“Smoke reminds me of the fire & the damage it causes. It also reminds me of breathlessness & the pollution & the destruction. It reminds me of the chaos & fire alarms. It reminds…………of the never ending horror.” I always have this curiosity to know what does a smoker feel when he witnesses a fire breaking out & the smoke such fire emits, other than the smoke from his cigarette. I had the opportunity to ask the same question to one of my friends & he said “I feel bad to see a fire”. But he does not feel bad when smoke of the cigarette burns his pinkish lungs…….. (So very contradictory).
Smoking is a kind of addiction “A smoking addiction means a person has formed an uncontrollable dependence on cigarettes to the extent that quitting it would cause severe emotional, mental, or physical reactions.” Everyone knows that smoking is harmful and addictive, but few people realize just how risky and addictive it is. One in every 3 smokers, who do not quit the habit on time, eventually dies because of the addiction. On an average each smoker dies 10-15 years earlier than they would have died from other causes. The smoker smokes & chooses to die earlier than he might have lived voluntarily whereas a non-smoker in his company dies because of smoker’s choice. I wish such people could be charged under the IPC section 299 which talks about “Culpable homicide”. Second hand smoking or Passive smoking has been found to be more dangerous than active smoking. Passive smoking is involuntary inhalation of smoke from tobacco products. Approximately, 3,000 lung cancer deaths in each year have been reported due to passive smoking. In addition to deaths scientific evidence shows that exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke causes disease and disability as well.
The current ban on smoking, not only in the public but also in private, from 2nd October 2008 in Delhi has come as a relief to those passive smokers who had no choice but to suffer. I am sure if we are alert & aware all the non-smokers can join their hands to breathe in tobacco free air. Its our right to live & live in a clean environment. I know there’s varities of pollution in the air other than the tobacco, cleaning has to begin somewhere.
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Weconscious has come up by combining two words “WE” & “CONSCIOUS”. Thereby meaning, we the people who ought to be conscious about our rights & duties. We Conscious is a pious effort to highlight, show, and educate people of the various monsterheads of corruption, moral degradation and gross civic negligence that are rampant in our society. It’s an effort to highlight the illegalities we suffer on day to day basis.