Rise from the ashes

Smoking kills but still a large part of the population around the world lights up. Every year millions of smokers become the victim of their own deadly habit. Giving up an addiction, especially of tobacco, is without doubt difficult for people. However, it is their refusal and not their inability that doesn’t let them quit.

World No Tobacco Day, observed globally every year on May 31, is the day for all tobacco addicts to try giving up the habit. The World Health Organisation (WHO) initiated the efforts with the aim to encourage people around the globe to abstain from all forms of tobacco consumption. According to the WHO’s website, nearly six million people die each year worldwide, out of which 600,000 are non-smokers who have been exposed to passive smoking. What bothers me is that people who smoke not only put themselves at a risk but also expose those around them to a long list of diseases.

But what leads people to adopt the habit of smoking or chewing tobacco? Usually, teenagers tend to get hooked on cigarettes if their friends smoke. Or at times, they get used to the idea of smoking it as they have been around a smoker while growing up. I have a long list of friends who have been smoking since the age of thirteen and still haven’t been able to quit, despite earnest attempts. Even after continuous efforts of giving up the addiction, many of my loved ones are still hooked on one form of tobacco or another.

Smoking is basically a senseless activity in which many intelligent people are engaged in. But maybe they are not really intelligent, after all. Not only that, smoking is also a stupid way to commit slow suicide. Many people tend to say that tobacco is legal and they have all the right to put whatever they want in their bodies. They say it is their life and can do whatever they want with it. But here is the thing: your life does not entirely belong to you, unless you are living alone somewhere in a cave. Part of your life belongs to every person who cares about you, every person who you care about, every person you love and those who love you.

We have been blessed with just one life. Why cut short this precious life or spend most of it becoming the victim of deadly diseases caused by your choice of using tobacco? Every time you decide to light a cigarette, remember that you are aiming a gun at your head and you are ignoring the relationship you have with everyone in your life. Every time you inhale tobacco, you hurt those who care about you, put your health and waste your money. So if you are a tobacco addict, for God’s sake quit because your life and health is too precious to be wasted like this.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2016.