LOOK THEM IN THE EYES
While you're lighting up that cigarette, 480,000 families are planning funerals this year alone. Families who would give anything for just one more day with their loved one.
You think your smoking only affects you? That's what the 16 million Americans with smoking-related diseases thought too. Now they can't walk their children to school or dance at their daughter's wedding because they can barely breathe without an oxygen tank.
Every time you choose to smoke, you're essentially telling your family: "I don't care enough about you to stick around." Is that the message you want to send to your children? Your spouse? Your parents who raised you?
That $600 billion smoking costs our nation each year? That's money taken from schools, hospitals, and communities—money that could have saved lives instead of catering to your addiction.
And when you eventually end up in a hospital bed, gasping for breath, doctors and nurses will spend countless hours trying to undo what you did to yourself, taking time and resources from patients who didn't choose their illnesses.
The most selfish part? You know better. Nearly 29 million Americans continue this self-destructive behavior despite knowing exactly what they're doing to themselves and everyone around them.
So next time you reach for that pack, ask yourself: How will you explain to your family that you chose cigarettes over watching them grow up? How will you justify making them watch you suffer through preventable disease?
The choice is yours. But so is the guilt.
The result of a conversation with Claude 3.7.