"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times," so humorously stated Mark Twain. At first glance, smoking does seem like a piece of cake. But after gradually taking in the deeper meaning of the quote, smoking does not sound like a game that you can quit whenever you want anymore. Smoking not only causes addiction, but also brings serious harm to a person by damaging the respiratory system and leading to various diseases.

A person usually finds it daunting to quit smoking because of the nicotine in cigarettes and their own emotional, besides physical, attachment to smoking. Nicotine, a highly addictive chemical that affects the pleasure center of the brain, exists in cigarettes and brings the smoker a momentary bliss. The brain releases chemicals, such as dopamine and noradrenaline, in respond to nicotine. Those chemicals control the moods. Therefore, a person's moods shift because of the levels' changes. Without that magical three-inch stick, a person gets anxious, depressed, and irritable due to the changes of the levels of dopamine and noradrenaline. Due to these adjustments, a person's brain adapts and grows dependent on smoking, at first physically, then also emotionally. After a while, that person could not cut the habit. For instance, quitting proves to be very hard according to a smoker called James. He recounts, "I lasted a day and went back to smoking. Every following New Years Eve I tried again and again." Because a smoker, deep inside his heart, does not want to quit, he usually tries to stop smoking two or three times before his final success. Overall, with the unwitting betrayal of the brain added to the naturally addictive nicotine and his own dependence on cigarettes, addiction to cigarettes is the result.

Although taking a puff on a cigarette seems harmless, even pleasant, it secretly hurts the respiratory system with the cigarette tar content and the lack of oxygen when smoking. The tar content in cigarettes is a major threat because it stays behind in the system and also paralyzes the cilia in the lung. The tar sticks to the walls of the lungs and turns them into a nasty brown while healthy lungs are naturally pink. In addition, a highly poisonous gas named hydrogen cyanide also exists in cigarettes to prevent the body to get enough oxygen. Tiny cilia line the lung’s wall, thwarting any harmful chemicals. Hydrogen cyanide prevents this lung protection system from working properly, which means any toxic chemicals can enter the lungs freely while a person smokes. When the body has less oxygen due to the increases of other gases, the muscles, brain and body tissue toil harder; they will eventually swell up and let even less air into the lungs. When other gases replace vital oxygen in the blood, they actually cause the ability of blood to carry oxygen to decrease. As a result, smoking erodes a person's body by smearing it's lungs with tar and robbing oxygen from it.

Smoking also leads to various diseases, like cancer and heart problems. Experts identified smoking as a major cause of lung cancer, and I have a painful case that shows how smoking leads to this terrible disease. My father's friend and colleague Lee smoked heavily, and he died at the too-young age of thirty from lung cancer, leaving behind his wife and a little boy. Even if spared from the dreadful lung cancer, smokers can also have heart problems due to their vice; the wastes of cigarettes cling to the tender wall of the blood vessels and eventually clog them. Like a clogged water pipe, blocked-up blood vessels cannot transport blood all around the body. This leads to serious heart troubles as the heart works harder to pump blood to various body parts. Overall, lung cancer and various heart diseases are the ultimate effects of cigarette smoking.

Finally, this vile habit not only keeps smokers in bondage, but it also brings serious injury to the respiratory system and introduces various diseases. At first, holding a cigarette and puffing out little ringlets of smoke sounds fun and even mature. However, as a person sinks deeper and deeper in the mire of reeking cigarettes, he cannot effortlessly pull himself loose from the malignant grip of smoking. "Smoking is related to practically every terrible thing that can happen to you." so stated Loni Anderson. Although this remark seems extreme, it nonetheless tells people how smoking devastates a person's life.


Works Cited
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/smoking_2.html#z2R08YZzTCYi77Fh.99
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