

First of all, smoking should be banned because there are more than four thousand toxic chemicals found inside a cigarette. You wouldn’t breath in the chemicals from wood varnish, the insect killer DDT, nail polish remover, and rat poison. Well, when you suck in another puff of a cigarette that is only a few of the chemicals you are sucking in. Is it still cool? How about knowing you suck up soot and tar and other poisons that over a period of time could do harm to your body, by putting your heart and lungs at risk. Smoking also makes it hard to taste, smell and makes it harder to fight infections. The chemicals also can make your teeth and finger nails yellow, your skin wrinkle, and give you a smell. What part of that is cool? What are you going to say “Yo dude, my teeth are yellow, I smell, I have premature aging, and I’m addicted. But I still smoke.”

Secondly, smoking causes thirty percent of all cancer deaths. For starters eighty-seven percent of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking. All the toxic stuff that builds up into your lungs making it blacker and blacker. In the first hour that you quit smoking your body already starts to repair itself. Other cancers are smoking is related to are, mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, cervix, kidney, uterus, and bladder. The smoker can deny or ignore that this happens, but they can’t stop it from happening, Smoking has even replaced breast cancer as the leading cause of death caused by Cancer for women in Canada. Do you know that a smokers risk for dying from cancer is doubled from someone who doesn’t smoke. A heavy smoker has almost four times the risk of dying from cancer than nonsmokers. Is it really worth it?

Furthermore, smoking has one of the most addictive substances, nicotine. Nicotine affects the brain from smoking faster than it can feel the effects of heroin. Its just seven seconds until you have the instant feeling of high. That messes with your brain chemistry so you need tobacco every minute of the day. My aunt, a single mother of two who has had a heart attack at forty because of smoking, knows that her kids could become parentless if she continues, but she sill smokes. Nicotine makes it so every moment you have a little devil sitting on your shoulder saying, “You have to smoke! Cigarette, cigarette, cigarette!” Until you give into it. Only three percent of the people who try to quit smoking can actually quit. Nicotine makes the heart beat faster, increasing the breathing rate, which throws you at greater risk for a heart attack.

Lastly, imagine your child crying behind a sofa because their daddy or mommy still smokes like my aunt found her four year old daughter one night. Conceive them grieving at the hospital because you suddenly had a heart attack, stroke, or cancer because of the addiction that you just couldn’t give u. Visualize them sitting at a funeral, your funeral. Now imagine sitting through that, only the person in the hospital and dead was your own child. What would you do? Another scenario is a pack of cigarettes cost at three dollars and fifty cents a pack. If the smoker smoked a pack a day at the end of the year he would have paid three thousand dollars in total for cigarettes. Think of a child saying, “I can’t get a tutor because daddy and mommy won’t stop smoking and we can’t afford it.” Live above the influence for you and your child. Making smoking illegal for other children and parents.

“Go, go, go!” the man in the ambulance screams. As unfortunate as it is, the girl who was smoking had a heart attack. her body finally had enough of the abuse from the smoke and just couldn’t handle it anymore. She was eighteen, the legal age for smoking. Live above the influence. Ban smoking today, and save some lives of tomorrow.

(Note, this speech placed first in the middle school speech competition and second in the Sandy Andy.)