I have known you since the day I was born. I also understand that you are 18 and you have been smoking for a few months. Smoking can do a lot of very harmful things to your body. Some of the reasons that I do not want you to smoke are because it decreases your appearance, it leads to disease, and it affects your body in harmful ways. I don't want to see any of those things happen to you.

One of the first reasons I don't want you to smoke is because it can decrease your appearance. By smoking, your breath can smell really bad. People will not want to be around you if they can smell your breath from a mile away. You could also get very yellow teeth. No matter how much you try to brush your teeth, the stain is probably not going to go away. But it is probably not going to. You do not want your teeth to be as yellow as a banana, do you? Another things that I really don't want to happen to you is that when you smoke for a long time your fingernails get very discolored. I don't think you want people to think that you have some kind of disease if they see your fingernails like that.

Second of all, if you smoke for a long time you can also get harmful diseases. A disease that can definitely happen to you is cancer. You saw what happened to Dad and Uncle Ernie. You would have to go through kemo and radiation therapy, and you would have to fight to live the rest of your life. Cancer can lead to death. Bronchitis is another thing that could happen to you. Your uncle had bronchitis and he was coughing all of the time. Every time he coughed his chest felt like it was tightening up. By getting bronchitis you could get coughing spells. I also don't want to see any of that happening to you. Heart disease is another bad thing that could happen to you. Your heart is not able to circulate blood around your body. When you have heart disease, your heart also can beat irregularly because there is some thing wrong with it. Do you really want any of that stuff to happen to you??

Lastly, smoking can really affect your body. Every time you smoke a cigarette, you lose seven to ten minutes of your life. Smoking can also kill 43% of people each year. If you smoked at least three cigarettes a day for the past few months, you have already lost at least two days of your life. Smoking is very addicting. It is harder to quit than to start. You could smoke at least two cigarettes, and you could be smoking on a daily basis, which is really bad for you. When you smoke your heart rate increases. When it increases, your body needs more oxygen to get into the blood. Also it makes your heart work faster, and it makes your lungs work harder too.

I hope that you have understood what I just said to you. See, if you smoke, it is only going to make you look really bad, and it could make you get some bad diseases. You have a lot of people that care about you, and I do not want you to lose all of that. You also have a lot of things going for you with school and everything, and no one wants you to mess up what is happening for you. Do you really want any of those really bad things to happen to you?? You really need to quit smoking before something really bad happens to you like DEATH!

Sincerely,

Your Sis,

Alicia