Task 8

Smoking for Teenagers

Smoking is one of bad habit that has many disadvantages for people’s health. It is not only at risk for the smokers, but also the people around them. In Indonesia, more than 50% of the people are doing this kind of bad habit. Amazingly, most of them are teenagers under 18 years old. Smoking is really common among the teenagers, even it is such a popular habit for them. It causes the number of smoker always increase. There are several reasons for teenagers to do smoking. Those reasons are as follow.

First, teenager’s psychology is still in the lower stage of awareness. They are still looking for their self-identity no matter by a good or bad way. They love to try something new whether it is good or bad thing. While in this case, smoking is such an interesting habit to tried by the teenagers. They do not care about the risk to be a smoker in order to be an easy going and well-known person. So that teenagers are motivated to try to smoke just for their popularity.

Second, environment is one of vital things that can built teenagers’ character. Teenagers who have weak of self protection will be easy to be influenced by their environment. So if the environment is good, they will influenced by good habits. Whereas if the environment is bad, it will be a big probability for the teenagers to having smoking habit. That is why choosing a good environment for our teenagers is also important to avoid them from smoking habit.

Third, lack of parents’ control. Parents have a significant role in order to built a self-defense of teenagers. Then they will have a strong protection against their environment and reduce smoking habit. Yet in reality, most of teenagers’ parents are careless of controlling their daily activity. So their teenagers are free to choose their way to associate with their environment. The parents’ contributions are completely needed to built teenagers’ attitudes. A good parent should be a shelter for their teenagers.

Fourth, there is no specific rules for cigarettes distribution. It is easy to find the cigarettes seller everywhere and they sell it to everyone without any consideration whether the consumers are mature or underage. In fact, there is no prohibition for teenagers, especially teens under 18 years old to buy cigarettes. It sold freely among teenagers. Besides that, it cost is too cheap and accessible for teenagers. Even children under ten are allowed to buy it. This will provide a tremendous opportunity for the youth to get pack of cigarettes.

The last, but not least, consciously or not, smoking has become a culture in this country. It is not only among the teenagers who think that smoking is too common, but also adult people think that smoking habit among teenagers is familiar. It has been their daily life to seeing teenagers smoking. It feels like need more than a century to change this culture. That is why teenagers feel comfortable to smoke as if they are forced to do.

Those are several reasons why teenagers smoking. It is not only caused by internal factors of teenagers, but also external factors such environment and parents. However, It would be better if the cigarettes’ cost is increased, so it will be inaccessible for teenagers pocket. The most important is adults should not only give understanding about the dangerous of smoking, but also being model.