Mark Twain, an American novelist whose last words were, "If smoking isn't allowed in heaven, it shouldn't be allowed here." He had a smoking problem at one time in his life. Twain eventually quit, but it was too late; he died of a heart attack. Currently, smoking is one of the most dangerous activities on the planet. Per year, over 8 million people die as a result of smoking. A single cigarette has the potential to destroy a person's life. Cigarettes contribute to fires, pollution, cancer, and plenty of other issues. Sadly they haven’t been outlawed yet. Below you will find why I believe cigarettes should be banned. 

Effects on the body

Smoking destroys your lungs. When smoking, your lungs are deprived of oxygen, causing you to cough. Your blood vessels may get blocked or shrink. Cilia lines the lungs and cleans them. However, cilia decreases as a result of smoking, causing fewer cilia to clean the lungs. The chemicals you inhale when smoking travels straight to your lungs. “When you smoke, the cells that produce mucus in your lungs and airways grow in size and number, as a result, mucus production increases and thickens,” according to UPMC. 

Smoking may cause cancer in any part of the body, although it is most common in the lungs and intestine. Smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer. According to the American Lung Association, “men who smoke are twenty-three times more likely than nonsmokers to acquire lung cancer.”  Lung cancer kills around seven thousand people in the United States every year. Tobacco is combined with seven thousand other compounds, seventy of which have been linked to cancer. However, the human body is only capable of fighting three toxic chemicals at a time, not seven thousand, which is the amount a single cigarette has. 

Every one out of five people in the USA dies from smoking. When compared to non-smokers, a smoker's life can be cut by ten years. If you quit smoking before the age of forty, you have a ninety percent chance of not developing a smoking-related disease. Every cigarette a guy smokes reduces his life by eleven minutes, according to Medical News. That means each carton of cigarettes represents a day and a half of lost life. If a man smokes a pack a day for a year, he shortens his life by almost two months.

Effects on the Environment

Cigarettes have a negative impact on the environment. It generates a ton of waste. In California, cigarettes are the most littered item. Due to all the chemicals inside, a single cigarette can take up to ten years to decompose. 4.5 trillion tons of cigarettes are littered each year. That's a third of the world's waste. They are dumped into the ocean, where they harm marine life like fish. If you are walking down the streets in New York, you will notice at least three cigarettes littered every thirty feet. This is due to the fact that cigarettes are only one-time use.

According to CEF “Cigarette smoking causes environmental pollution by releasing toxic air pollutants into the atmosphere. The cigarette butts also litter the environment, and the toxic chemicals in the residues seep into soils and waterways, thereby causing soil and water pollution, respectively.” Tobacco is the key component in cigarettes, and it is grown in rainforests. Three hundred cigarettes are created from a single tree. Every minute, ten million cigarettes are smoked. This means that 33,333.33 trees a minute are required to keep up with the number of cigarettes being smoked. Each year, smoking releases roughly 2.6 billion kilograms of CO2 and 5.2 billion kilograms of methane into the atmosphere.

Cigarettes have the potential to start fires. Every year, approximately seventeen thousand people are killed by forest fires started by cigarettes. Because of a cigarette, a forest fire in China killed three hundred people and burned 1.3 million hectares of land in 1987. Cigarettes are responsible for ten percent of all global fires and thirty percent of all fires in the United States. Every year, six hundred people are killed in fires started by cigarettes, Costing half a billion in property damage a year. If you come inside with a lite cigarette, your chances of starting a fire rise by thirty percent, but you smoke while cooking, your chances of starting a fire rise by 63 percent.

Other 

One of the most addicting behaviors is smoking. When you smoke, nicotine enters your brain and provides a stress reliever, but it also harms the rest of your body at the same time. Your brain craves the stress-relieving experience all the time. Your brain sends out a signal to the rest of your body that you require nicotine. You get dependent on it as you become unable to quit. Even one cigarette can lead to ruin your life.

Cigarette banning may harm the economy. Over a hundred million people will lose their jobs if cigarettes are banned. The average tobacco company employee earns between $23,000 and $40,000 per year. Taxes on cigarettes bring in a lot of money for countries. Cigarette taxes might bring in up to $19 billion each year to countries. Cigarettes account for 20 percent of US exports, implying that the country would lose a large amount of money. California, on the other hand, spends almost $9 billion a year on tobacco-related medical costs. Another $8.5 billion per year is lost as a result of reduced work productivity due to increased employee smoking breaks, illness, and death. Cigarette cleanup costs cities anything from $3 million to $16 million.

Smoking/cigarettes have some negative and a few positive effects, but when the pros and cons are considered, the cons outweigh the pros. Many illnesses, such as cancer, cannot be cured, yet smoking may be by banning the sale of cigarettes. Money or people's lives: which is more important?