• If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Laura's persuasive essay

Page history last edited by AKabodian 9 years, 4 months ago

YOU'RE GOING TO DIE.

     Did you know that smoking kills around 480,000 people every year, in the U.S.?(Center for Disease Control) Well that's true, and for that reason and others I think that we should ban smoking in the U.S. Some of the other reasons are, before you buy your tobacco, it has to be grown, right? Well most times the plantation where it's grown is harvested by children aged 9-16.Another reason is that smoking will cause very bad health problems for the smoker. My other reason is that not only does smoking harm the person doing it, but also the secondhand smoke can cause fatal heath problems for people around you.

 

  First of all, when tobacco is grown most times plantation owners will hire children from the age of 9-16 because they don't have to pay them as much.(New York Time) Surprisingly this is not against the law because "children 12 & up are allowed to work 12 hour shifts if they still have schooling. Children under 12 can work for 8 hours a day".(U.S Department of Labor)In a recent study by the Human Rights Watch on child workers aged 7-17 about three fourths complained about getting highly sick while harvesting the nicotine coated leaves. Some even reported that  tractors spraying pesticides would come through the fields where they were working spraying them with the toxic liquid.(Human Rights Watch) Not only do the kids have to go through this unfair labor, they are usually paid minimum wage or very close to it.(New York Times) This should not happen just because people want to smoke.

    

 Secondly, smoking is very bad for your health. When you smoke it damages nearly every organ in your body & creates countless more diseases.(center for disease control) In every tobacco product there are at least 4,000 chemicals, out of those, 250 are harmful to humans. An example of some of these chemicals are Tar, Formaldehyde, Benzene and many others.(Center for Disease Control) If that doesn't sound bad enough to you, in the U.S. two out of every five deaths are caused by smoking.  Another health problem with tobacco is that when you smoke it, you inhale Carbon Monoxide. Once in your lungs it travels to your it travels to your blood stream where it decreases your oxygen levels. (National Cancer Institute) If you don’t care about this and the problems it creates, OK, but you should care about the other people it affects.

    

 Lastly, smoking can be harmful for other people, not just who's doing it. This is called secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke is almost as dangerous as smoking especially for children and people with high blood pressure.(secondhand smoke) Every year secondhand smoke alone kills around 46,300 people. Studies show that the risk of developing a heart disease is 25-30% higher then when people are not exposed to smoke.(LiveScience) These are only a few problems with secondhand smoke. For example, children who have smoking parents are more likely to have respiratory problems then anyone else.(secondhand smoke)There are many other side affects of this type of smoke apart from the ones I listed. You might not care about yourself and that is fine, but putting others in danger for something you do is just not right.

  

   Given all my reasons, the process of getting tobacco to make products takes advantage of unfair labor laws, the health problems for the smoker, and the health problems secondhand smoke creates for others are just a few but there are many other problems that go along with it. For these reasons, and other I think the government should follow my advice and ban smoking everywhere in the U.S. 

 

 

 

 

 

Citations 

  • Website Title: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Article Title:Cigarette Smoking in the United States: Current Estimations

Publisher: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Electronically Published: February 14, 2014

Date Accessed: November 11, 2014

 

  • Website Title: National Cancer Institute

Article Title: Tobacco Statistics Snapshot

Date Accessed: November 12, 2014

 

  • Website Title: The New York Times

Article Title: Just 13, and Working Risky 12-Hour Shifts in the Tobacco Fields

Publisher: The New York Times

Electronically Published: September 06, 2014

Date Accessed: November 10, 2014

Author: Steven Greenhouse

 

  • Website Title: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Article Title: Secondhand Smoke (SHS) Facts

Publisher: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Electronically Published: April 11, 2014

Date Accessed: November 11, 2014

 

  • Website Title: U.S. Department of Labor

Article Title: Youth & Labor

Date Accessed: November 10, 2014

 

  • Website Title: LiveScience

Article Title: Secondhand Smoke Kills 42,000 Nonsmokers a Year in US

Publisher: TechMedia Network

Electronically Published: September 28, 2012

Date Accessed: November 12, 2014

Author: Christopher Wanjek 

 

  • Website Title: Human Rights Watch

Article Title: Child Laborers. In America. In 2014. 

Publisher: Human Rights Watch

Electronically Published: September 17, 2014

Date Accessed: November 13, 2014

Author: Jo Becker  

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.