When I was fourteen, I experienced the most horrific event of my life. I watched my father slowly slip away and die after a 5- month battle with lung cancer. He was 56 years young with a loving wife and three kids he adopted. His name was Mitchell John Dembowski and he didn’t need to die. He died because of one mistake he made almost 35 years before. He was a smoker. Although he quit smoking 7 years before his death, he still contracted lung cancer and by the time it was diagnosed, it had metastasized throughout his body. He was told that he had stage IV lung cancer and that he had a maximum of a year and a half to live. I was only fourteen, my brother was sixteen, and my sister was eighteen. On July 25, 2011 at 11:15 AM, my father became a statistic. He became one of the 440,000 Americans that die each year because of smoking. Tobacco smoke is still the leading cause of preventable deaths in America today. Yet, while hundreds of thousands of Americans die each year, tobacco companies make billions by feeding into people’s addiction. The corporations commit mass murder and the government allows them to get away with it because it is too lucrative of an industry to fall. Crushing them would mean crushing the economy. Yet isn’t 440,000 lives each year enough of a tradeoff? Cigarettes, in the least, need to be banned from the United States of America.

The biggest and most obvious reason as to why cigarettes in particular need to be banned is because they kill people. I don’t need scientific evidence to back this up. There is too much data on the subject for anyone to remain ignorant. Smoking kills. It ruins lives. It ruined my life. I lost my father, my guiding light, at fourteen years old. At a pivotal moment in my life, when I needed a father the most, I was lost. He was the greatest person I’d ever known, and I doubt there is anyone else out there who I will hold in the same high esteem. My father was a state liscensed psychologist who worked in a Massachusetts mental facility. He was also a family counselor, who helped many of my peers within my hometown. He was the very thing I needed, and yet a corporation lining their pockets with blood money took him from me. Yet, there is more evidence. Cancer isn’t the only smoking related death that I’ve experienced. My Aunt Sharon, was the same age as my father was when she died. They both died an early death at 56. She died in her Gloucester home on December 25, 2012 of a sudden and violent heart attack. She had no preexisting condition to warn her against a heart attack except that she smoked. A smoker’s risk of heart attack is nearly double that of a non- smoker’s. She died on Christmas Day. The Aunt that convinced my parents to adopt my brother, sister, and I died on what was supposed to be the most magical day of the year for many families. Now, it carries the shadow of death for my family. No, to prove my point, here is some scientific backing that everyone knows yet seems to ignore. According to the CDC website:
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49,000 people die each year because of secondhand smoke- related illnesses.
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20% of all cases of heart disease are smoke- related.
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There are 70 known carcinogens in tobacco smoke, and that count increases every year.
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There are over 250 toxic substances in tobacco smoke.
So why isn’t anything being done about this?

Tobacco smoke affects not only the smokers, but the people around them as well. As previously stated, the CDC states that almost 49,000 people die each year because of secondhand smoke- related illnesses. These people aren’t smokers. They don’t pay for cigarettes, they don’t give the corporations the money they want, yet they still die because of their actions. Thirdhand smoke is even more harmful. It is, by definition, residual nicotine that mixes with pollutants to create toxic substances and large health risks. It lasts for a long time and resists normal cleaning. So, the harm sticks around, literally, for long after the smoker leaves the area. This can lead to health problems for anyone, even unborn children. Thirdhand smoke has been shown to cause a rare form of liver cancer in infants still in the womb, whose mothers are nonsmokers. Smoking kills. Not only adults. Not only my Aunt Sharon, nor my father, but unborn babies as well? What madness allows these people in charge of these corporations to get away with this murder? There is a reason why smoking is banned from all hospital property, and that is because it is a clear health risk. There is no excuse for corporations who try to explain their actions by placing all responsibility on the consumer. They say that if someone does not wish to cause themselves a health risk, they can simply quit, or they can never start in the first place.

There is no way to excuse this mass murder. They fail to take into perspective the scientific evidence that nicotine addiction is by far the hardest addiction to overcome, and tobacco companies don’t make this any easier. Through selective breeding of specific tobacco plants, these corporations increase the nicotine of the average cigarette by 1.78% each year. This is irresponsible, immoral, and unacceptable.

Every year, smoking kills more people than World War II did. More than AIDS, cocaine, heroine, alcohol, vehicular accidents, homicide and suicide combined, according to the CDC. The cancers that can result from smoking are nearly innumerable. Cancers that can occur from tobacco are cancers of the mouth, lips, nasal cavity (nose), sinuses, larynx (throat), pharynx (voice box), esophagus, stomach, pancreas, kidney, bladder, uterus, cervix, colon/ rectum, ovary, as well as acut myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the blood. It can result in liver cancer in unborn children, and then there is the largest killer of all: lung cancer. 30% of all cancer deaths are from lung cancer. 87% of all lung cancer deaths are smoking related, and 32% of all smoking deaths are from lung cancer. That calculates to about 138,748 people each year the die due to smoking- related lung cancer. My father was one of those. Heart attack, stroke, those are two more health risks from smoking. And, all three of these health problems; cancer, heart attack, and stroke, are in the top ten causes of death in America each year. Do tobacco companies see this? There are people dying across the country because of their greed. The government does nothing. They stand by and raise taxes on the product, but that does little to sway people from the product. They’re addicted, beyond their control. Their very livelihood is dependent on cigarettes. Before, I labeled this as ‘mass- murder’. I still stand by that. Tobacco companies need to be shut down. Nothing is too big to fall, and I can give you 440,000 reasons why they need to fall. Now. One of those reasons has the name Mitchell John Dembowski. He was also known as Mitch, Mitchell, and most important, Dad. He may not have been my biological father, but he was my Dad. There is a difference, and yet, he was taken from me. Shouldn’t someone pay for that? Shouldn’t someone pay for the extinguishing of my guiding light? Shouldn’t someone pay for my mother’s broken heart? For her tears and her lost sleep? In this case, there is blame to lay, fingers to point. Banning the very thing that kills almost half a million people every year should be a governmental priority. Someone needs to pay. Someone needs to accept responsibility. Let’s make it happen.