This is a prompt from The Daily Post’s “365 Writing Prompts” E-book, which can be downloaded here.
If you could un-invent something, what would it be? Discuss why, potential repercussions, or a possible alternative.
Few inventions have been more harmful to human health than the cigarette. Every year, over 400 thousand people in the United States alone die from smoking. In the workplace, smokers drain millions of dollars a year due to lost productivity and sick days. Add up the cost incurred to the smokers themselves — maintaining hygeine, buying packs of smokes, increased health insurance cost — and the price per smoker amounts to about $5,200 a year.
Yet, back in the 1960s, the majority of people thought that smoking was good for you. 50% of men, 33% of women in the United States smoked. By the time we realized that maybe ingesting copious amounts of carcinogens might be bad for our health, it was too late. People were already hooked on the nicotine.
It’s not so much the tobacco inside that will damage your health, but rather the plethora of addictive substances that piggyback along. Cigarettes are known to contain over 4000 chemicals, from applications as diverse as barbecue grill lighter to rocket fuel. 69 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and all of these chemicals will affect every part of your body.
No good comes from smoking in public, either. I detest the smell of cigarette smoke, and I’m not alone. Each year, over 53,000 people will die from second-hand smoke. If smokers are foolish enough to sell their life to ingesting toxic chemicals, why should the rest of us have to pay the same price?
Since it has absolutely no benefits to society, the cigarette gets my vote for an invention I’d like to see un-invented.
