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Dear Shannon
Cigarette smoke is just plain bad for anyone -- young or old. The longer you smoke, the more damage
it may do to your body!
Listen, Shannon, your body works really hard to keep you from breathing in things that don't
belong in your lungs. But with cigarette smoke, your body fails. The mucus coated cilia, or small
hairs in the tubes leading to your lungs are supposed to keep dust and debris from getting to your
lungs.
But that doesn't work with cigarette smoke. The smoke particles are simply too fine. Not only
do they carry soot, the smoke also carries in chemicals like tar and nicotine that can be extremely
dangerous to you. Once these chemicals get into your lungs, they stay there. And your body never
entirely recovers!
An adult who smokes is more likely to have a heart attack than a kid. But kids will find that
smoking makes it harder to breathe and harder to have the oxygen needed to run. And no matter what
your age, some of the chemicals you breathe in when you smoke make it much more likely you'll
develop lung cancer when you grow older.
Unfortunately, if you were to smoke, you wouldn't necessarily notice that each and every
cigarette is bringing in more smelly gunk. You might not know that gunk is slowly coating your
insides. But over time, you'd begin to experience the results as your beautiful pink lungs turned
an ugly, inky black.
Signed,
Wendell
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