7 - APC'S NO SMOKING CAMPAIGN

 Yesterday was October 21 ,2015 and me and my classmates attended the Anti-Smoking seminar held at our school's Multipurpose Hall 2. First of all, being a student of Asia Pacific College for about 4 months I can say APC has a very nice facility and service in terms of education but there is only one thing that bothers me and this is to see a lot of APC students smoke. I feel sad when I see someone, somehow same at my age, that smoke because they know already what are the bad effects of smoking yet they continue their bad habit. Teenagers nowadays see smoking as a cool thing which is one of the reasons why the number of teenagers who has a habit of smoking keeps increasing, well I myself is not a smoker that is why it is very easy for me to say NO TO CIGARETTES and of course NO TO SMOKING and since our school have this anti smoking campaign, I am very happy that a No Smoking Campaign Seminar was held yesterday. 
 
Mr. Emer Rojas was one of the speakers in the seminar, he is part of the New Vois Association of the Philippines Inc. and is a cancer survivor. He shared us the effects of smoking and why smoking shouldn't be a habit. Mr. Rojas being a cancer patient back then,  he shared the things that he can no longer do for the rest of his life and one of it is to swim it is because he no longer breathes through his nose but he breathes through the hole somewhere on the lower part of his neck. He also mentioned that since he no longer breathes through his nose, he's sense of smell and taste were no longer functioning. During his talk all of us were really listening for we see that he can't speak without his electrolarynx, an electric medical device used by Laryngectomy Patients or Throat Cancer patients to produce clearer speech. All through out his very informative talk I think many of my classmates were reminded of why smoking is a bad thing to do for.

 

Engineer Emer Rojas giving his talk about the hazardous effects of smoking

In the talk of Mr. Rojas he mentioned how many chemical compounds does cigarettes contain and for all you know cigarettes contains over 7,000 chemical compounds. By that information they have raised up awareness about it through this No Smoking Campaign, and with the help of raising the awareness, Sin Tax Law RA 10351 which is an act restructuring the excise tax on alcohol and tobacco products was implemented at the year 2012. As the awareness continues to spread the next goal of the campaign is to make Graphic Health Warnings printed along the pack of cigarettes.

Example of Cigarette Packs of other countries that has Graphic Heal Warnings.

After the talk and have been reminded of preventing cancer by removing smoking as a habit of many all throughout the talk, we were given flyers. Even though I'm not a smoker I really do learn a lot in this talk we attended, and by this it helped me to be more alert and careful for I myself is still prone to lung cancer due to what we call second hand smoke, and that through the help of all the information I got from the talk I can help raise awareness to other people especially to those people who smokes.