Teen Smoking in America

Advertisements in the media back up the truths of the American teen culture: Even those who it is least expected from, smoke cigarettes. In my three years of high school so far, I have slowly come to realize that what our elders regurgitate to us regularly is true and have come to understand why they prepare us so young with "no" to smoking. 23% of high school students smoke cigarettes, with an increasingly higher statistic in metro areas.

It is mainly done to boost one's self image to seem "macho" or "sexy" and to be accepted by peers. Initially, it is done when making new friends and slowly turns into an addiction. Programs across the country are not doing their office to prevent teen smoking and make them realize what damage they are doing to their bodies. Select groups of students reach a certain level of maturity and quit, but many of the students less interested in succeeding academically find it perfectly normal to smoke. They think it will not come back to haunt them later since they are young and care-free and push it off to the back of their minds just as they push aside having to study for a history test.

"Seventy percent of adolescent smokers wish they had never started." If these simple facts and statistic could somehow be penetrated into the skulls of America's naïve youth, we could begin to build or modify our crippling country into an admirable one. Severe legal circumstances and actions should be augmented to expensive fines for teen smoking on their parents. One must attack the root of the problem, inadequate parental control often merged with the company of the wrong friends. If it becomes a burden to their parents and interferes with their daily commute, they are more likely to take strict measures against their children.

On the surface, teen smoking may not seem controversial to most Americans because it is so prevalent in the media, on the street, and many campaigns to stop it are not properly funded or pushed to extremes. The whirlwind of superficiality in our country is to blame because of the strong emphasis on perfection and celebrities. In third-world country, this presence in non-existent or usually mitigated, and the teen smoking rate is virtually not even there. Some may argue "What about Europe, where literally almost everyone smokes?" The European way of life is so much more advanced and capable than the primitive American ways that teen smoking is an issue, but a much smaller one since they have the power and control to overrule it. Europe handles its affairs and issues wisely and effectively, while in America we are still in diapers in that department, making the topic of teen smoking a much bigger complication.

It the coming decade it is guaranteed that the use of tobacco by adolescents will grow to be a bigger problem than it is now. The evils of growing up: peer pressure, media, and the possibility of creating negative judgment all spiral down to making the wrong decision. Most teens feel they are immortal and that world issues do not affect them. For the time being they may not, but when they are sixty years old and going in every Saturday for chemotherapy, they will remember when adults told them "Smoking is bad for you".