The Ripple Effect of Smoking

The Ripple Effect of Smoking It has become common knowledge that smoking is bad for people’s health, nonetheless people continue to smoke. To be honest, that is fine. If people want to endanger themselves by smoking then I wish them a swift and peaceful end (though most smokers die a slow and agonizing death). What is not acceptable is the effect that smoke has on non-smokers who have almost no way of getting away from smoke unless they want to stay in their house. Smokers affect everyone around them for the worse. Smoking should be restricted or banned from all public places because the health of non-smokers should not be jeopardized by secondhand smoke. As stated before, almost everyone knows and accepts the fact that smoking is unhealthy. For those who don’t know, Phillip Morris, one of the leading tobacco manufacturers, must tell them that very fact. As part of a settlement agreement with the government, Philip Morris must publish that they “agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema (where the lungs basically break down), and other serious diseases inn smokers” (Philip Morris U.S.A.1). Yet some don’t know how bad smoking actually is for people, both for the smokers and non-smokers alike. According to Michele Late, author for The Nation’s Health, published by the American Public Health Association, “A new report by the U.S. surgeon general found that smoking causes disease in almost every organ of the human body.” So aside from common knowledge that smoking causes lung cancer as well as other respiratory problems and diseases, people need to know that it also causes cancer in almost every other part of the body. Among those diseases are, “leukemia, cataracts, and pneumonia as well as cancers of the pancreas, cervix, and kidneys” (Late). According to the surgeon general’s report, “Other complications linked to smoking included diabetes