Introduction

Pros

Cons

Reasons People Smoke

Reasons Not to Smoke

The Smoking Decision

A Smoker's Thoughts

Letter From Me

Resources

For the past 4 months I have worked at Wal-Mart with some very interesting people and in that time I took my lunches with the" smokers." At Wal-Mart we had seperate rooms for each group, the smokers and the non smokers. I started out my time there eating with them because they turned out to be the more interesting and funny people there at the time. This obviously wasn't because they were smokers they just happened to be people that I got along with and it proved to me that people are different just because they smoke.

As I spent my time with them i began to ask them why they smoked and everyone seemed to have their own reasons. Some were the same and others weren't. One of the women that i worked with I found out that when she was younger her step father had abused her and her sisters and that had been one of the reasons why she began smoking. I felt horrible when i found out but she assured me it was ok. Another had begun smoking because when she was in highschool she was overweight. Now she is much skinnier and seems to be happier. A man that I worked with was in the army. He began smoking why he was there and he said that it was just sort of something everyone did. Kind of a way for everyone to deal with what they were doing.

Though they all smoked almost every single one of them talked of a time when they had either quit smoking for awhile or had decided to quit. Obviously none of them had succeeded in staying away but they also didnt seem to care that they smoked. They did however care that I didn't smoke and that i was sitting with them. They all said to me that it was a nasty habit and I should never start. Eventually they kinda kicked me out of the smoker's room because they didn't want me to be taking in their second hand smoke.

The people I worked with ranged from guys just a couple of years older them me to those that were thirty years my senior. Though everyone was so different in age, smoking kind of gave them a means of belonging. They all had smoking in common so they were able to get along in that sense and it was sort of a bonding force that made them all get along and become friends.

Overall I think they all knew it was wrong but they had started doing it and none had a desire to stop. This was sort of my look at the smoker's perspective. Some people don't want to quit they just do it to do it and that's all. Yet they all would admit that it was a bad habit and that no one should ever start and they didn't judge me because I didn't smoke. They just smoked and that was it.