The Voice
When you begin thinking about Thanksgiving, you probably picture a table heaped with steaming cuisine. Imagine the taste of the cranberry sauce, stuffing and don’t forget the most famous Thanksgiving staple — the turkey. This Thanksgiving, Georgia College & State University has asked us to think about our holiday turkey in a different way.
Thursday, Nov. 19 marked the first annual Cold Turkey Day designed to encourage students to give up smoking. Cold Turkey Day teams up with the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout to offer students the chance to sign a pledge to quit smoking. In return for signing their promise, students received a coupon for a free cold turkey sandwich from local sandwich shops.
Here at The Colonnade we would like to applaud our university’s attempt to offer an incentive for students to quit smoking. But we’ve come up with some of our own reasons why students should choose to quit smoking, even without the promise of a free sandwich.
Smoking causes nearly five million deaths per year around the world. We may not be able to understand how many people this is, but to make the number real — imagine over 60 percent of the residents of Georgia dying — per year.
Even smoking only a few cigarettes a day greatly increases your risk of developing lung cancer and heart problems. If you believe that smoking helps you calm down and relax, consider the fact that smoking actually leads to depression and increased stress.
Here’s a frightening fact for all you men out there who light up. Smoking has been linked to erectile dysfunction. Put more plainly … you may not be able to perform the way you would like to if you use cigarettes. You may think you are in the prime of your sexual lives now, but smoking increases your risk of becoming impotent by 50 percent.
All college students know what it’s like to be out of money. But imagine how much money you would save if you gave up smoking. Let’s say that a pack of cigarettes is $3.75, and you smoke two packs per week. Did you know that in one year you spent almost $400. Imagine having an extra $400 to spend, and the immeasurable return of being healthier.
To those of you who do not smoke — congratulations. However, even hanging around someone who smokes, even as little as an hour a day, will almost triple a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer.
We all know that smoking is an addiction, and that quitting is easier said than done. We’re not asking you to quit just for a free cold turkey sandwich (even though that sounds really good right now). We’re asking you to consider the full value of your life and your health. The pain and discomfort of quitting will be nothing compared to the pain of surgery to remove a cancerous part of your lung, or the pain of seeing your loved ones deal with your body slowly wasting away. Think about it when you go home for Thanksgiving. And enjoy the turkey.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Nov 21 2003. Filed under Our Voice.
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