TEENAGERS can talk themselves out (or into) anything. Take smoking, for example. If you were to tell them that a person who smokes a packet of cigarettes a day may lose about two teeth every 10 years, they’ll just reply: “So what? Got dentures what!” Tell them that cigarette smoke contains over 4,800 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer, they’ll say: “I’ve learned all that in Science and Biology! No need to tell me again.”

And if you say that smokers have a higher tendency of getting heart attacks (some studies have show that three years after a person quits smoking, the risk of them getting heart attack has lowered substantially, they would also have a reply. “You crazy ah? Heart attack? But I’m so young! My uncle smokes, my grandfather also smokes – all still alive what!”

The fact is, everyone knows that smoking is bad for you. And we may not be doctors, but think about it: do you really want to be known as the youngest person who died of a heart attack ?

Smoking among teenagers has long been common, so much so that most people do not even view it as a serious social ill, not like taking drugs. Just try to remember the last time you reacted to a young person smoking openly in public. No one even bats an eyelid.

The truth is: No matter how many rulings or laws you drown teenagers in, and no matter how many times you tell them this habit can potentially kill them, teenagers will continue to do it. Rebellion seems to be in our genetic make up. Why do you think most of them started smoking in the first place?

Which brings us back to teenagers getting what they want, and what they would do to get them. The two of us are not smokers, but we thought we’d conduct an experiment to just see how easy it was to get what we wanted (for the purpose of this article, what we wanted was a box of cigarettes).

It wasn’t so difficult for underaged teens to purchase cigarettes, as the BRATs discovered.

Remember that in Malaysia, cigarettes are not allowed to be sold to those under the age of 18 – the exact category we fall under. We went out to some stores in the Klang Valley to see if we could get the people behind the counter to sell us a pack of cigarettes. We were given odd looks at the counter. The cashiers hesitated to sell us the cigarettes (although none asked for our MyKad for age verification). We didn’t insist that they sell us the cigarettes because we did not want to attract too much attention, and so we left.

The next day, we returned with a fail-proof back-up plan. We brought along our guy friends (who were also underaged) to see if the stores would sell them the cigarettes instead. We can’t say that we were surprised but our male counterparts fared much better. Within seconds, the man at the counter passed them the cigarettes. Of course, this proved our point that we could get what we want . Even though we failed to buy the cigarettes, we were able to hatch a plan that got them for us. The fact is that teenager s today can easily get cigarettes.

We may not be able to convince you to stop smoking because we know that once a teenager has set their minds on something, there’s no convincing them otherwise. In that sense, the only person who can help you is yourself. Therefore, before you even think of picking up the cigarette , we can only hope that you would change your mind before it is too late to quit. Talk to the older smokers and many would tell you that they wished they had quit when they still could. Imagine living your life with a cough that never leaves you, or your throat hurting every time you laugh. There are plenty of things people don’t tell you about smoking. If you are already a smoker, STOP NOW.

You would think that it would be easy to snuff out a cigarette, considering how most people already know the negative effects of smoking.

Some teenagers continue to smoke because they did not think they’d be hooked on it. But addiction is inevitable if you continue to indulge in that one stick of cigarette, and then another....it becomes a necessity and a craving you have no control over. So, have the guts to resist societal and peer pressure. Think of all the things that you will be able to buy in the future instead of spending it for a “quick fix” of nicotine.

So what if all your friends are smoking? So what if they tell you it’s “not cool” to not smoke? To all the teens of the world, stand up, be different, and say NO to smoking.