lbungardspeech

Good Afternoon I’m am here to say that I think that smoking should be banned around the world.

Firstly, because it is bad for your health. Smoking takes years off your life and adds millions of dollars to the cost of health care. It causes lung cancer and other cancers around the body. The smoke can rot your teeth. Then you will have a really long dentist bill on your hands. You can also get really sick and you might end up in hospital. The cost of smoking-related health care to New Zealanders is about 250 million dollars per year. There are also costs from litter, accidents, and fires. The government also spends 28 million dollars a year on quitting smoking and prevention programmes. Tobacco smoking kills 5,000 New Zealanders every year, including deaths due to second-hand smoke. People, including infants, who are not smokers themselves, but who die because others around them smoke. If these people were to live to the natural term of their lives, the New Zealand population would be 2 per cent bigger, that means 80,000 more people. These dead people are important to us all. They are our own children, parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, neighbours and friends. Imagine how many people around the world could die from smoking each year. If you smoke tobacco, you are smoking one of the most powerful and addictive stimulant known to man and it is very hard to quit once you start.

Secondly it is not good for the earth. The smoke is pollution and it can harm our air. That means if someone is smoking around you and you breathe it in, you are actually harming your own health. It is also bad for the earth because people drop their smoke butts on the ground and litter is very bad for our environment. Also if you are walking up the street and there is a smoke on the ground you could stand on it.

Thirdly, because they are quite cheap, and anyone who’s over 18 can buy them. That’s heaps of people in New Zealand but don’t forget the world. Most New Zealanders start smoking at 14-15 years of age. That means they must get someone over 18 to buy them for them.

So if you know someone who smokes, tell them what it can do to them and they might quit. So I think smoking should be banned around the world.