Is smoking just smoke and mirrors?

The University has recently put up signs all around campus advocating that students don’t smoke on campus, in efforts to transform itself into the “smoke-free” campus it claims to be. Smoking has always been a problem for students, both here on campus at MSU and on college campuses all around the world. 

The life of a college student is a life full of stress. Trying to balance fast-approaching deadlines with a lack of time to complete them, a job (or two) to pay bills and a personal life can make any college student feel like life’s kicking them when they’re already down.

As a result, many students turn to smoking as a means to resolve any feelings of anxiety, whether that be in the form of cigarettes or electronic vapes, getting themselves caught into an endless cycle of addiction before they’ve even realized.

The rise of social media certainly hasn’t helped solve the problem, either. Video sharing platforms like TikTok dominate the Internet, showing off videos of young adults or even teenagers hitting Vapes and blowing smoke rings. 

We as students believe that no matter how cool smoking may make you look, the effects of smoking span much further than a cool photo op to post online. The detrimental health effects far outweigh the potential benefits one may receive from picking up smoking as a hobby, if there are any benefits at all.

The most obvious effect smoking has on your health is that it destroys your lungs. We’ve all seen the pictures of the pink, pure pristine lung of a non-smoker vs. the crumbling, collapsed charred lungs of a smoker.

For this reason, many younger people have switched to vaping, rather than smoking, since they think it’s healthier. And while it may be a healthier alternative to smoking tobacco, it’s still a bad choice.

A common argument many make is that vaping is merely just fruit-flavored water vapor. And in response to that claim, they’re right; it is fruit-flavored water vapor. But what they’re failing to admit is that it’s not just water vapor. It’s fruit-flavored diethylene glycol, diacetyl and propylene glycol.

Do you know how to pronounce any of those words? We don’t either. So why would you choose to put that in your body?

Another aspect many don’t talk about is the toll smoking takes on your bank account as well as your body. A typical disposable vape pen is around $10 a piece, while higher quality pens can range anywhere from $20 into the hundreds. You could be burning through nearly $100 a week – literally.

As students, we believe that the cons of smoking vastly outweigh the pros. There are plenty of better ways of blowing off steam than actually blowing steam.