Smokers Essay, Research Paper
Smokers
People often become addicted to smoking because they have been brainwashed into believing they receive some sort of benefit or crutch from smoking. Every smoker becomes brainwashed in his or her own individual way. There are many ways to subdivide smokers into various groups such as; women smokers, casual smokers and ex-smokers. These three fall under my own personal classification. I use these particular ones because I find that I encounter them the most, thus I know their reasoning and why they choose whether or not to smoke cigarettes.
I picked women as a more prominent group over men smokers, as it is a fact that in Britain and many western countries, women smokers now outnumber the men. It is particularly disturbing to note how many teenage girls are hooked compared to men, it is important to us find out why this is. Various reasons have been put forward by some experts as to the reason why. History states that smoking cigarettes was not considered lady like; there were more male smokers. Some experts maintain that the change is due to the women’s liberation movement. However, I do not believe one smoker becomes a smoker for just any one reason, but perhaps the women lib movement did indirectly help why there is an increase in the number of women smokers. Women are not necessarily trying to show their masculinity but perhaps because of other newfound rights and freedom it has created more stress in women’s lives. One of the main myths and illusions of smoking is that it relieves stress. Many women executives are now holding down traditionally men’s jobs and feel they have to do the job ten times better to be accepted. Many women today, in addition to the stress of having to compete with the male, still have the genuine stress of child bearing, motherhood, keeping there house clean, feeding and clothing their children. The reason there are generally more women smokers than men is because they have more stress in their lives than men.
Casual smokers, an important category of smokers, are those who smoke three or four cigarettes on social occasions and may not have another for a couple a months. In my personal experience however casual smokers smoke more than a couple of months, such as every time they drink. They are classified by rarely buying a pack and tend to always boast that they are not addicted Casual smokers however, is almost permanently conscious of there smoking. The drug nicotine is dominating their smokers, and because they do exercise some willpower and discipline, they are under the illusion that it is they that dominates the drug. This ignorance is terribly harmful as they are living in an illusion believing smoking cannot hurt them.
The third classification is the ex- smoker. There are many kinds of ex-smokers however; most common are the preachers. As soon as they have extinguished their last cigarette, you’ll find “No smoking” signs are implemented in their homes, cars, offices and basically anywhere they can find room. The preacher will keep reminding you that smoking ruins your health, pocket and find it incomprehensible that an intelligent person like yourself finds it necessary to put those as they call them, “cancer sticks” in your mouth and set light to them. They appear to have forgotten that they themselves did the exact same thing. I think one of the reasons this classification of smokers act the way they do is because, the worst thing that smokers do to ex-smokers, is reminding and tempting the ex-smoker by smoking in front of them. The problem is that, when smokers quit by using the willpower method, although they are pleased to be non-smokers, they still believe that they’ve made a genuine sacrifice. While at social occasions the ex-smoker negatively watches the smokers enjoying their cigarettes, they feel that itch is still there. The only way that the preachers can remedy the situation is to humiliate the smokers. The preachers feel insecure and vulnerable; their defenses start to denigrate. All aggression is based on fear. They are not being hypocritical; rather they lash out in self-defense. They don’t consciously set out to annoy smokers, it’s instinctive; it’s a self-help plan that steers them away from the dreaded smoking pit. They are not so much trying to convince smokers that they are better off but want to reassure themselves.
Smokers can be grouped into many different classifications, those who have kicked it completely and by far the larger group, those that can not resist the temptations. There are so many kinds of smokers that there would have to be millions of classifications for the millions of smokers out there. It will be interesting to see what the smokers have planned for themselves in the future and in what ways will the government tackle them next.
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