This post was sponsored by Tobacco Free New York State as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.
Smoking. It seems just such a non-important issue. Until you have kids. Until you realize how easy for them to pick it up and notice it at 13 because that’s when you started smoking yourself. Until you realize how much advertising is still right in their faces every single day.
The Marlboro man may not be gracing the pages of magazines anymore (but really, who’s reading magazines anymore anyway?), but it’s still right in our faces. Every single day we walk to school past this bodega to get on the train and it’s right there on the windows. In fact, the store itself is CALLED the Smoke Shop.
So you don’t think it’s a big deal cause you never smoked? You’re wrong. Kids are impressionable and the tobacco companies know that. I know because I was that 13 year old. I DID think it was cool, and I DID get hooked because my best friend introduced it to me.
The average age of a new smoker in New York State is 13 years old.
How can that be? Peer pressure is real in your teens and it’s something you need to realize and talk about – even if your kids aren’t teens yet – and even if you don’t have kids.
You want to be cool and fit in and be a rebel. Smoking is cool because it’s illegal and you want to do something that is against the rules. But this one has consequences – it’s addicting.
From 2014-2018 e-cigarette use grew 160% among high school students
Think that cigarette smoking is down because people are using e-cigarettes now? Wrong. It just changed forms to morph with the times of being cool.
I also think it’s important to mention that I started just to be cool. A cigarette here and there…. Which morphed into a few more cigarettes…. Which morphed into a whole pack a week. Then two (especially if I was drinking). Smoking and drinking went hand in hand. Did I mention I wasn’t 21 yet?
See where this is going?
I finally stopped cold turkey at the age of 30 the moment I found out I was pregnant. I also am one of the very rare people who never went back. I know how lucky I am to somehow walk away – I know many people who went back to smoking no matter how much they tried to stop.
It’s a life long addictive habit that is extremely hard to quit.
And it might all be starting from your son walking past a bodega every day on his way to 1st grade.
Am I scaring you? Good. Cause I am proof that it can (and will) sadly happen to a child you know – maybe your own.
So what can you do now that I’ve doomed the world?
Make it stop. Sign the petition.
Tobacco companies are spending BILLIONS to put their products in front of our kids.
But it doesn’t cost you a penny to sign the petition to stop this from happening in New York State.
Click here to visit the Seen Enough Tobacco website and sign the petition in 30 seconds.
Even if you don’t have kids, sign it to do it for mine. And my friend’s kids. And my neighbor’s kids. And my son’s classmates.
You get the point.
Make the pledge today——> http://goic.io/GQOHqI
