blog #12

                  We should educate young kids regarding the danger of smoking and  the use of other drugs that can harm them and their bodies. There are limited resources that provides schools, parents and kids about the dangers of drugs. Everyone has their favorite actor who they look up and wants to be like them, especially young kids.Considering most kids are watching television all the time, we need to restrict them of what they can watch and what they can't. In the mean time we also need to teach them why it is so important to stay away from drugs what they can do to prevent themselves from using it. Having more advertisements about drugs and the dangers it can do to your body , I think it will help and reduce the percentage of young kids addicted to drugs. 
In a survey published by Dr. James D. Sargent , kids between the ages 10-14 years  that watches R-rated movies containing smoking and other drugs  are more likely to smoke and destroy their lives.
Kids are not only exposed by drugs in movies, but at home and school. Parents are the first role models to their kids, in fact most  kids wants to be like their mom or dad at one point in their life. One of my friend who I thought  would never smoke because we were always against it and said to each that we would never do drugs or smoke. One day she informed me that she was addicted to smoking a whole pack of cigarette  a day. I was obviously very sad and devastated at that point, but tried to understand why and how she started to smoke. It happened when she was a very young age , when she saw her dad smoking and she started to steal the cigarette from her dad. At first it was just a try, but then it became  a habit.She stated that she just wanted to try because it looked cool and nothing happened to her dad's health.  At that time also many parents did not have that type of education to inform their kids that smoking is bad for your health. Even at school we were not educated much about smoking and what the consequences. For example smoking can give you cancer or have hearth and lung problems. Now there are more pictures ,commercial , billboards regarding companies that provide  services to get help if you want to quite smoking or if you want to quite using other drugs like cocaine or marijuana than before.

Thirty- Eight percent of kids tend to imitate their favorite actors from  different types of movies. Many kids would dress, talk, and even end up doing drugs just to stand out around their piers. In the passage "Children who had the greatest exposure to smoking in movies were more than two and a half times as likely to start smoking as those who had the lowest exposure." Yes, kids will try to be and act like their favorite actor at home , in school and among their friends just to impress the people around them and also for attention. Kids are exposed to smoking from small when they watch television. For example , watching cartoon when Tom and Jerry smoking cigars and even drinking wine to impress their girlfriends. I have seen kids try to take a lollipop stick or a Popsicle stick  and pretend to smoke because they saw it on television. Now how can you explain to 2 or 3 year old that what he or she did is wrong and can harm your life, when Tom and Jerry is one of their favorite show and characters. It's up to us now to protect our kids from not only television, but also their favorite characters who are showing them that smoking and drugs are cool.

There are many ways we can help young kids from staying away from drugs. We need to have  have strict regulations  and rules on all businesses that produce cigarette and other type of drugs to companies that sell these products.  Creating more awareness in school and movies can help prevent young kids from using drugs.