1. One of the main problems that effect teens today is smoking. A lot of under aged smokers have health problems as they get older as a result of smoking. The reason young people smoke is to improve their self image or to act cool in front of their friends. When young people get pressured into smoking, this is called peer pressure. The reason some young people get away with under aged smoking is because they do it under the bridge or in the park away from supervision .They feel like they will not get caught and they do not think ahead of what the future will hold for them if they continue to smoke. One of the solutions I have thought of to stop teen smoking is to reduce the number of ads in magazines that encourage smoking and to discourage the use of smoking in movies and television. Don’t have a cool person with awesome hair, cool shades and a nice abdominal tight shirt picking up and smoking a cigarette. Some youth would see that as being cool and start smoking trying to act like that guy in the ad. We need to get rid of apparel that promotes cigarettes. We should discourage having movie actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a movie “Predator”, smoking a big cigar when he is looking for the alien. This could make smoking seem easy if you want to be the tough guy. You know that being tough or strong have nothing to do with smoking. Sometimes being tough is fighting off the peer pressure about smoking. We should also ban smoking from movies, cartoons and TV shows. For example, at the end of some of the episodes of the “Andy Griffith” show, when he is playing his guitar, he is smoking a cigarette. Some students would like to play a guitar like he does and this could lead them to start smoking. These are some helpful ideas we could use to stop under aged smoking. The other solution that comes to mind is to use education both in the schools and in the use of medical studies to reduce the number of youth turning to cigarettes. The school could bring in a motivational speaker, such as a doctor, that has worked with patients who have smoked the majority of their life and discuss how the act of smoking has damaged their health. The doctor could show pictures of the patient’s lungs before and after they have smoked. He could also describe the different diseases you can get from smoking. My great grandfather and my grandfather both died from emphysema resulting from smoking. We could have cameras set up on the outside of school to catch students smoking. This would be proof of those students that that are going over to the park to smoke in-between classes. We could have rewards for the students that turn their cigarettes in and consequences for those students that continue to smoke. Students could get involved in after school activities such as DARE were they will learn not to get pressured into smoking and how to handle situations if you ever got offered a cigarette. We could do fun activities that would involve experiments to show how smoking could affect your breathing. Running 22s until you are short of breath could make you feel like a smoker that is short of breath. The parents could also attend the meetings and hopefully have their minds changed regarding smoking and how dangerous under aged smoking can be for their children. I think my best solution to stop under aged smoking is to have the education system involved. Every student has to go to school, it’s the law. If every student in the United States would stop smoking, the tobacco companies would see their profits go down the drain and possibly go out of business. This could possibly help the adults stop smoking as well because they would not anything to smoke. This would lead to people living longer and happier lives instead of dying from lung cancer and other diseases. The Average life expectancy would increase and people could be living to the ripe old age of 80’s and 90’s. This would mean millions of dollars could be saved for the cost of medicines and health devices to save lives. If there were no under aged smoking in our schools, students would pay more attention in class rather than waiting anxiously for the bell to ring to smoke their cigarettes. By paying more attention in class, students would achieve better grades, resulting in a higher IQ which would possibly allow them to attend a college. The end result could be a higher paying job. This is what I call the “domino” effect. I hope my essay will discourage students, as well as adults, from making the decision to smoke their first cigarette. Not only does it affect their health, but also the people around them. If we start right now, our efforts would make a difference.