By Banji Ayoola
Whether he smokes indoors or outdoors, a smoker endangers his life, and that of his neighbours, who are forced to breathe in smoke compulsorily from his unhealthy and deadly habit.
He is committing suicide, killing himself by instalment with each stick or wrapping of the dangerous substances he smokes.
With his smoking, he poisons the clean air around him and thereby harms his neighbours and environment. He thereby poisons all the human beings around him, and even the foetus being carried by any pregnant woman nearby.
He thereby poisons the water, animals, plants, and all other creatures around him. He poisons Nature and makes joyful and healthy living on earth difficult for all its inhabitants, particularly human beings who are here to make this place more habitable, beautiful, and ennobling.
Rather than be a blessing, the smoker is a curse to himself, his neighbours, the environment, and the entire earth. He harms not only himself but also his neighbours.
Each puff of his smoke damages and destroys the vital organs of the body, harms neighbours, and poisons the clean air provided for all of us to breathe, and for all creatures to blossom and flourish in good, radiant health.
This aggravates the health challenges afflicting mankind generally on earth today.
Each puff of smoke brings the smoker closer to his untimely death, to his grave. This goes further to complicate the health challenges confronting his neighbours who are forced to be indirect and compulsory smokers.
Smoking poisons, weakens and endangers the heart, lungs, respiratory system, and other vital organs of the body.
Smoking harms the liver by incapacitating this major organ, which is the body’s processing plant, from effectively performing its over 500 essential functions in the body.
The liver thereby becomes insufficient, weak, and compromised. By this, the smoker unknowingly breaks down and weakens the body’s immune system.
He renders the body vulnerable to cancer and many other diseases that may be difficult to treat or defy all known treatments today, that hasten death. Not only for himself alone but also for his neighbours who are compulsory smokers.
As a result, diseases or ailments, the enemies which must stay away from us when we do not disturb the proper functioning of our bodies organs with unhealthy habits or wrong lifestyles, freely invade the body to attack, wreak havoc, cause us discomfort and hasten death unnecessarily.
Smoking harms the foetus and may result in loss of pregnancy in some women who may not be direct smokers, and other complications in pregnancy.
Indeed, medical experts have warned that apart from cancer, smoking causes heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes, and pulmonary diseases including bronchitis.
Also, they warn that smokers are vulnerable to an increased risk of being afflicted with tuberculosis, eye diseases, and immune system-related problems, including rheumatoid arthritis.
Besides, they warn that smoking causes pulmonary or lung disease, which makes breathing difficult and causes serious long-term disability and early death; lung cancer; heart disease; stroke; asthma; diabetes; blindness; cataracts; and age-related macular degeneration.
According to them, smoking also causes adverse reproductive effects in women including ectopic pregnancy, reduced fertility, and premature low birth-weight babies.
They further warn that marijuana smoking is more harmful.
Indeed, they caution that while breathing in tobacco cigarette smoke is harmful; going further to breathing in marijuana or cannabis smoke, which has been known to cause neuropsychiatric disorders, is worse, indeed deadlier.
