BOTTLE ROCKET

Stop exploding, you cowards.

I had my first cigarette in Grade 4. I stole it from my parents. It took 15 years to stop. I don’t think we really consider what sort of products are being sold to us. Look at it this way, if infected meat kills 1 person - every piece of related meat is taken off the shelves, instantly.

I started this project to help me quit. The Mr. Men characters were both a perfect symbol of my constantly changing mood, and a reminder of where my mind was when I picked up my first cigarette.

I worked on this project from the day I quit smoking. I thought that trying to avoid smoking all together was impossible, so I pushed it right in front of my face. It was the hardest part of quitting. Quitting is a battle of stubbornness. The first 3 days are a catastrophe. The first 3 weeks are only a disaster. If I can pass along any advice to people trying to quit, it is this; accept that for 3 weeks, your only mission in life is to quit. It takes 3 days for the chemicals to leave your brain and three weeks for the habit to leave your mind. It is absolutely worth it.

This does lead us to ask one question; how is it that we can let someone as young as grade 4 make the decision to start smoking?

Tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year. More than 6 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 890 000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. Nearly 80% of the world's more than 1 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries.

That's a pretty crazy bit of information when you realize that the average smoker is 13 when they start smoking and 90% of all smokers start before they turn 18.

I think it's time we look at the arrangement we have with big tobacco again, and ask ourselves, do we need to be selling this stuff?

The only way to prevent these companies from signing up new recruits is to ban cigarettes all together.

There is no better time.

Let’s put them out.

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