A bad habit: smoking by Claudia Sonea

In spite of having written on all cigarette pack “Smoking is dangerous to your health”, people continue to persevere in their harmful habit. Yet, who could be surprised, considering that it is a legal recreational drug. Most probably Cannabis will be soon accepted too, as its popularity has increased in time, getting to be the fourth recreational drug after alcohol, caffeine and tobacco. Nowadays there are more and more pressures and people need to find a refugee. While some choose less harmful ways of getting rid of the stress, there are many others that find happiness in a bottle or in the substances absorbed thro! ugh lungs. Among the substances providing happiness, cigarettes are the most used, mainly because there is no law preventing people from smoking and the general opinion is that the harm produced is smaller. However, smoking is very dangerous as it kills gradually from inside like the rot both those who do it and those who have to inhale the smoke released which is in fact even more dangerous. In order to raise public’s awareness on the health hazards caused by the habit of smoking, there are many campaigns and some countries even set high taxes on tobacco. More recently, countries all over the world prohibited through law to smoke in public places (like restaurants or cafés) or they imposed a separation between smokers and non-smokers. For instance, starting this Monday, in Syria smoking was banned from public places (restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theatres, schools and on public transport). It is surprising that the fiercest fighters again! st smoking are the Arabs (Egypt, Lebanon, UAE, Iraq) who have ! a tradit ion on smoking. What about Europeans, when will they wake up and smell the terrible smoke that kills?

related story (sgx15605): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091012/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_syria_...

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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