Dear Editor:
Students from Carrollton High School have just finished coming into our classroom to teach us about the harmful and addictive effects of tobacco and nicotine-containing products, especially smokeless tobacco.
These high school students are members of Stay Tobacco-Free Athlete Mentor Program (STAMP) sponsored by the American Cancer Society. We have learned that most teens don’t smoke and that tobacco companies try very hard to convince us that smoking is safe.
Learning these warnings from students that I look up to had an impact on me. I think it’s sad that people use cigarettes, chewing tobacco and snuff just to try to be cool. Using these substances can cause cancer that could make you lose part of your face, not to mention other cancers.
People who smoke, especially parents, should think about what they are doing to the people they smoke around. Did you know that if a non-smoker is in a car with someone smoking it’s like the non-smoker has smoked 4 cigarettes just by breathing the second-hand smoke?
Use of tobacco products is also very costly. If you smoke one pack a day it could cost almost $2,000 a year! I think people should save the money and their heath and go on a nice vacation!
Just think of all the nice things you could do with $2,000 every year! You should consider making it a resolution in 2010 to stop smoking tobacco or help someone you know to quit. Thank you STAMP mentors, Jasmine, Ben and Garth.
Maggie Mapes
(Student in Mrs. Shroyer’s 7th grade class
at Bell-Herron Middle School)
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