Lately, around the halls of Greenfield High School, posters, tattoos, and signs have easily been found. They all seem to have one thing in common, the number “84”. On the first day that the posters came up, nobody could figure out what it meant. Then, on the second day, the teachers and students behind this all revealed what it meant. A statistic, “84 percent of Massachusetts teens do not smoke”. “I think it was great that the school got the students educated on the dangers of smoking, and obviously our response was positive.” say freshman Johanna Murphy.

It’s rather shocking to know that even with some low statistics, smoking kills 440,000 people per year in the United States alone. One of the main reasons that people still smoke, knowing how bad it is for them, is because they’re addicted. It has been estimated that over 4.5 million U.S. adolescents are smokers. This contributes to the fact that each day, nearly 6,000 kids under 18 try smoking. Nearly 2,000 of those kids will become regular smokers. Nearly 90% of smokers begin their habit before age 21.

No matter what brand, all cigarettes have a harmful addicting poison called nicotine. Ever since cigarettes became popular back around 1914, the company’s have been putting nicotine in them. The amount of nicotine that tobacco companies put into cigarettes has risen over 10% in the last 6 years. This helps the industry make more money because it’s easier to get hooked and harder to quit. Smoking harms almost every organ in the body and makes the risk of heart attack, cancers and many other health issues. Even with all of the medicines and gums they have out to help you quit, it seems to be one of the hardest addictions to break. This could be because other than nicotine, cigarettes have many other harmful chemicals such as: tar, carbon monoxide, acetaldehyde, nitrosamines and many more. Now that people are being educated on the bad effects of smoking, hopefully they will chose to never start.

The students at Greenfield High School are now much more educated thanks to the efforts of some students and staff. As a student of Greenfield, I can honestly say that I think this campaign had an impact. There aren’t very many students here who smoke, and the ones who do are now educated. I think it’s very crucial that young people everywhere are taught about the dangers of smoking and I would like to thank everyone who put this together.